Back at Columbia I took this course on the "philosphy of language". The professor had the whitest hair I ever saw, and he spoke like such a philosopher, that you felt like you registered for a class with Socrates :)
I remember very well how this prof always reminded us that language is more than just a way of communication. It is a "fossilized fuel of ancient wisdom and cultural heritage". Ever since, it has become my hobby to hunt for examples of how language contains more than communicative qualities. Here's one example that I thought of recently:
If you ask a ten year old: "Which is stronger, metal or diamond?", he probably won't know how to answer. That's because your average ten year old has had no experience with either metal or diamond and so he wouldn't know what to base his answer on. Except, if that ten year old happens to be Greek, he will probably answer your question much more easily. Why?
Because "diamond" comes from ancient Greek "adamas", which literally means "invincible". In effect, you would be asking him: "Which is stronger, metal or the invincible material?".
To speak Greek is much more than to know what sound relates to what word, it is also to associate this shiny object with invincibility. And therein lies ancient wisdom, fossilized into the language itself.
Notice how in Arabic for example, the word for "diamond" is "almas", which sounds almost exactly as "adamas". This ofcourse is not a coincidence; the word traveled from ancient Greece to Arabia thousands of years ago. But "almas" in Arabic is just the sound associated with the shiny object, and it means nothing more. That extra dose of knowledge, the invincibility of diamond, locked inside their language as a freebie, this is the gift of ancient Greeks to their offspring, and their offspring alone.
Comments
As you say, the most notable Greek legacy is that of language, even in the most common everyday expressions, such as fate, fury, giant/titan, chaos, labyrinth, amazon, lesbian (from the little island of Lesbos, although we don’t really know what the sexual orientation of its inhabitants was…), dyonisiac, a trojan horse, the sword of Damokles, Achilles’s heel, the hades, the hounds of hell, a gordian knot, don’t open Pandora’s box, Midas’s touch, a herculean effort/task, to leave no stone unturned, sophist, man is the measure of all things… And there’s probably more I cannot recall right now. My favorites are « beware of Greeks bearing gifts » (we all know this piece of wisdom still stands true 2400 years later !) and the « face that launched 1000 ships », as a reference to the gorgeous Helen of Troy.
Yet more than just language, they left us democracy, philosophy, some basics of our laws&institutions, the hippocratic oath, a colourful mythology (that permeates all the arts, from literature – remember « the Tortoise and the Hare » ? It’s actually Aesop – to a recent US blockbuster like Matrix), wonderful theatrical plays we imitate in our screenplays etc today, influenced psychology (cf. Freud’s Oedipus complex, or the wide range of ‘phobias’) as well as architecture and sculpture – and all men of power have recognized the greatness of the Greek leaders right down to Alexander. Quite simply, the Greeks influenced all the greatest western minds, from the XVth century Renaissance movement in Europe up to the classicism and neo-classicism periods in XIXth century America…
Getting a little carried away, and drifting far from your point, but thanks for the humbling reminder that we owe our great ancestors…. As always, your notes are a pleasure to read, continue comme ça ! Tu m’as donné envie de relire de la mythologie grecque ce soir :-)