winter haiku d’haiku – have you ever seen = as-tu jamais vu, translation of Hermippus, an ancient Greek poet have you ever seen a pomegranate seed in drifts of snow?as-tu jamais vu une graine de grenade dans une congère ? Hermippus traduction en français par Richard Vallance I converted this beautiful poem by Hermippus, an ancient Greek poet, into a haiku. It is not my original work at all, but I just love this poem! I think you will agree. J’ai transformé ce beau poème par Hermippus, poète grec de l’antiquité, en un haiku. Ce n’est guère une oeuvre originale de ma part, mais je l’aime passionnément ! Je crois que vous serez d’accord.
Tag Archive: translation
winter haiku d’hiver – translate silence into snow = traduire le silence en neige who knows what friend can translate silence into snow?qui sait quel ami sait traduire le silence en neige ? Richard Vallance
Translation of Linear B tablet Knossos KN 854 K j 11 by Rita Roberts:
Locations of Linear A tablets at Haghia Triada, including the 14 I have deciphered:
This general plan of Haghia Triada with the locations of Linear A tablets incorporates the 14 tablets which I have managed to decipher more or less accurately to date.
A partial rational translation of another Minoan Linear A tablet on crops:
Ms. Gretchen Leonhardt has correctly pointed out that this decipherment I have assayed of what I took to be one Linear A tablet is in fact two entirely unrelated Linear A tablets, and as such it must be considered as completely invalid. I am truly grateful to Ms. Leonhardt for bringing this serious gaffe to my attention. Once I have cleared the matter up, I shall repost my decipherment of both of these tablets in two separate posts.
This Linear B tablet clearly deals with various crops, with the lead in crop being grains or wheat, just as one would expect on either a Mycenaean Linear B tablet. By the same token, there is no reason to suppose that a Minoan Linear A tablet dealing with crops would not deal first and foremost with grains and wheat. The units of measurements identified on this tablet accord with those tentatively tabulated by Andras Zeke on the
I have already tentatively deciphered both adu and adaru in my Glossary of 107 Minoan Linear A words to appear in Archaeology and Science, Vol. 16 (2016), which is to be published sometime in 2018, since the publication date of this compendious international annual always lags behind by at least 18 months from the approximate date of submission of articles by authors, which in my case was November 2016.
Tentative confirmation of 10 possible proto-Greek words out of 18 under the first vowel, A, in Prof. John G. Younger’s Reverse Linear A Lexicon:
When I subjected the first alphabetical entries under A in Prof. John G. Younger’s Reverse Linear A Lexicon to rigorous analysis in order to determine whether or not any of the entries under A just might have been proto-Greek, or more likely than not, proto-Mycenaean. I was able to extrapolate tentative archaic Greek “definitions”, if you like, for no fewer than 10 of the 18 entries under A. That is quite a staggering return! However, in spite of these encouraging findings, we must exercise extreme caution in assigning proto-Greek significance to any number of Minoan words.
Of course, the discovery right fro the outset of 10 words which might possibly be proto-Greek or proto-Mycenaean, is highly tempting. One could, if one were so inclined, that as a consequence of this discovery, the Minoan language must have been proto-Greek. But I would warn us away from such a rash assumption, for several cogent reasons, all of which will become clear as we run alphabetically through the Reverse Linear A Lexicon. One of the most obvious roadblocks to accepting, even on a tentative basis, a proto-Greek reading of words such as the 10 I have isolated under A above is the extreme paucity of consecutive, running text and, what is even worse, the even rarer instances of extant Linear A words providing sufficient context on the tablets for us to be able to extract any real meaning at all from the tablets. This is the brick wall we run up against again and again in any endeavour at deciphering any Minoan word, taken as a single entity.
There is one tenet at least which bears out confirmation or abnegation, and it is this: if we continue to discover a considerable number of potential proto-Greek under subsequent initial syllabograms alphabetically from DA on through to ZU, then there might very well be a case for concluding that either (a) the Minoan language was entirely proto-Greek or (b) the Minoan language was pre-Greek and very probably non Indo-European, but which contained a great many proto-Greek words, for reasons which will become apparent as we proceed through our extrapolative analysis of Minoan words from DA to ZU.
This is bound to be one exciting journey of discovery!
New Testament in Greek & Meditations of Marcus: Aurelius, Meditations: II,4 Beginning today, and posting every two weeks or so, I shall be quoting alternately from the New Testament and from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius in Greek. Wherever possible I shall also translate sentences and phrases in each citation. This is a very tricky manoeuvre, but at the same time it close to ideally serves me in writing in natural, not tabular, Mycenaean Greek. The next citation will be drawn from the New Testament in Greek in early January 2017. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: II,4The Greek text is taken from Haines, C.R. ed. & trans. Marcus Aurelius. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1953, with several revisions, the last of which was published in 2003. ISBN 0-674-99064-1. xxxi, 416 pp. Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted you further periods of peace, of which you have taken no advantage. It is time now to realize the nature of the universe to which you belong, and of that controlling power whose offspring you are; and to understand that your time has a limit to it. Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment; or it will be gone, and never in yourf power again. Translation by Maxwell Staniforth = Marcus Aurelius Meditations. London: the Folio Society, 2002.
International Historical Linguistics journals I will contact to review my articles in Archaeology and Science, 2016 & 2017: Following is a list in 2 PARTS of international Historical Linguistics journals I will contact to review my articles in Archaeology and Science: [1] Janke, Richard Vallance. The Decipherment of Supersyllabograms in Linear B, Archaeology and Science. Vol. 11 (2015), pp. 73-108. As soon as this ground-breaking article is published in early 2017, I shall submit it for review in every one of the international journals below. [2] Janke, Richard Vallance. Pylos tablet Py TA 641-1952 (Ventris), the “Rosetta Stone” to Minoan Linear A tablet HT 31 (Haghia Triada) vessels and pottery, Archaeology and Science. Vol. 12 (2016) Since this article is not going to be published before mid-2017, and as yet has no pagination, I shall have to wait until then before I submit it for review to all of the periodicals below.![]()
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