u/notveryamused_

Siedzę sobie nad greką ostatnio i cisnę archaiczną poezję, czytanie mi lepiej idzie niż przekładanie samemu. Co ciekawe, archaiczna grecka poezja jest często prostsza do czytania niż proza, mniej tam gramatycznych zawiłości. Wiele z tych elegii wywodzi się z sympozjonów, czyli dosłownie popijaw :), gdzie przy winie i flecistkach układali sobie takie drobiazgi.

Elegia po grecku nie oznacza smutnego wiersza, elegie układali na każdy temat, chodzi wyłącznie o miarę metryczną: w elegii pierwszy wers to heksametr, drugi to pentametr (sześć stóp, pięć stóp). Spora część elegii to były takie neurotyczne romanse, ale Mimnermos akurat jęczał przede wszystkim o starości: w każdym z tych trzech wierszy pojawia się fraza γῆρας ἀργαλέον ("wstrętna starość"), co chyba było taką sygnaturą Mimnermosa. Żył w siódmym wieku p.n.e., więc to praktycznie najwcześniejsza grecka liryka, trzy-cztery pokolenia po Homerze (do którego Mimnermos zresztą często nawiązuje).

Podrzucam oryginalną grekę, polskie przekłady i krótkie komentarze.

Fragment 1

>τίς δὲ βίος, τί δὲ τερπνὸν ἄτερ χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης;
>τεθναίην, ὅτε μοι μηκέτι ταῦτα μέλοι,
>κρυπταδίη φιλότης καὶ μείλιχα δῶρα καὶ εὐνή,
>οἷ᾽ ἥβης ἄνθεα γίγνεται ἁρπαλέα
>ἀνδράσιν ἠδὲ γυναιξίν· ἐπεὶ δ᾽ ὀδυνηρὸν ἐπέλθῃ
>γῆρας, ὅ τ᾽ αἰσχρὸν ὁμῶς καὶ κακὸν ἄνδρα τιθεῖ,
>αἰεί μιν φρένας ἀμφὶ κακαὶ τείρουσι μέριμναι,
>οὐδ᾽ αὐγὰς προσορέων τέρπεται ἠελίου,
>ἀλλ᾽ ἐχθρὸς μὲν παισίν, ἀτίμαστος δὲ γυναιξίν·
>οὕτως ἀργαλέον γῆρας ἔθηκε θεός.

Przekład Jana Czubka:

>Życież to, gdy odwróci lice Kiprys złota?
>Bywaj, śmierci! gdy zmierzchnie miłośna ochota,
>Rozkosz tajnie kradziona i słodkie szeptanie,
>Co nam wonią potrząsa żywota zaranie.
>Bo gdy się już raz starość zgarbiona przywlecze,
>Człowiek zrobi się lepszy, lecz krasa uciecze:
>W sercu ciągle kłopoty i troskę masz wieczną,
>Już wesoło nie patrzysz na światłość słoneczną,
>Biedny cel kpin niewieścich, pośmiewisko dziatek:
>Oj, ciężkiż nam bóg, ciężki dał życia ostatek.

Przekład Włodzimierza Appla:

>Czymże jest życie, czym rozkosz, bez Afrodyty złocistej?
>Obym umarł, gdy dla mnie istnieć te rzeczy przestaną –
>w łożu słodkie chwile z kochanką i miłość tajemna.
>Tylko kwiaty młodości pełne są czaru i one
>wabią kobiety i mężczyzn, bo skoro przykra nadejdzie
>starość, która zeszpeca nawet pięknego człowieka,
>wówczas serce bez przerwy niedobre troski nękają,
>także nie cieszy już więcej widok słonecznych promieni,
>wnet też niemiły się stajesz dla kobiet i wstrętny dla chłopców.
>Tak to bóg człowiekowi starość bolesną sposobi.

Komentarz: obaj tłumacze to właściwie historycy literatury, nie poeci, ale dziewiętnastowieczny Czubek, trochę mniej dbały o ścisłość filologiczną, sobie lepiej radzi. Bywanie na sympozjonach w archaicznej Grecji było przywilejem wyższych klas, wszyscy najdawniejsi greccy poeci to elity, a ulubioną rozrywką elit była oczywiście miłość do chłopców :-) Jest inny krótki wiersz Mimnermosa, w którym narzeka, że na starość jest się "wstrętnym nawet dla swoich chłopców": niektórzy niby tłumaczą, że chodzi o własne dzieci, no ale jednak na pewno nie, chodzi o swoich młodych kochanków :D Z kolei Appel dodaje "w łóżku z kochanką", w oryginale w drugim wersie nie ma płci zaznaczonej, są tylko "tajemne miłostki, słodkie podarunki i łóżko". Dlatego tutaj też Czubek z "pośmiewiskiem dziatek" przestrzelił, bo o męskich kochanków chodzi, ale przekład poza tym bardzo spoko. Kiprys to Afrodyta, taki przydomek, bo Afrodyta miała narodzić się na Cyprze, gdzie było wiele jej świątyń.

Fragment 2

>ἡμεῖς δ᾽, οἷά τε φύλλα φύει πολυάνθεμος ὥρη
>ἔαρος, ὅτ᾽ αἶψ᾽ αὐγῇς αὔξεται ἠελίου,
>τοῖς ἴκελοι πήχυιον ἐπὶ χρόνον ἄνθεσιν ἥβης
>τερπόμεθα, πρὸς θεῶν εἰδότες οὔτε κακὸν
>οὔτ᾽ ἀγαθόν· Κῆρες δὲ παρεστήκασι μέλαιναι,
>ἡ μὲν ἔχουσα τέλος γήραος ἀργαλέου,
>ἡ δ᾽ ἑτέρη θανάτοιο· μίνυνθα δὲ γίνεται ἥβης
>καρπός, ὅσον τ᾽ ἐπὶ γῆν κίδναται ἠέλιος.
>αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν δὴ τοῦτο τέλος παραμείψεται ὥρης,
>αὐτίκα δὴ τεθνάναι βέλτιον ἢ βίοτος·
>πολλὰ γὰρ ἐν θυμῷ κακὰ γίνεται· ἄλλοτε οἶκος
>τρυχοῦται, πενίης δ᾽ ἔργ᾽ ὀδυνηρὰ πέλει·
>ἄλλος δ᾽ αὖ παίδων ἐπιδεύεται, ὧν τε μάλιστα
>ἱμείρων κατὰ γῆς ἔρχεται εἰς Ἀΐδην·
>ἄλλος νοῦσον ἔχει θυμοφθόρον· οὐδέ τίς ἐστιν
>ἀνθρώπων ᾧ Ζεὺς μὴ κακὰ πολλὰ διδοῖ.

Przekład Aleksandra Walickiego:

>My jak liście, gdy wiosny kwiatorodna pora
>Ożyje, kiedy słońca znów błyśnie oblicze,
>Radujem się młodości kwiatem do wieczora,
>Ni rozkosze od bogów ważąc, ni słodycze.
>W tem Kery czarne zeszły; ta starości nici
>Ciężkiej, trudnej piastuje, a tamta śmierć trzyma.
>I póki słońca promień po ziemi nam świeci,
>Póty owoc przez chwilę pieścimy oczyma;
>Lecz gdy pora pogody zejdzie z swej koleje,
>Wtedy śmierć pożądańsza niż pasmo żywota.
>I zewsząd troska spada; człek nędzą więdnieje
>I trwogi niezliczone kołaczą we wrota:
>Ten żałuje swych dziatek, boleść serce krwawi
>I z tęsknym żalem w ziemię do Hadesu schodzi;
>Innemu ciężki umysł chorobą się trawi.
>Każdego swój od Zeusa pocisk zła ugodzi.

Przekład Włodzimierza Appla:

>My jak liście jesteśmy, co w porze nastają kwitnącej
>wiosny, kiedy promienie słońca do życia je budzą.
>Im podobni krótko cieszymy się kwiatem młodości,
>zgoła przy tym nie znając – bóg to bowiem rozstrzyga –
>dobra i zła; a Kery tam w pobliżu stoją posępne,
>jedna z nich nam przynosi czas bolesnej starości,
>druga zaś śmierci. Bo chwilę zaledwie trwa owoc młodości,
>tyle, ile od rana słońce nad ziemią jaśnieje.
>Zatem skoro nadejdzie ów czas, gdy młodość przemija,
>lepiej jest umrzeć natychmiast niźli żywot wieść dalszy.
>Sercu bowiem przychodzi wycierpieć wiele niedoli;
>oto czyjś dom niszczeje, bieda zaś zmartwień nie szczędzi;
>oto ktoś dzieci nie mając, choć bardzo posiadać je pragnął,
>musi ziemię opuścić, zstąpić w krainę Hadesu;
>oto ktoś inny śmiertelnej ulega chorobie. Bo nie ma
>człeka, któremu by Zeus nieszczęść licznych nie przydał.

Komentarz: nie wiem, czy chlanko z Mimnermosem było takie przyjemne, skoro non stop jęczał o jednym. Wariacja na tym samym motywie, co pierwszy fragment, ale tym razem bezpośrednie nawiązanie do Homera: w szóstej księdze Iliady Glaukon porównuje pokolenia do liści. Takie przerabianie wielkiej i ważnej Iliady na mniejsze motywy przy popijawie jest szalenie ciekawe w elegii: pierwszy wers elegii to heksametr, więc cytat z Homera można dosłownie przerzucić do własnego wiersza i będzie pasował, natomiast kolejny wers to zawsze pentametr, więc trzeba dopisać własną odpowiedź, takie przerzucanie się. W oryginale choroba jest θυμοφθόρον, "duszoniszczycielska", ładne. Znowu Appel trochę przegadany imho. A z ciekawostek: thymos, dusza po grecku, powiązana jest etymologicznie z polskim słowem dym :)

Fragment 5

>αὐτίκα μοι κατὰ μὲν χροιὴν ῥέει ἄσπετος ἱδρώς,
>πτοιῶμαι δ᾽ ἐσορῶν ἄνθος ὁμηλικίης
>τερπνὸν ὁμῶς καὶ καλόν, ἐπεὶ πλέον ὤφελεν εἶναι.
>ἀλλ᾽ ὀλιγοχρόνιον γίνεται ὥσπερ ὄναρ
>ἥβη τιμήεσσα· τὸ δ᾽ ἀργαλέον καὶ ἄμορφον
>γῆρας ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς αὐτίχ᾽ ὑπερκρέμαται,
>ἐχθρὸν ὁμῶς καὶ ἄτιμον, ὅ τ᾽ ἄγνωστον τιθεῖ ἄνδρα,
>βλάπτει δ᾽ ὀφθαλμοὺς καὶ νόον ἀμφιχυθέν.

Przekład Jana Czubka:

>Wnet drżę i pot gorący ciecze mi po ciele,
>Gdy na młodości spojrzę urok i wesele,
>Tak piękne, tak rozkoszne! – Oby dłużej trwało!
>Lecz nie – młodości kwiecie trwa przez chwilkę małą,
>Jak piękna mara senna; tuż zaraz się skrada
>Starość zgięta we dwoje, ciężka, drżąca, blada,
>Miru i czci pozbawia, krasę z lica ściera,
>Bystrość oka osłabia i rozum odbiera.

Przekład Włodzimierza Appla:

>(...) krótką chwilę jedynie, tyle, co senne marzenie,
>młodość trwa drogocenna, bo wnet bolesna i szpetna
>starość nad głowę człowieka chyżo się zniża, pogardę
>niosąc oraz nienawiść, i wnet zapomnianym go czyni,
>rozum i oczy zaślepia, cieniem się wokół rozlawszy.

Komentarz: przekład Appla pomija trzy pierwsze wersy, bo one zachowały się na innym papirusie, być może napisane przez Teognisa, chociaż z dużym prawdopodobieństwem to całość Mimnermosa, a końcówka na pewno, bo to znowu jego sygnatura ("szpetna starość" z tym nietypowym przymiotnikiem, ἀργαλέον). Nie wiem, skąd ta "starość zgięta we dwoje", nie ma tego w oryginale, ale są za to dwie ładne metafory: starość najpierw "wisi nam nad głową", potem, zanim się człowiek obejrzy, "rozlewa się wokół". (Czemu cieniem, tego nie wiem :D, też nie ma tego cienia w oryginale).

Ogólnie rzecz biorąc, Mimnermik trochę ponad 2600 lat temu najbardziej się martwi tym, że już się nie podoba nastolatkom obu płci, i woli umrzeć z tego powodu. Ładny ten jeden wers: ἀλλ᾽ ἐχθρὸς μὲν παισίν, ἀτίμαστος δὲ γυναιξίν – "lecz (już) i dla chłopców szpetny, i dla dziewczyn niemiły". Cóż!!! Gone but not forgotten!, RIP :-)

We have only a few fragments from Mimnermus, curiously in three of them γῆρας ἀργαλέον reappears as an epithet ("grievous, painful old age"), which looks a bit like his poetic signature as this is what he's mostly concerned with :) I'm pasting Greek and two different translations below. Very cleanly written elegies from the 7th century BC, quite easy to parse too: it's interesting how the same vocabulary comes back time and time again, those are basically three variations on the very same theme. Fr. 2 references Homer (Iliad, book 6), and in fr. 5 first three verses were preserved in Theognidean corpus, but the latter are securely by Mimnermus. Enjoy!

Fragment 1

>τίς δὲ βίος, τί δὲ τερπνὸν ἄτερ χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης;
>τεθναίην, ὅτε μοι μηκέτι ταῦτα μέλοι,
>κρυπταδίη φιλότης καὶ μείλιχα δῶρα καὶ εὐνή,
>οἷ᾽ ἥβης ἄνθεα γίγνεται ἁρπαλέα
>ἀνδράσιν ἠδὲ γυναιξίν· ἐπεὶ δ᾽ ὀδυνηρὸν ἐπέλθῃ
>γῆρας, ὅ τ᾽ αἰσχρὸν ὁμῶς καὶ κακὸν ἄνδρα τιθεῖ,
>αἰεί μιν φρένας ἀμφὶ κακαὶ τείρουσι μέριμναι,
>οὐδ᾽ αὐγὰς προσορέων τέρπεται ἠελίου,
>ἀλλ᾽ ἐχθρὸς μὲν παισίν, ἀτίμαστος δὲ γυναιξίν·
>οὕτως ἀργαλέον γῆρας ἔθηκε θεός.

Fragment 2

>ἡμεῖς δ᾽, οἷά τε φύλλα φύει πολυάνθεμος ὥρη
>ἔαρος, ὅτ᾽ αἶψ᾽ αὐγῇς αὔξεται ἠελίου,
>τοῖς ἴκελοι πήχυιον ἐπὶ χρόνον ἄνθεσιν ἥβης
>τερπόμεθα, πρὸς θεῶν εἰδότες οὔτε κακὸν
>οὔτ᾽ ἀγαθόν· Κῆρες δὲ παρεστήκασι μέλαιναι,
>ἡ μὲν ἔχουσα τέλος γήραος ἀργαλέου,
>ἡ δ᾽ ἑτέρη θανάτοιο· μίνυνθα δὲ γίνεται ἥβης
>καρπός, ὅσον τ᾽ ἐπὶ γῆν κίδναται ἠέλιος.
>αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν δὴ τοῦτο τέλος παραμείψεται ὥρης,
>αὐτίκα δὴ τεθνάναι βέλτιον ἢ βίοτος·
>πολλὰ γὰρ ἐν θυμῷ κακὰ γίνεται· ἄλλοτε οἶκος
>τρυχοῦται, πενίης δ᾽ ἔργ᾽ ὀδυνηρὰ πέλει·
>ἄλλος δ᾽ αὖ παίδων ἐπιδεύεται, ὧν τε μάλιστα
>ἱμείρων κατὰ γῆς ἔρχεται εἰς Ἀΐδην·
>ἄλλος νοῦσον ἔχει θυμοφθόρον· οὐδέ τίς ἐστιν
>ἀνθρώπων ᾧ Ζεὺς μὴ κακὰ πολλὰ διδοῖ.

Fragment 5

>αὐτίκα μοι κατὰ μὲν χροιὴν ῥέει ἄσπετος ἱδρώς,
>πτοιῶμαι δ᾽ ἐσορῶν ἄνθος ὁμηλικίης
>τερπνὸν ὁμῶς καὶ καλόν, ἐπεὶ πλέον ὤφελεν εἶναι.
>ἀλλ᾽ ὀλιγοχρόνιον γίνεται ὥσπερ ὄναρ
>ἥβη τιμήεσσα· τὸ δ᾽ ἀργαλέον καὶ ἄμορφον
>γῆρας ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς αὐτίχ᾽ ὑπερκρέμαται,
>ἐχθρὸν ὁμῶς καὶ ἄτιμον, ὅ τ᾽ ἄγνωστον τιθεῖ ἄνδρα,
>βλάπτει δ᾽ ὀφθαλμοὺς καὶ νόον ἀμφιχυθέν.

Translations by Christopher Childers

Fragment 1

>What life, what pleasure, without golden Love?
>Let me drop dead when I have had enough
>of secret trysts, love-gifts and the love-bed,
>flowers of youth whose joys are harvested
>by men and women. But when the pain sets in
>of age, deforming even handsome men,
>cruel worries always wear us down for spite;
>we get no pleasure looking on the light;
>women do not respect us; boys are cold.
>That’s how bitter the god made getting old.

Fragment 2

>We are like leaves born in the teeming spring,
>basking in sunlight, swiftly burgeoning;
>like them, for an arm’s length of time, we live
>happy and young, and what the gods will give
>we don’t suspect. Presences wrapped in gloom
>are always near, one holding out the doom
>of age, another, death. And youth won’t last;
>its fruit, like one day’s worth of sun, dies fast.
>And when this season dwindles and is gone,
>it’s better being dead than living on.
>For troubles swarm the heart: one man will blow
>his savings, and lose everything but woe;
>another man wants children most of all,
>and, wanting them, goes down to Hades’ hall;
>disease destroys a third. For Zeus the king
>gives everyone a share of suffering.

Fragment 5

>(Suddenly speechless sweat rivers my face
>and my heart flutters at the charm and grace
>of boys my age in bloom. If this could last!)
>But like a pleasant dream that fades too fast
>youth withers; suddenly above your head
>old age hangs pain and ugliness and dread;
>dishonored, foul, disfiguring, it wounds
>the mind and sight of those whom it surrounds.

Translations by M.L. West

Fragment 1

>What's life, what's joy, without love's heavenly gold?
>I hope I die when I no longer care
>for secret closeness, tender favours, bed,
>which are the rapturous flowers that grace youth's prime
>for men and women. But when painful age
>comes on, that makes a man loathsome and vile,
>malignant troubles ever vex his heart;
>seeing the sunlight gives him joy no more.
>He is abhorred by boys, by women scorned;
>so hard a thing God made old age to be.

Fragment 2

>But we are like the leaves that flowery spring
>puts forth, quick spreading in the sun's warm light:
>for a brief span of time we take our joy
>in our youth's bloom, the future, good or ill,
>kept from us, while the twin dark Dooms stand by,
>one bringing to fulfillment harsh old age,
>the other, death. The ripeness of youth's fruit
>is short, short as the sunlight on the earth,
>and once this season of perfection's past,
>it's better to be dead than stay alive.
>All kinds of worry come. One man's estate
>is failing, and there's painful poverty;
>another has no sons – the keenest need
>one feels as one goes down below the earth;
>sickness wears down another's heart. There's none
>Zeus does not give a multitude of ills.

Fragment 5

>The sweat runs down me, and my heart's a-flutter,
>seeing my generation in its bloom
>of joy and beauty. Oh, it ought to last
>for longer! But it's fleeting as a dream,
>our precious youth; in no time ugly, harsh
>hateful old age is looming over us,
>unvalued, that enveloping deforms
>past recognition, dims both sight and mind.

Most of my playlists are focused on oldies, late 60s was such a magnificent time. After the Foreign Tongues rush – I need a short break now :D – I wanted to explore some more modern stuff, and curiously rock today isn't my favourite genre really. I'm especially very far behind when it comes to stuff people listen to nowadays, I don't really enjoy modern pop that much, but I'm sure there'll be some exceptions. Any recommendations of albums from the last 3-4 years, stuff that resembles the Stones but also more general, something people listening to the Stones also enjoy? Thanks in advance.

Continuing my work on a new branch stemming directly from Proto-Indo-European (colours/shining here, body parts here). Again, educated inventiveness, with two aims in mind: some kind of naturalism and historical accuracy paired with minimalism and regularity.

A minimalistic conlang could get away with a single motion verb, but Proto-Indo-European offers a lot of stable reconstructions. I’ve spent this entire weekend studying Hittite :), not much inspiration from it so far, but I hope to sneak some Anatolian features here and there. At the end a small note on how I hope to resolve laryngeals/ablauts and an early morphological sketch.

Verbs of movement

h₃er- ‘to stir, to move’. Originally this root had a somewhat inchoative meaning, and this gets resolved through a slight semantic shift in active (‘to set something in motion, to begin something’) and mediopassive (‘to stir, move restlessly, be agitated’). This is the general root for movement, but not going anywhere („Stop moving and listen to me!”), particularly good for extending and compounding.

h₁ey- ‘to go’, the most general multi-purpose root. Greek eimi, Latin eo (perf. ii lol), Slavic iti. Those forms already point to a problem though, in zero-grade this verb simplifies to a very awkward, single i-: Latin conjugation reflects in some of the funnier forms, like iit (‘he/she went’). I’m aiming at regularity, but I believe this root will actually be defective, resisting productive derivation (which is historical, eg. Polish doesn’t have going as an existing form, which needs to be supplied by other roots), but open to compounding.

gʷem- ‘to come, to arrive’; a counterpart to h₁ey-. Reflected by Greek baino, Latin venio, English come. Useful for ‘newcomers’, but also as stative with a strong sense of ‘being here’, of course ‘arrival’ as well.

h₂eǵ- ‘to drive, to lead’. Active by default, it denotes an animate mover most of all, in Latin and Greek it gave us both hegemon ‘leader’ and actor. With the -r- extension it also resulted in „agro” stuff, from ‘field, pasturage’ to ‘hunting’, it’s a very naturalistic development (you lead your livestock to the fields just like a general leads their troops…), but at least in the beginning I want to keep the agricultural semantic field separate (h₂erh₃- ‘to plow’ steps in!).

weǵʰ- ‘to convey by vehicle’, somewhat connected to previous one, but with a clear semantic field: ‘driver’, ‘vehicle’ (think of the English word wagon!). English word way also comes from it, interestingly, but for paths I’m using –

steygʰ- ‘to stride’. Originally it also had ‘to climb’ as its primary meaning, but in my branch it supplies all of the above with ‘path, route, road’ and ‘traveller, voyager’, and also ‘trip, voyage’. In other words, it deals with trips which are intentional, it’s a goal-directed motion.

bʰegʷ- and bʰewg- are two separate roots, but their similarity is an important coincidence. They give us Slavic  biegać/bieżać ‘to run/to flee’, but also Greek phobos ‘fear’ and pheugo ‘to flee’. Here running is conceptualised primarily as flight rather than rapid movement. In my branch, the concept gets two different roots (‘to fear’ in mediopassive, ‘to terrify’ in active) and ‘to run’ simply, but both sound very similar to each other (and were perhaps connected in PIE).

kʷel- ‘to turn, to revolve’, a very well attested root (think of cycle and wheel). It will also provide ‘around’ and revolves:) around this whole concept. There’s also another PIE root worth mentioning, wert- ‘to turn, rotate’, which might denote a similar concept, but with an underlying idea of ‘changing’ as well, here I’m not perfectly sure whether to use both of them yet.

ped- ‘foot, to walk’ is one I mentioned already in body parts, it means a ‘short walk’. bʰer- is also worth mentioning here, one of the most famous PIE roots, ‘to carry, to bear’, also meaning ‘load, burden’, with quite amazing derivations in different languages: at the most basic level I keep it to its primary meaning though.

leykʷ- ‘to leave behind’ in active, ‘to depart’ in mediopassive. Interestingly, in daughter IE languages it meant simply ‘what’s remaining, the rest’, sometimes ‘inheritance’, but in Baltic languages also ‘time’ (as in: what remains…). I’m strongly considering this development.

terh₂- ‘to cross, traverse’, crossing a boundary, which also gives me ‘boundary, limit’ and some grammatical development (Latin trans comes from this root as well). My first root with a final laryngeal, I’ll note its resolution below too.

sleydʰ- ‘to slide, to slip’ is a small addition, nice distinctive root still seen quite clearly in modern English, here meaning also ‘slippery’ and perhaps even ‘deceitful’. In Slavic languages it had an interesting development, ‘track/trace’ and ‘to follow, to stalk’, including Polish śledczy ‘detective, investigator’.

Finally, peth₂- ‘to fly, wing’ here gives me also a general word for ‘bird’, in a few thousand years also an ‘airplane’ :). This also lets me go with ptā- root for 'bird/flyer' in zero-grade, which looks very similar to the Slavic word (ptak), but interestingly would most probably make a false cognate. Water movement is covered by plew- ‘to swim, to sail, to float’ and srew- ‘to flow’.

Stationary verbs

Movement verbs were mostly active-leaning, the ones below are mostly mediopassive-leaning.

steh₂- ‘to stand’ is one of the most prolific PIE roots and for a reason, from physical action to stasis, state, status, -stan, stay, stead etc. While I’m obviously going to derive it extensively, from the very beginning I’d like to limit the semantics a bit through extensions: physical and spatial ideas stay with the core one, institutional gets suffixed with something (-dʰ- perhaps?). 

sed- ‘to sit’, with also connotations of ‘nest’ etc. legʰ- ‘to lie, to lay down’ with ‘bed’ derived from it, which extends further to both sexual and marital connotations. Also active ’to lay/put something down’. I’m wondering whether ‘rest’ (which swep- ‘sleep’ doesn’t denote) belongs here as well, or maybe needs a wholly different root (like kʷeyh₁-). 

Laryngeals and ablauts

Resolving laryngeals while maintaining a regular ablaut system required some tough compromises, but well, roots like peh₂- 'to protect, shepherd' and peh₃- 'to drink' must remain distinct without relying excessively on secondary extensions.

The reflexes are deliberately simple. h₁ is lost without a trace, h₂ and h₃ colour adjacent e to a and o respectively. In CvH roots this is followed by lenghthening (to make it clear we’re not dealing with regular ablauts), giving pā- ‘to protect’ and pō- ‘to drink’. Likewise h₂eǵ- > āǵ- ‘to drive’, although historically this remained short (here I’m hesitating a bit though, would love your comments). HCvC roots develop prothetic vowels, eg. h₃neyd- > oneyd- ‘to insult’ (again, short, long?).

CeRH roots like terh₂- are treated somewhat differently, since the laryngeal has nothing to colour there. In e- and o-grades it’s simply lost (ter-, tor-), but in zero grade it reappears with lenghthening again (trā-). More generally, long vowels function as regular reflexes of underlying laryngeals rather than part of the inherited ablaut alternations (every laryngeal leaves lengthening).

Morphological sketch

Thanks to ablauting and basic suffixation each root can produce verbs, nouns and adjectives very easily and regularly. The point of this conlang is its fluidity. My morphology unfortunately flattens quite a lot from original PIE, but hopefully remains both robust and easy to learn. Particles are the only undeclined parts and a closed group, but all of them come from actual fully working roots.

Nominals: four cases (nom., gen., dat., acc.). The early animate/inanimate split develops into a full three gender system, but in a rather regular way. From each root there are nominal derivational categories (suffixed): agentive, resultative, abstractive, action/process (verbal noun replacing infinitives, fully declined); while this will be decided on a root-by-root basis with productivity in mind, in the end it’ll have a certain coherence and regularity clearly visible (which is supposed to help with learning a lot while making space for some historical lexical accidents :)).

Verbal system: tense/aspect is basically a 2x2 grid (perfective/imperfective, past/non-past). Interestingly there’s no imperative as such (no dead forms rule, avoiding defective paradigms whenever possible), indicative and optative are two moods, with optative being a general irrealis.

Active and mediopassive voices are retained and remain a very important feature. MP has three basic functions: reflexive/reciprocal („I was something” vs „I wash myself”); passive-leaning and lexicalised semantic drift in some of the roots („to touch [something]” and „to touch oneself, ie. masturbate” is my favourite example lol).

Voice is retained in the participle system, but not in nouns and adjectives. Where the semantics of MP form really change the meaning, swe- (which I’m going to cheat into sweh₂- actually) functions as the prefix (swātag- ‘masturbation’, from teh₂g- ‘to touch’). 

Jestem jeszcze przed pierwszą niedzielną miłmiłką, ale przeglądam sobie słowniki etymologiczne starożytnych języków, ostatnio siedzę nad językiem hetyckim. Pamiętam z samego początku tego suba, jakie kontrowersje spowodowała etymologia polskiego słowa kanapka :D, która faktycznie jest zresztą bardzo ciekawa (bo powiązana zarówno z kanapą, jak i z komarami lol). Dzisiaj podrzucam wam najstarsze mi znane słowo na kanapkę, używane na terenach dzisiejszej Turcji około czterech tysięcy lat temu: mjumju(tek) lub miłmił :-) No i co najlepsze, jest etymologicznie powiązane z polskim przymiotnikiem "miły", no i miłością oczywiście!!!

Sam fakt tego, że jesteśmy spokrewnieni językowo z Hetytami, którzy zamieszkiwali dziejszą Turcję w epoce brązu i handlowali/bili się z Egipcjanami jeszcze długo, zanim starożytni Grecy zaczęli się liczyć jako cywilizacja, jest szalenie ciekawy. No ale przede wszystkim interesuje mnie to, że jedli miłmiłki xD

Polski przymiotnik miły pochodzi od prasłowiańskiego *milъ 'drogi, przyjemny, delikatny, miły'. Jeśli sięgniemy jeszcze wcześniej, przez bałtosłowiański *meilas, to dojdziemy do praindoeuropejskiej formy *meyH-l-os, przymiotnika od rdzenia *meyh₁- 'miękki, delikatny'.

Ten sam rdzeń widoczny jest prawdopodobnie w łacińskim przymiotniku mitis (od którego mamy polskie mitygować), no ale przeszedł też do hetyckiego. Hetyci skończyli, co ciekawe, z dokładnie taką samą formą jak kilka tysięcy lat później my: mju- lub w niektórych odmianach mił- 'miły, delikatny'. Dzięki reduplikacji, czyli podwojeniu pierwszej głoski (którą w polskim widzimy np. w naszym boberze, który pewnie pochodzi od brązowego koloru, bobrąz hehe) zrobili sobie słówko czytane mjumju lub miłmił, które Kloekhorst w słowniku etymologicznym oznacza jako "a kind of soft bread".

Shout out do starożytnych Hetytów, a wam miłych mjumjutek i miłmiłek :)

Hejka Kraków. Nieoczekiwanie wpadło mi wolne w przyszłym tygodniu, więc po chyba dziesięciu latach prawie wpadnę was znowu odwiedzić i zobaczyć, co się zmieniło. Eszewerię wam zamknęli :( Plan mam dość typowy, będę się samemu szwędał z książką po Plantach, obczaję muzea (interesują mnie starożytności i XIX wiek, macie bardzo spoko kolekcje), poganiam gołębie na rynku, wypiję piwerko na Kazimierzu, poczytam Boya-Żeleńskiego o młodopolskim Krakowie, takie tam.

Wcześniej nocowałem tylko w tych bardziej turystycznych miejscówkach, wszystkie te miejsca dość dobrze pamiętam i bardzo lubię, ale teraz nieoczekiwanie mi wskoczyła miejscówa w okolicach Kampusu UJ przy Bobrzyńskiego. Tak chodzę sobie teraz żółtym ludzikiem: to takie miejsce, żeby wskoczyć w tramwaj rano i wracać wieczorem, czy jest tam coś ciekawego do zobaczenia? Wspinać się na tę górkę za kampusem? :) Z tego, co widzę, to całkiem studencko tam, więc jest gdzie zjeść itd., ale coś więcej do porobienia samemu? Dzięki!

(A jeśli nie konkretnie okolice kampusu, to po prostu inne dzielnice w okolicy, żeby nie tylko do centrum jeździć jednak i coś więcej zobaczyć).

Sveiki from Lenkija. It's a weird conversation to have, it's a weird subject to shitstorm online, I'm really sorry about that lol but it doesn't let me sleep at night, it's important to me beyond any politics and I'm writing in good faith among neighbours. Bear with me please :D

I always hated linguistics classes during my uni years, I have no proper education in linguistics, but at some point in my 30s I started learning Greek as a hobby and I was surprised how much of it was similar to my native Polish. Then I went the Proto-Indo-European rabbit hole, checking how deep we can go to reconstruct the language spoken five-six thousands years ago on the steppes. Polish isn't bad, we still retained plenty of roots directly, but Lithuanian is way more traditional with both vocabulary and grammar, you are the closest and by far. While that Lithuanian–Sanskrit intelligibility is obviously bollocks, the similarities are super cool. I doubt I will learn Lithuanian enough to be fluent, but I'll try to have a conversation one day.

I absolutely understand why you Lithuanians are proud of your language and I'm with you here, even in Poland there's great scholarship on Lithuanian, our Smoczyński wrote one of the best etymological dictionaries of Lithuanian. And I obviously understand the politics of our region, orcish propaganda etc., but it's not even worth commenting on, when we were rolling in the past they were a small country in the East we paid no attention to. They're not a linguistic argument at all.

Which brings me to the shitty question I want to ask. According to the vast majority of scholars, Proto-Balto-Slavic was a branch before it diverged into Baltic and Slavic languages. It doesn't mean that Baltic languages come from Slavic ones, quite the opposite – we were fully equal branches that diverged. There were some scholars in Lithuania who rejected that idea, but they weren't that convincing imho; the public view of Proto-Balto-Slavic in Lithuania, as I understand it, is also rather negative. Why?

Continuing my previous thread (colours, shining), below are my roots for body parts and most basic bodily functions. Proto-Indo-European has a rather extensive vocabulary for them, but my branch avoids words like the plague, instead opting for clean roots only. It’s minimalistic and aggressively regular, introducing its own semantic and morphological changes, and I’m also aiming at ~400 roots in total. So what comes below isn’t perfectly historical or naturalistic, I’m aiming at educated inventiveness.

And no fossilised words, in the long run my branch won’t even inherit very well established words for the sun, mother or father: regular roots only. This is a constraint which gets quite interesting when tackling body parts, since PIE roots were rather verbal (is my liver livering at the moment? hopefully so…) at their essence, and proper words were only secondary. I’m not sure about everything yet, I don’t know how radically minimalist I want to be in the first place, so for now I’m sharing what I’ve already worked out, and noting some hesitations as I go along.

EATING, DRINKING, TASTING

*h₁ed- is a very well established root for ‘to eat’, naturally extending to ‘food’ as well. Interestingly it also gave us the word *h₃dónts (‘tooth’, which is simply a participle of *h₃ed- ‘to bite’, which must be closely connected); teeth are biters then. While my branch doesn’t inherit it, it certainly will take inspiration later. (While nouns derived from roots will get a fixed meaning, participles I'd somehow love to keep more fluid, more ambiguous, more uncertain; it'll be difficult in practice though).

*peh₃- is similarly well attested root for ‘to drink, drink’, seen from Greek and Sanskrit to Slavic and Celtic. Ancient Greek philosophical sym-posion (‘drinking-together, drinking party’) and Slavic pivo ‘beer’ are related :) Laryngeals in my branch are doing real work, messing with my neat ablauts though, and the root is very similar to another important one (*peh₂- ‘to protect, to shepherd’), so I guess it’ll be extended by -y- and -t- naturally in different contexts.

*ǵews- is also a very well attested root for ‘to taste, to try’, think of Italian gusto and English choose, but one of which I’m curiously not sure yet. I’m certainly introducing the root *sweh₂d- though, which means ‘sweet’ literally, but extends to being tasty and pleasant in general. Yes, sweet hedonism is a pleonasm :), Greek hedone comes from the very same root.

FOUR REMAINING SENSES :)

Seeing, historically, has been considered the most important human sense. In my branch two roots take care of it, I’m also considering a third one. *h₃ekʷ- is the root for ‘to look’ in a physical sense, the act of looking at something, and also gives us the word for ‘eye’ (like in Greek and in Slavic languages: oko). *weyd- is a much more interesting one, which also means ‘to see, perceive’, but from its perfective usage (‘I have seen that’) comes the word for knowledge: I have seen that, so I know that to be true: Sanskrit veda and Slavic wiedza ‘knowledge’ are close cognates, quite fascinating stuff.

*ḱlew- ‘to hear’ is another fascinating, polysemic root in PIE, where it naturally extends to fame, word, speech or poetry (kleos in Greek, the eternal glory Achilles dreamed of, but also slava ‘fame’ and slovo ‘word’ in Slavic languages, which gave the name to the branch!). I’m absolutely keeping those connotations in my branch, and I’ll have to resolve them in some neat manner, because the same root also gives me ‘ear’ as an organ, which historically has been rather curiously connected to ‘seeing’ (as in: perceiving by ears, not eyes). I didn’t want my ears to be connected to eyes though :-), but just a note that in many IE branches they were, yeah.

Smell is a tricky PIE reconstruction, we came up with the same one we used for ‘to bite, tooth’ actually, and also the nose is a very stable reconstruction, with which I’m not happy. Unlike with taste, where I came with sweetness as the general root, here I assume stench would take the precedence, and it’s somewhat historical as well: we still speak of ‘biting, pungent stench’, and indeed this is the same intuition coming from PIE, where bad smells used to punch us; I’ll probably go with the root for ‘to hit’ here, I haven't resolved it yet.

For touch, I decided to go with two different roots: *teh₂g- ‘to touch’ and *ǵʰes- ‘hand’. They have two slightly different connotations, both positive (‘soft touch, care’, good manual work!) and negative (‘to steal’, ‘to be handsy’?). Importantly, their primarily meanings aren’t ‘to take, give’, as different roots take care of exchanging goods: they stay physical.

BEING GENERALLY ALIVE

*gʷeyh₃- ‘to live’ is the general root for ‘life’, being generally alive or lively; it’s also generally for living beings (Slavic życie ‘life’ and Greek bios ‘life’ are cognates! it also gives us, through compounding, the word hygiene, curiously ‘long, good, healthy life’). It’s got a connected root *ǵʰwer- ‘wild animal or person, untamed, dangerous’.

Ancients used to think about lungs as the seat of life, interestingly, that’s why anima comes from *h₂enh₁- ‘to breathe’. Another important root for me, although I haven’t resolved yet to what extend I want to connect it with ‘smoke’ as the ‘life-essence’ (slightly different root).

*swep- ‘to sleep, to dream’ is very well attested and here probably gets some of the connotations of English ‘dreaming’ (hopes etc.), but also denotes ‘resting, chilling’. *bʰewdʰ- is a much fancier one though: ‘to wake up’ both literally and metaphorically, to be not only awake, but somewhat aware, enlightenened (Slavic budzić ‘to wake up’ and Sanskrit Buddha ‘the awakened one’ are connected! one of my favourite linguistic fun facts, since I buddha myself with difficulty every morning, literally…). A nice word for a ‘witness’ too then?

*mer- is a very stable root for death, but here without ‘to kill, murder’ overtones, which get relegated to the word *neḱ- (originally only general ‘to perish, to disappear’); still naturalistic though in my opinion, two roots for dying are important and a slight euphemism seems quite possible historically in my opinion („to perish someone”…). I already mentioned the root *krewh₂- ‘blood, but also wound, gore, carcass’, it’s also got a coordinate root *h₁esh₂r- ‘flowing blood, bodily fluid, source of life’. (Here I’m cheating very slightly for phonological reasons, the -r- there is actually a nominal suffix in PIE, but in my branch becomes part of the root).

MIXED EMOTIONS

*lewbʰ- is a very well attested root for ‘to like, to love’, the last one without sexual overtones. After some deliberations I decided to include two different ones with a certain ambiguity, sexuality as something positive and sexuality as taboo, curiously changing their places haha. Greek orkhis ‘testicle, ovary’ gives us PIE *h₃érǵʰ-, which in my branch means ‘genitals in general’ (not related to orgy, historically speaking haha), also ‘to have sex’. *h₃yebʰ- ‘to copulate’, prominent in Greek, Sanskrit and one of the most (in)famous Slavic swear words, here retains its rudeness: ‘to fuck, fucking, bloody hell’ etc.

*bʰeyh₂- ‘to fear, to shake’, gets an additional meaning of ‘to run away, to flee’, and generally denotes all sorts of danger, uncanniness, abnormality.

*ḱerd- ‘heart’ is a very stable root, here denoting also ‘centre, middle’ (funnily, in English it gives us also the word credit: practical Romans are to blame here…). I’m unsure about emotional connotations, actually. Oh, and also I forgot the word for ‘head’, which gives us ‘main, leader, top’ in a slightly different way than heart does: *ḱerh₂-. Curiously I haven’t chosen the regular word for head, but the one which probably stems from ‘horn’ or ‘to grow’ (I didn't like the original reconstruction).

SO, ABOUT THOSE BODY PARTS…?

Yeah, I know. Not too many of them, actually. Since I went with more general and rather verbal roots instead of words, I didn’t end up with too many actual body parts properly speaking. I wonder how much of a problem it is in a minimalistic conlang though; I’ll fill some of those gaps later on, but I’m marking my uncertainty about this semantic group more generally. It’ll need plenty of work still I believe. But to finish things for today –

*ped- ‘foot, to march’. One of the most stable PIE roots in general, I believe? Also, fear not, I avoided *pedō ‘I walk, I march’ haha, it’s actually pedemi lol. (The recent career of the Greek root for ‘child’ in English is rather irritating though, I have to confess). One innovation to this very important root, which also used to give us ‘foot soldiers, infantry’ or even ‘plains’, is giving it a sister form *sped-, which would mean ‘down, base, floor’, which I’m considering, but those most basic adpositions, deixis and vectors are truly a pain and I’ll tackle them in a another post. Thanks for reading!

Everyone these days is talking about the Odyssey, no idea why :D Okay okay, I feel claustrophobic in crowded cinemas though, so I'm going to wait a bit before going to see new Nolan's film. In the meantime, a reading recommendation: Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica or the Voyage of Argo in different translations.

The story of the ship Argo, of Jason and of his voyage to get the Golden Fleece is one of the oldest surviving Greek myths, Homer already references the story as "known to all". The main retelling of it, on the other hand, doesn't come from that early archaic period, doesn't even come from the classical Greece at all. The epic we've got was written by Apollonius of Rhodes, who lived a few centuries later, in the post-Alexandrian time known as the Hellenistic era. Apollonius himself knew how late he was in every meaning of the word. He was a learned scholar living in a time of libraries and museums, which were a sign of a massive cultural shift. The Greek world became wider, with many different cultures interacting, but the heroic time and even the time of the Greek poleis we all know were long gone by then.

Homer's epics come from the time of the oral culture, when stories were passed down from one generation to another. There's plenty in Homer which rather directly tells us so: repeated epithets, formulaic scenes etc. Apollonius, on the other hand, was a writer in a perfectly modern sense of the word, sitting down to write a poetic text. Homeric epics come from ~750 BC, Argonautica comes from ~240 BC and it shows.

The story itself is great, shorter and less grandiose, somewhat skeptical of the Bronze Age heroic myths, but it makes it even more readable. We're reading Homer for this very early epic and archaic scale; my recommendation is to follow with shorter, modern and wonderfully self-conscious Argonautica. And the storytelling, even if smaller in scale, is genuinely great (it's also one of the first neurotic love stories in Western literature, if not the first!).

(Old prose translation by Rieu in the picture, Penguin published since an updated one by Poochigian in verse, OWC also published a very readable prose one by Hunter, who's an expert on the Hellenistic Greek poetry; generally it reads as an adventure novel, so tackling it in prose my not be the worst idea actually). Short comparison of translations in the comment.

Older translations are available in the public domain from Project Gutenberg.