Ruination of Transliteration: How Two Loanwords Changed History

Source

Transliteration happens all the time. We often call them loanwords. Some examples from Arabic (remember, it reads from right to left):

• القرآن‎ (Al-)Quran: The holy book of Islam. It's a verbal noun of the word قرأ (qar'a), meaning "he read" or "he recited".
• مسلم Muslim: A follower of Islam. Its meaning is "one who submits", derived from the verb أَسْلَمَ (aslama), meaning "he resigned". إِسْلَٰم (Islam) is the verbal noun meaning "voluntary submission to God". You can see the relation in the S-L-M root.

Here are just some other random words that we've appropriated from other languages (note: some of the transliterations have changed over time):

• Czech: dollar, pistol, robot
• Etruscan: antenna, arena, autumn, serve
• Old French and Latin: letter, person, budget
• Icelandic: saga, geyser
• Algonquin: Mississippi, Wyoming, Chicago, Illinois, Wisconsin, caribou, hickory, moose, muskrat, pecan, raccoon, skunk, squash
• Nahuatl (Aztec): avocado, cocoa, chocolate, coyote, guacamole, tomato
• Arawakan: barbecue, canoe, hammock, hurricane, potato, tobacco
• Various American Languages: cougar, cashew, bayou, manatee, igloo, kayak, jerky

There are many other loanwords that I didn't include (safari, zen, chi, zebra, luau, ukulele, guru, buddha, fjord, tundra, et cetera, et cetera), but I think you get the picture. We like to borrow words instead of translating them. A noteworthy exception to this rule is Icelandic, though more loanwords are creeping in. Instead of using a variant of telephone (a Greek word), they resurrected the word sími, an old word for "long thread". Another one is læknastokkrós, meaning marshmallow. As far as I can deconstruct this one, að lækna means to heal and stokkrós means hibiscus, a member of the mallow family. The healing hibiscus. They do this so that the new words will comply with Icelandic grammar.

The Biblical Conundrum
Now that we've overviewed transliteration in English, let's look at two Greek to Latin transliterations that changed the world.

First, βαπτίζω, baptizo. This comes from the word bapto meaning to dip; therefore, baptizo means to immerse or submerge. This was all fine until around the fourth century when Latin became the primary language of Christianity. At that time, baptizo was transliterated into Latin. It was adapted to Latin grammar and changed to baptizare, making baptizo the first person singular present tense, i.e. "I baptize".

What this did is sever the tie between the root understanding and the definition. What was once understood intrinsically as an act of immersion became an act of mere ablution (ceremonial washing), and was altered to include aspersion (sprinkling) and eventually exclude immersion. The alteration of one holy ceremony is a beautiful precedent for further alteration.

Second, βιβλία, biblia. This is the plural of biblion, book. Once again, before the fourth century, the extant holy writings of Christianity weren't compiled into one body. Rather, they were a collection of texts called ta biblia, the books. As Latin became Christianity's primary language, they once again transliterated this word from Greek. Biblia is what they called them—it. To explain, Latin has a conjugation system that allows you to distinguish between singular and plural. What started as "the books" eventually migrated to take on the meaning of "the book". 

What this did is set in the minds of Christians that canon was immutable post fourth century. You had the Book, what more could you need? Gone were the days when God could speak as He pleased through servants that He chose. Because who needs the Books when you have the Book?

How to Forge True Love: An Overiew of Relationship Investment

True love is found in the union of two people who never truly feel worthy of one another. Service and validation are imparted of freely and bounteously. True love is lost when an air of superiority seeps into that union; when at least one of the parties concludes they are entitled to the service and validation of the other.

True service can only be accomplished from a position of unpretentious humility and love. If a person feels angry and does something to benefit the other party, it's not actually to benefit the other party but themselves. If a person renders a beneficial act to another from a position of condescension, it's not service nor love but pity.

True love therefore is bred by true service. True service is not a thing to be tallied. It's not a contest of high scores and rivalries. It's a river that flows from your heart, buoying your partner up and carrying them to a sea of bliss.

You may assume that the reason service is the secret is because your efforts will endear you in your partner's eyes, but that's only a sliver of the reason. Most people, referring to the first paragraph, forget to return gratitude for nice acts, especially when acts of kindness are commonplace. No, what service does is it endears you to your partner.

It's all about investment. The time that you spend with a partner is an investment, but even more important is the quality of the time. When the time you spend with them is consumed by transient cares or even brooding over areas in which you think they're lacking, that's like investing your money in fireworks. It's no surprise when it ends in flames. When your time with your partner is spent serving and building them up, that's like investing in a house. You expect many long, comfortable years with it.

Source

Of course, you see the relationships where one person is making payments on a house while the other is building up their fireworks stockpile. Eventually the second person lights off their investment and burns the house to the ground. Make sure you don't miss the signs if your partner doesn't care about investing in you as much as you do in them.

In the end, that's the goal. You need to find someone who's willing to invest as much in you as you are in them. And that amount should be 100%.

Oneironauts 2 Cover

So I had a grandiose idea about the cover of the second Oneironauts. It was going to involve nice cameras and paint in water. Unfortunately I couldn't muster a fish tank for the photos, so it turned out out to be only a dream...

It was at this point that I decided to take matters into my own hands. I fired up GIMP yesterday and came up with the following. It likely won't be the final draft of the cover, but it's a big step in the right direction. I'm going to try and finish everything tomorrow (interior included) and order a proof. If everything looks good, I'm going to publish These Apparitions next week. Until then, enjoy the cover. Please comment with any feedback.

FYI: the word count for this book is about 97,000 words. It will be 344 pages (not including front and back material).

Update (6.16.15): I've finished the interior. The chapter names took quite a while. Luckily I learned some good lessons from my first time around so creating the interior was a fairly smooth process. I also posted my cover on an authors' forum and have gotten some feedback which I'll be implementing.

Update 2 (6.18.15): The final cover is nearly complete. I just need to get a picture of my own model (as I don't have rights to the one I used). I'm in talks with some people right now, Hopefully I'll have the shots before the end of the week.

Update 3 (6.19.15): I ended up just using myself as the model for the cover. I would have preferred someone else, but meh. I can change it later if I want. I spent all day yesterday doing the eBook for book 2 and fixing the eBook for book 1. My proof is on the way, so it should be published next week! Anyway, here's the final cover:

The Unofficial Author's Contract

Series. We've all read them. And we've all read an under construction series, id est, an unfinished string of novels. It can be excruciating waiting for the next sequence of events concerning characters you've invested time and emotion in. At the same time, sometimes part of the fun is grouping up with other fans online and trading theories or commiserating. But sometimes you realize it's been several years, and still there's not much news about that next installment... What's going on?

I'd like to address what I term the Unofficial Author's Contract. It reads, "By publishing the first of a series of books, I, the author, do promise to complete the remainder of the novels in a timely fashion. I will honor this agreement even if I occasionally have to ignore other activities that seem more entertaining, and even if I grow weary of my own story and characters."

I finished the first Oneironauts in 2012 and published it in October 2014. I finished the first draft of the second book in March and just finished the second draft tonight. All together, it's about a 200,000 word sequence. I was going to school during the second one, which explains why it took 7 months to write, then I waited for finals to be over to edit. I will have physical copies before July, a 9-month turnaround from book to book. Part of what motivated me to keep writing even though school was pressing was the fact that I had people waiting for book 2. I was locked in the Contract.

Now there are writers like Martin and Rothfuss who have made big promises on books they will produce, but take great periods of time to deliver on those promises. Game of Thrones came out in 1996. The intervals for the next books are 1998, 2000, 2005, 2011, TBA, TBA. That's 5 then 6 years for two books, and it will be at least 5 for Winds of Winter. Rothfuss published in 2007 and 2011, and the third is TBA. So 4 years for the first gap, then at least 5 for the second. The reason why readers are annoyed with Rothfuss' output is that when the first novel came out, it was announced that he had the series complete.

For some contrast, I've compiled a small list (some word counts are estimated from page lengths):

Patrick Rothfuss

720,000 words in 9 years

George R R Martin

1,770,000 words in 20 years

Jim Butcher

3,200,000 words in 16 years (not including his forthcoming novel)

Steven Erikson

3,300,000 words in 12 years (for the Malazan novels alone)

Robert Jordan

3,400,000 words in 16 years

Brandon Sanderson

3,900,000 words in 11 years (this is including short stories and Shadows of Self)

Now, all of these authors have put out a bit more than what's shown here, but the fundamental information is obvious. I won't speculate on the various factors that affect the authors' release schedules, but I will say this: Sanderson, Erickson, Jordan, and Butcher all consider their fans while they write. The fans are the only reason an author can write for a living. If you don't consider a consumer when creating a product, it will likely flop.

Let's draw a parallel to Google+. People were mental about G+ from about 10-4 months before it came out (I can't exactly remember). But Google kept doing invite only. Eventually buzz died down. Then they released it and it flopped marvelously. If they had put it out about half a year before, there would have been a massive migration over to G+. But they waited and people lost interest.

Books obviously have a longer timeline than social media, but honestly, the longer an author waits to deliver on a book, the more the hype dies down (generally). Martin is surfing on back catalog orders for the first five borne by the success of the TV series. Rothfuss is still riding on the fact that he was going to release the three books within 3 years of each other. Butcher, Erikson, and Sanderson however consistently put out new material that readers enjoy. They honor the Contract, and I love them for that.

A Godawful Observation

Source: Rita Ip

In my various pursuits, I make a casual study of the Hebrew language. One thing that people acquiring a new language find is that it gives us insight into our own language. For example when I was learning Danish, I learned that the word for circumstance is omstændighed. Om means about or around and stænde roughly translates to stance or standing. Therefore omstændighed literally translates to "the state of things around one." If we break down the English word, circum is Latin for around or about, and stance comes from the Latin word stare, meaning to stand. So circumstance literally means "the standing of the surroundings." It wasn't until I learned the Danish that I realized the roots of the English.

There are many other insights that language learning can provide other than etymology. A conspicuous example finds place in slang. If you were to say "rock on" in Danish, it would literally mean there's a stone on...something. You haven't specified that yet. Another thing, you can say "rock on," but "stone on" comes with completely different connotations. In Danish to express coolness (and not the temperature kind), you say something is fat. "He's a fat guy" = "He's a cool guy/cat." It really makes you examine your own slang and realize how illogical some of it sounds.

But now I come to my Hebrew observation. The word el in Hebrew means god. It finds itself in many modern personal names, e.g. Michael, who is like God?; Daniel, God is my judge; Nathaniel, God has given. You also see its cognate in the Arabic Allah, a contraction of al-ilah (the (sole) God).

However, god or deity isn't the only denotation of el. It also means mighty. Therefore in places like Psalm 82 (which is poetry) you get nice little word plays.

God (elohim) standeth in the congregation of the mighty (el, could also be rendered god); he judgeth among the gods (elohim).

 Elohim is merely the plural of eloah, a derivative of el, and can be translated as God, gods, or powers. It is the name of God in the Old Testament (HEB: Tanakh). You can see here that the poet uses the different connotations of elohim and el to make a nice wordplay.

But all poetry set aside, learning this fact about the Hebrew language made me realize something about my mother tongue. I've heard the expression godawful a decent number of times during my life, but in light of this, it gave the expression a new depth. Something that's godawful is mighty awful, or so terrible that only an omnipotent being could create such a debacle. This makes it possibly the biggest hyperbole known to the English language.

The Beginning of God's Creations

A quasar via Wikipedia.

This post was inspired by a crazy Kolob theory, specifically one that said that God resides at the center of our galaxy and that the extent of his dominion is the fringes of the Milky Way. I'm here to prove that wrong. Deeply wrong.

Our friend Enoch, in Moses 7:30, says, "Were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations." The Milky Way contains perhaps 300 billion stars, 100 billion planets, 100 million black holes, and is about 120,000 light years across. The number of atoms in the Earth is about 10^50, approximately 10^40 times greater than the number of celestial bodies in the galaxy. Millions of earths would yield greater than 10^56 atoms. And that's not even the beginning of Elohim's creations.

It's estimated that the number of stars in the universe is about 7x10^22; we can round up to 10^23. If we want to be nice, we can say there are about the same number of planets. That brings us up to 2x10^23. If you factor in black holes and nubulae and stuff—being quite generous—you might have double that. That brings you to 4x10^23 astronomical objects, or not even .0000000000000000000000001% of the particles in the Earth (10^-25%). That means to not even reach the beginning of God's creations, you would need approximately 10^32 universes like ours.

For comparison, the sun is on the order of 10^30 kg (~1,000,000 times Earth's mass) and a pineapple is about a kilogram. If you were to compare a pineapple to the universe, you would need enough pineapples to weigh as much as 100 suns, or 100,000,000 Earths. In other words, 10^32 pineapples. One hundred nonillion pineapples.

And you would not have even reached the beginning of how many pineapples God has made.

Dating the Death of Shiz

A question I think most LDS members consider lightly or not at all is, When did the Jaredites perish? I think the reason behind this is most people make sweeping, cursory assumptions about the Jaredite timeline. The common mentality is that as Lehi's foot first pressed the American shores, Shiz' head fell from his shoulders. I would like to show that this is conception utterly false.

Absolute Upper Limit
If we only take into account one event, namely Mulek's landing, we find that the soonest the Jaredites could have foregone is about 530 BC. We learn that Mulek was the only son of Zedekiah not slain (Hel 8:21). From the Bible, we learn that Zedekiah died at 32 (2 Kings 24:18). By common concession, Jerusalem was razed in 587 BC. The oldest Mulek could have possibly been at the time is 20 years old. The oldest he could have plausibly been is 14-16. The problem with imagining him as a stripling is that all of Zedekiah's sons were killed by Babylon. A teenager, especially the eldest son, would be hard to miss—for invader and historian alike—so it's improbable.

The leading theory is that Mulek was either an infant (so he could have been disguised as a girl or more easily snuck out in a basket), or he was unborn. The leading theory for how Mulek got to the Americas is through the Phoenicians. This is supported by (1) the identification of the Jaredites as the Olmec people, and (2) the fact that Mulek and his party first landed among the Jaredites in the land northward (Alma 22:30). The Olmecs lived primarily along the eastern coast of Mexico, meaning Mulek would have to take an Atlantic route to arrive there.

So the earliest Mulek could have landed in the Americas is 586 BC, five or so years after Lehi. The oldest he could possibly be at that point is about 20, but more likely he would have been an infant. It's more likely that he lived in the eastern hemisphere for a time, gained a few years under his belt, then made the voyage. One of my main sources for that inference is Hel 6:10 where it says, "the Lord did bring Mulek into the land north, and Lehi into the land south." I'm assuming that Mormon is making parallel references to the leader of the traveling parties. It's also easier to imagine a 20+ year-old man as the leader of the party than a baby. That puts a more likely date of Mulek's earliest arrival at ~565 BC, though it could have been even later.

However, we cannot yet assume that 565 is when the Jaredites perished. Omni 1:16 tells us "[the people of Zarahemla's] language had become corrupted; and they had brought no records with them; and they denied the being of their Creator; and Mosiah, nor the people of Mosiah, could understand them." Verse 21 tells us that Coriantumr (the "last Jaredite") dwelt with the people of Zarahemla for nine moons. It may just be me, but a people who put no emphasis on records and who had forgotten God don't strike me as the type to remember a single man who lived with them more than 400 years before. That indicates that the Jaredite civilization ended closer to 130 than 587 BC.

Chemical Degradation Factors
That was a fun exercise using chronology alone, but now I'd like to introduce the factors of corrosion and decomposition. Mos 8:8-11 (the Limhi expedition, ca. 130 BC) reports that Limhi's scouts found

1. Bones (ch. 21 specifies dry bones) of man and beast of a very numerous people
2. Ruins of buildings
3. 24 gold plates
4. Perfectly sound brass and copper breastplates
5. Sword with perished hilts and rusted blades

In my mind, I also identify the Jaredites with the Olmecs, but even if you think they lived in North America, this will be relevant. This brings up some questions, namely

1. How long does it take corpses to skeletonize in the open air, but not for bone decomposition to take place?
2. How long does it take blades to rust in open air, but not oxidize entirely?
3. How long does it take wood to decompose (the hilts)?

Copper and brass don't come into the question because they tarnish and don't rust. Gold also doesn't rust.

I've done a lot of searching on the internet, but haven't found too much conclusive material. To summarize my findings, I set an upper limit for the destruction of the Jaredites at 100 years before the Limhi expedition. A more likely limit in the tropical climate of Mexico is 50 years. Heat and humidity will make all of the applicable processes go faster. Taking decomposition into account, a new time frame for the end of the Jaredites is 180-230 BC.

This site dedicated to "online information regarding the funeral and cremation process" states that "decomposition in the air is twice as fast as when the body is under water and four times as fast as underground." It also states that "When buried six feet down, without a coffin, in ordinary soil, an unembalmed adult normally takes eight to twelve years to decompose to a skeleton." Using these two statements, bodies above ground would take two to three years to skeletonize (in the UK). Add in the higher heat and insect population in Mexico and the number will be even lower.

Wikipedia says that "After skeletonization has occurred, if scavenging animals do not destroy the bones, acids in many fertile soils take about twenty years to completely dissolve the skeleton of mid- to large-size mammals, such as humans, leaving no trace of the organism. In neutral-pH soil or sand, the skeleton can persist for hundreds of years before it finally disintegrates." I looked but couldn't find any good information on the pH levels of the soil in Olmec areas.

Here's a site for a high school rusting experiment with pictures. It states that visible rust (Iron (III) Oxide) forms within hours. In this article, Tim Scarlett, archaeologist, says, "Put partly corroded nails in a zip-lock bag, store them awhile, open the bag years later, and end find 'lumps of rust powder,'” I don't know what "end find" means (likely bad editing), but it's clear that iron doesn't have that long of a lifespan. I just can't find exact numbers on that lifespan. Also, everywhere I've found says that heat and humidity will make rusting faster.

Answers.com says that wood an inch in diameter can take 3 years to decompose, and logs a foot across can take ten years. It's safe to say that the hilts of the swords were gone within five years of the final battle.

Conclusion

Pictured: the head of Shiz

There's much more that can be said on the topic, but I think I'll stop here. If you have any further information about rusting and decomposition, please drop it in the comments! I just wanted to point out that the Jaredites lived on the same continent as the Nephites for about 400 years before they perished.

In conjunction with Alma 22:30 (which states that the land northward where Limhi's expedition found the bones was the people of Zarahemla's first landing site), Mos 25:2 talks about "Zarahemla, who was a descendant of Mulek, and those who came with him into the wilderness." That means that some of the Mulekites stayed with the Jaredites, and it also likely means that the two groups had intermarried. So even though Coriantumr is appellated "the last Jaredite," Jaredite blood (and culture) still lived on in the people of Zarahemla. That's probably why their "language [was] corrupted; and Mosiah, nor the people of Mosiah, could understand them."

Anyways, my thoughts.