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0 pointslaichzeit011y ago0 comments

In some languages the meaning of a word is highly dependent on the pitch accent, like ancient Greek. If you're 1 bit off you have trouble :) Surprising enough I read an example of this yesterday evening:

"Hegelochus, the actor in Euripides' Orestes, which was presented in 408 BC, in line 279 of the play, instead of "after the storm I see again a calm sea" (galeén' horoo), Hegelochus recited "after the storm I see again a weasel" (galeên horoo)."

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legutierr11y ago

One of the most famous passages from the Bible seems to have have been affected by (or benefited from) a similar ambiguity.

Mark 10:25 (and parallel versions in Matthew and Luke) has prompted much speculation over the centuries with regards to the origin of it's evocative metaphor: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

But when you consider that the word for camel (kamêlos) and for rope (kamilos) differ by only one vowel, quite a mundane explanation springs to mind: someone in the early church misheard, misspelled, or mistranslated Jesus' original admonition.

The more satisfying explanation, the one that I prefer, is that this is a pun that happens to have gotten lost in translation.

The few comments in this blog article offer some interesting explanations:

http://rambambashi.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/common-errors-36...

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