
Harry Potter in Ancient Greek - luu
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/harry_potter.htm
======
ComputerGuru
Off topic: I have been reading Harry Potter in French as my gateway to French
literature. My love for French actually started with _The Count of Monte
Cristo_ which made want to learn French just so as to read the original _Le
Comte de Monte-Cristo_.

Obviously, my French (starting from zero) a mere year or so later isn't good
enough to read something like Alexandre Dumas' masterpiece, but I figured if I
started with a book I've literally read dozens of times in English that I
always know what the next sentence will say, well, that would be a good place
to start.

~~~
ekidd
This is an amazing way to improve your knowledge of a foreign language. When I
started reading French novels, I could mostly understand maybe 60% and guess
another 30%. But after 10,000 pages, I was only running into unknown words
every few pages, and my understanding of idioms was vastly better.

The same thing works for listening comprehension: Find a DVD box set of easy
TV series, one where you can understand maybe 40% of the dialog, and just
start watching. It's OK to use a good dub of a series you've already watched.
Repeat this with, say, 5 series and you'll see an amazing boost in listening
comprehension. TV series are usually better than films for this exercise,
because they'll give you 50+ hours of mostly the same people speaking about a
limited set of topics, which helps a lot in the beginning.

It seems like the brain is very good at upgrading partial comprehension to
nearly complete comprehension. But the trick is getting to an enjoyable level
of partial comprehension.

~~~
ecdavis
There is a technique called "Listening-Reading" that's fairly well known
within the language-learning community.

The idea is straight-forward:

Get a novel-length text in your target language, a high-quality recording of
that text and a literal translation of the text in your native language.
Alternate between reading the original text and the translation while
simultaneously listening to the recording.

The method is supposedly fantastic, but it's incredibly difficult to gather
suitable materials. While widely-translated books like Harry Potter seem
ideal, the translations are not literal and occasionally the audiobooks do not
match the texts exactly.

Further info:

[http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Listening-
Reading_Met...](http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Listening-
Reading_Method)

[http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/!%20L-R%20th...](http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/!%20L-R%20the%20most%20important%20passages.htm#_Toc346179147)

~~~
eru
They have interlinear translations of lots of religious texts (and surely also
audiobook recordings. But religious texts are not everyone's favourite reading
material.

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Jun8
"The Greeks ate a simple healthy diet, involving bread, vegetables and fruit -
none which (except potatoes - γεώμηλα -in every guise) are available at
Hogwarts."

Wait, Ancient Greeks didn't eat potatoes
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_potato](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_potato))!

~~~
schoen
Yeah, I'm not sure where this reference comes from. γεώμηλα is a Modern Greek
word for potato (literally 'earth apple', presumably a calque from French
_pomme de terre_ ). It might be a sensible way to refer to potatoes in Ancient
Greek too, but it wouldn't be sensible to suggest they were eaten in Ancient
Greece!

~~~
madaxe_again
Were they, our history of circumnavigation would need a complete redraft, as
last I checked Chiloe (from where potatoes come) is some distance from Greece.

------
madaxe_again
What a great idea. When we learned Greek, we ended up translating Homer...
which would have been fine, had we not spent most of the previous year reading
the Iliad and Odyssey in Latin.

Main reason I found myself ultimately disengaged with Greek was the subject
material... that and the ultimately limited tolerance of a 9 year old's mind
for endless declensions and beatings.

"IMPERFECT INDICATIVE, BOY! FUTURE PERFECT INDICATIVE INDEED! COME HERE. HOLD
OUT YOUR HANDS."

Shudder.

~~~
murbard2
That and ...

In all languages, regular verb conjugations are taught with some example,
typically the simplest regular verb you can think of. It's "cantar" in
Spanish, "to sing", it's often "parler" in French, "to talk", "amare" and
"vocare" (to love, to call) are common in Latin.

In Greek, it's "λύω" (I untie), because yes, that's how common regular verbs
are.

~~~
madaxe_again
Untie, eh? It was "loose" when we learned, but yeah, precisely that.

I wish that they'd involved us in it - explained the wonder of a language so
ancient, so close to PIE, the tie of language to thought and semantic linking
- but it was utilitarian. Latin was better as they intermingled it with roman
history, but it was almost like they wanted Greek to be miserable. Our texts
were printed in the 19th century - little leather bound books covered in notes
on translation... In Latin. My school was such a time warp.

------
TomAnthony
Andrew Wilson (the translator) was my Latin teacher in school (20 years ago!),
and I remember he made the subject quite fun. Having someone who is so
passionate about their subject makes a huge difference as a student.

The effort and ingenuity he put into the translation is wonderful. I can't
speak any Greek, so having the translations and logic laid out is a wonderful
insight into translation as a process.

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tempodox
OMG, this is so cool. I have the translatio in linguam Latinam “Harrius Potter
et Philosophi Lapis”, done by Peter Needham. If only my ancient Greek weren't
that bad, I would enjoy this endlessly. The latin version is full of shrewd
and imaginative adaptations of the good old lingua to our modern (and magical)
times. If the greek version is anything like that (and how could it manage
otherwise?), then this is apt to be highly addictive poison :) Wouldn't you
like a chocolate frog?

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StavrosK
Oh god, they transliterated the name "Harry Potter" to "Άρειος Ποτήρ", which
pretty much means "aryan cup"! I'm dying over here.

~~~
mryingster
From the article:

"And Harry Potter is Ἅρειος Ποτήρ [Hareios Poter]- ἄρειος [areios] means
"belonging to Ares", the war god - appropriate for the young warrior, and
ποτήρ [poter] is a Greek word for "cup" or "goblet" \- presumably the cup of
wisdom from which Harry must quickly learn to drink deeply."

It doesn't look like Aryan was what the translator believes it means?

~~~
StavrosK
Actually, both are right, because the words are homonyms. "Hareios" is both
the word we use for "aryan" and for "something of Ares". I actually thought
"Aryan" was supposed to mean "sons of Ares", but apparently the root is indo-
european.

I guess it's much better with his explanation, but "aryan glass" sounds
amazingly funny in Greek. He basically nailed all the names, they're very well
done, and all the explanations he gives for them are correct (the ones I've
seen so far, anyway).

~~~
mryingster
I wouldn't know :) It must be a weird task to try to translate something as
bizarre as names from one language to another. Harry isn't exactly a
distinctive name. It's rather common, like the name John. I wonder, why not
pick a traditional Greek name for the protagonist rather than trying to find
something that seems similar to the English name?

~~~
StavrosK
I think it's because an additional constraint. Translating it to just "John"
or something is fine, but translating it to something that _both_ sounds like
the original _and_ has meaning in the new language _and_ is relevant to the
book is just brilliant, and he did it for many of the names.

~~~
stan_rogers
Harry, though, is a diminutive of Henry, which means something along the lines
of "lord of the manor". Seems to me there'd be a Greek name beginning with
"ari" that would be a closer fit. I'm not sure whether you could work in the
aspiration, though; to say my Greek is weak would be understating the case
significantly.

------
hacknat
Also in Latin:

[http://www.amazon.com/Harrius-Potter-Philosophi-Lapis-
Philos...](http://www.amazon.com/Harrius-Potter-Philosophi-Lapis-
Philosophers/dp/1582348251)

This has been available for a while though.

------
bitwize
Harry Potter is Areios Poter -- Areios "of Ares" and Poter "goblet". Strangely
fitting since a "Goblet of Fire" figures later in the saga.

And Quidditch is Icarusball. I love it.

------
lips
From the Amazon product page: > Age Range: 12 - 17 years

This might be more relevant if HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE had a code for Ancient
Greek.

~~~
bhaak
ISO 639-2 defines "grc" for Ancient Greek. But I couldn't find a specification
for HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE.

Going by the language tag best practices every program should accept 3 letter
language codes if it also accepts 2 letter language codes. But with software,
you never know.

~~~
acdha
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231#section-3.1.3.1](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231#section-3.1.3.1)
says that Accept-Language uses a RFC 5646 language tag. That now says that the
three-character ISO 639 codes are valid, although it looks like the two-
character versions are preferred when available:

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646#section-2.2.1](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5646#section-2.2.1)

That said, it would be amusing to see how many servers and clients actually
support this.

