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English that is Greek | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6148 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes  | Message 1 of 10 17 November 2008 at 10:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'd like to share this speech I read some time ago, showing how one can communicate almost completely using Greek loanwords in English besides prepositions, articles, pronouns and the copula.
``Kyrie, It is Zeus' anathema on our epoch for the dynamism of our economies and the heresy of our economic methods and policies that we should agonise between the Scylla of numismatic plethora and the Charybdis of economic anaemia. It is not my idiosyncrasy to be ironic or sarcastic but my diagnosis would be that politicians are rather cryptoplethorists. Although they emphatically stigmatize numismatic plethora, energize it through their tactics and practices. Our policies have to be based more on economic and less on political criteria. Our gnomon has to be a metron between political, strategic and philanthropic scopes. Political magic has always been antieconomic. In an epoch characterised by monopolies, oligopolies, menopsonies, monopolistic antagonism and polymorphous inelasticities, our policies have to be more orthological. But this should not be metamorphosed into plethorophobia which is endemic among academic economists. Numismatic symmetry should not antagonize economic acme. A greater harmonization between the practices of the economic and numismatic archons is basic. Parallel to this, we have to synchronize and harmonize more and more our economic and numismatic policies panethnically. These scopes are more practical now, when the prognostics of the political and economic barometer are halcyonic. The history of our didymous organisations in this sphere has been didactic and their gnostic practices will always be a tonic to the polyonymous and idiomorphous ethnical economics. The genesis of the programmed organisations will dynamize these policies. I sympathise, therefore, with the aposties and the hierarchy of our organisations in their zeal to programme orthodox economic and numismatic policies, although I have some logomachy with them. I apologize for having tyrannized you with my hellenic phraseology. In my epilogue, I emphasize my eulogy to the philoxenous autochthons of this cosmopolitan metropolis and my encomium to you, Kyrie, and the stenographers.'' Mr Xenophon Zolotas Have fun trying to decipher the words. :p BTW, does anyone know why he uses "Kyrie" in that manner? Isn't Kyrie just the vocative of Kyrios? (It's use in Christian chants notwithstanding) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 10 17 November 2008 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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"I apologize for having tyrannized you with my hellenic phraseology." - a good summary. More seriously, though, that is impressive - even though it's slightly difficult to read, and a few of the words are blanks to me, even given context.
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| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6148 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 3 of 10 17 November 2008 at 1:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
I found that sentence the most immediately comprehensible of the whole speech! :p Some sentences are quite incomprehensible to me as well, in particular the Scylla and Charybdis part. Some of the substitutions are quite amusing, "numismatic plethora", for, presumably "inflation". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 10 17 November 2008 at 3:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
I was unclear. That was, indeed, a very comprehensible line - I was calling it the summary, tongue-in-cheek. The 'that' in "that is impressive", referred to the whole article, not that line! The Scylla/Charybdis part makes perfect sense to me - it's a mythological reference, and refers to a narrow path that can be taken, between two things that can entirely ruin everything. Didymous is perhaps the most unclear word in the whole thing to me, though a few others rival it; the sense of everything is clear, but not a few of the modifiers. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| customic Tetraglot Groupie PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5880 days ago 44 posts - 66 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Polish*, English, German, Turkish Studies: Arabic (Written), Persian | Message 5 of 10 17 November 2008 at 3:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I looked "didymous" up and it seems that it means "arranged or occuring in pairs;
twin" from a Greek word "didumos". But since the whole speech is not very clear for me (that's even more fascinating in English for me - you will always have some new words to learn), I can't say whether this definition of "didymous" would be suitable for this context. Perhaps not. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6148 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 6 of 10 18 November 2008 at 3:28am | IP Logged | |||||
He's probably addressing the IMF and World Bank in this speech, which are two presumably "didymous" organizations. Oh Volte, I understood you, I was just remarking that that sentence was one of the easiest to understand of the lot. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Makrasiroutioun Quadrilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Canada infowars.com Joined 6106 days ago 210 posts - 236 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Armenian*, Romanian*, Latin, German, Italian Studies: Dutch, Swedish, Turkish, Japanese, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 7 of 10 19 November 2008 at 11:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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Amphises, thanks for posting this... I enjoyed reading it! Do you have any more?
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| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6148 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 8 of 10 19 November 2008 at 11:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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Unfortunately, Mr Zolotas made only one other speech that is available online, as far as I know. Here's a link.
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