Clayboy has a short post in which he describes an experiment he ran. He told an audience, “I like to ask my fellow men to stand.” Only the men stood. This is pretty convincing evidence that, at least where he was, “men” doesn’t mean “men and women.” I wonder if there is any context in…
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Buses in Israel have the following written over the priority seating reserved for the elderly: mipnei seivah takum. Though the first two words sound esoteric to adult Israeli speakers and are often incomprehensible to children, the line is, in my opinion, a beautiful nod to the holiness code of Leviticus: “Stand before the elderly.” Unfortunately,…
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The issue of contractions in English translations has come up again recently, so I thought a look at how contractions work in English might be a good idea. Spoken English Spoken languages tend to obey a general rule that less is more, or, more specifically, the shortest form possible is generally the only grammatical form.…
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I’ve only just glanced at the new CEB translation of Matthew (available on-line here), so I’ll have more organized and thorough thoughts soon, but as I was paging through it, I saw this: After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judah during the reign of King Herod, magi came from the east to Jerusalem. [2:1]…
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What could be easier than translating “yes” (nai) and “no” (ou)? Actually, “yes” and “no” are sometimes tricky, because they work differently in different languages. In particular, negative questions are a common source of trouble. For example, in response to “do you want ice cream?” the answer “no” indicates no desire for ice cream, and…
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