I can answer at least one of your questions: Valyria is (was?) home to a series of volcanoes called the "Fourteen Flames" which supposedly all erupted simultaneously and destroyed Valyria. There is also some connection between these volcanoes and the Valyrians' dragons and magic. One of these connections is that they supposedly had been using magic to prevent the volcanoes from erupting but this magic failed and led to the eruptions. So the Valyrians were well aware of what the volcanoes were before they ever erupted. The destruction of Valyria is such a seminal moment to in-world history that a lot of people are likely aware of what volcanoes are due to its destruction.

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Ah that makes sense, thanks!

@thedj9553

Жыл бұрын

It’s definitely “was” at the point in time House of the Dragon is set, some 3 or 3 1/2 centuries after the Doom.

@Letterswords

Жыл бұрын

@@thedj9553 Well, the "was" I put there is mostly because I wasn't sure whether or not all the volcanoes still exist I guess (some may have collapsed)? Valyria (the place, not the nation) still exists despite the doom happening, it's just uninhabitable.

@TheElizondo88

Жыл бұрын

Basically this, Valyria was located in a highly volcanic area; more similar (even in climate) to our worlds Java than say Greece or Italy. I’m not sure but I’d asume Javanese and other Indonesian languages do have a word for volcano and the locals there understood the concept better than medieval Europeans.

@greysonbogle5080

Жыл бұрын

This is all true, but it’s important to specifically note that the word volcano doesn’t show up a single times in the books, despite the somewhat general awareness of the “fire mountains” in Valyria

I once saw a Western movie where a cowboy tries to hurry another's tall tale by saying, "Cut to the chase." I think the scriptwriter thought that expression was just another ordinary way of saying, "Get to the point." The expression actually originated in the movie industry. For me, it destroyed my suspension of disbelief.

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Haha that’s hilarious. Thanks

@markoz673bajen8

Жыл бұрын

In verse Rhymes of Tim Dawg: Let's get right to the nitty-gritty....

Luke, my ears were screaming bloody grammar when the king said, “Whomever may.” Thank you for correcting that. Maybe a future video explaining this concept of who vs whom in English demonstrated through Latin/Greek would make for a good video?

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

That’s a great suggestion! I have a number of “grammar police” ideas

@chitlitlah

Жыл бұрын

I can get over people using who instead of whom, but people who hypercorrect and use whom when they shouldn't seem like they're trying to look smart (especially in writing) and actually manage the opposite.

@Skadi609

Жыл бұрын

@@chitlitlah I thought that hesitation between "whom" and "who" was only a problem for non-Native speakers(like me😃). Glad to see I'm not alone.

@chitlitlah

Жыл бұрын

@@Skadi609 It's not so hard to figure out when writing or typing and you have time to think about it, but in flowing speech, it's a lot harder and people (including me) seldom use whom at all.

@tsoliot5913

9 ай бұрын

​@Skadi609 you simply answer the question before asking to know. "Whom? Him. Who? He."

Could you perhaps do a video on the Latin they teach on Duolingo? Would love to see your take on it!

GRRM would likely never let this slip. He even goes so far as to call "black sheep" "black goat" to ground the dialogue in his universe. A knight in westeros is refered to as "ser" instead of "sir" for the same reason

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Fascinating!

@piotrwegrzyniak5798

Жыл бұрын

It was annoying for me reading the Polish translation, as ser in Polish means cheese. I think at some point I even thought they were speaking about a person while in fact they spoke about the food

@HenryLoenwind

Жыл бұрын

"black goat"? I'd call this a bad translation from the in-universe language into English. A translation is supposed to also translate idioms into the target language's counterparts. You would be criticising me "to right" if I was reporting that it was "sow warm" here over the "vacation months" but I that I had a "good little nose" ten years ago to invest in a "climate facility".

@BenjaminBlodgettDev

Жыл бұрын

@@HenryLoenwind yeah I think the "black goat" was a goofy idea and hopefully he will forget it as he continues to write the books

@Skyewars

Жыл бұрын

Actually, the term "black sheep" DOES exist in Westeros. Hoster Tully called his brother Brynden Tully the "black sheep" of the family, and Brynden responded "Better a Black Fish", or something like that.

1. Does GRRM use "hector" in the books? Well, not in this specific scene. HotD is based on a book called Fire & Blood, which is written from the perspective of an in-universe historian, so there's almost no actual dialogue. As to whether he uses it elsewhere, he does quite a few times. Here's an example from Catelyn's 3rd chapter of A Clash of Kings: "Beneath the tight-trimmed beard his heavy jaw clenched hard, yet he did not hector her about titles". I should also note that George is heavily involved in the production and probably also writing process of HotD, so he probably okayed it in this case. 2. Is "volcano" used in the books? The only time I can find a variant of the word "volcano" being used is in the World of Ice and Fire, where the Fourteen Flames of Valyria are described as "great volcanic mountains". As TWoIaF is written from the perspective of an in-universe historian, it's safe to assume that the word "exists" in their universe (ignoring that they aren't actually speaking English). Even though the word itself is rarely used, volcanoes are referenced all over the place. They may not be littered all over the place in their universe, but they certainly have had a massive role to play it its history. The main reference to volcanoes is in anything about Old Valyria, since the city of Valyria was built by a set of 14 volcanoes called the Fourteen Flames. The story goes that the Valyrians found dragons in the Fourteen Flames, and then somehow tamed them. The Fourteen Flames were also mined for all kinds of metals, including gold, silver, and iron. As far as I know, the Fourteen Flames are always a little bit active (even most artwork depicts rivers of lava in Valyria), but according to some in-universe sources, the Valyrians likely used magic to keep the mountains from erupting, which seems to show they must have had some understanding of what the Fourteen Flames were. That magic must have backfired eventually, though, since the mountains eventually exploded in the Doom of Valyria. The Valyrian Freehold and the Doom of Valyria were massively influential, and pretty much everyone in the known world would have some knowledge of the Fourteen Flames because of them. That being said, I don't think it's quite right to say that people in-universe understand volcanoes to a deeper extent than just "mountains that sometimes explode". It could have been that people used to know a lot more, but that knowledge must have been lost with Valyria. Here's a short exchange from A Dance with Dragons, the 5th book, which I think shows their level of understanding: Tyrion: So those are fires of the Fourteen Flames we're seeing, reflected on the clouds? Moqorro: Fourteen or fourteen thousand. What man dares count them? It is not wise for mortals to look too deeply at those fires, my friend. Those are the fires of god's own wrath, and no human flame can match them. We are small creatures, men. 3. "Whomever" may... Is that not allowed? I'm not a native English speaker, so I wouldn't think myself to know this better than you, but doesn't "against" force the corresponding noun to take the object form? Could he not just be dropping a relative pronoun between the two parts of the phrase, effectively shortening from "against whomever who may challenge us" or "against whomever it is who may challenge us"? Again, not a native English speaker so I'd love to be corrected here. As for whether GRRM makes these kinds of mistakes, he definitely has the general idea of who vs. whom clear (but I am probably not qualified to comment on whether he has the specifics like in this case). When it comes to whether he uses these kinds of mistakes to mark the speech of his characters, it's certainly true that most of the highborn and/or educated characters use who/whom correctly. The problem is that lowborn people don't get as much time (at least proportionally) in the books than the show, since all of the main characters are highborn, and the book format lends itself to a lot of internal thoughts. After a quick search on A Search of Ice and Fire, I was able to find one place where who/whom is used incorrectly, and that is in an internal thought in Tyrion's 15th chapter of A Clash of Kings: "Who do I want? He could not tell pink Ballabar to fetch him Shae. Who could he send for, who could he trust?" Certainly, Tyrion is not uneducated, and he's not the person to be making this kind of mistake. But, this is just after he regained consciousness after sustaining injuries in Stannis' attack on King's Landing. It might be that GRRM did this because Tyrion is still not entirely awake, or it could just be a mistake. EDIT: I originally only searched for "volcano", and wrote that the word was never used. Eventually I got the idea of searching for "volcanic" as well, and a result popped up.

@Proud2bGreek1

Жыл бұрын

If he uses “hector” when describing a scene that’s fine because the writer is essentially talking to us. Now if the characters are using it in dialogue like they do in the series, that’s different and immersion breaking.

@underaveragecuber7437

Жыл бұрын

@@Proud2bGreek1 Characters do use it, like in Tyrion's 4th chapter of A Storm of Swords, where Tywin says "A day later, all was changed. The old woman's work. She hectors her son unmercifully. Varys claims she told him that your sister was too old and too used for this precious one-legged grandson of hers." I still wouldn't call it immersion breaking, since I personally like to think that GRRM is acting as a translator for a story originally written in the Westerosi Common Tongue, and he's translating a similar phrase from their language

@shapeoperator

Жыл бұрын

There are no correct or commonly used examples of the "shortenings" you suggest in English. A whom form is never the subject of a sentence.

@MaxMustermann-go8xf

Жыл бұрын

​@@Proud2bGreek1 I find it interesting that you say it is clearly immersion breaking. Because wouldn't it also be immersion breaking that they use English? And not just some English, but modern English with its influences from the French (who also don't exist in this fantasy world) and the Greeks (who also don't exist there) and the Romans (who...) - you see what I mean. And the influence of mythology on language is the point where it becomes too incredulous? This reminds me of Lord of the Rings, because Tolkien used so many words from Old English, especially with the people of Rohan (I guess they are basically a fantasy model of Old English society?) but we still buy Middle Earth as a fantasy world (whose name is borrowed from the Norse mythological word for the realm of the mortals, if I remember correctly). Needless to say, Martin's world geography is inspired by the real world - you have an island that resembles England (at least partly); you have a large continent that resembles Eurasia; you have a vast Ocean to the West that has not been properly explored yet, etc. You have the title Ser for nights, which is just Sir with a different spelling, which came into the English language via the French. So why isn't all that immersion breaking?

@MaxMustermann-go8xf

Жыл бұрын

"doesn't "against" force the corresponding noun to take the object form? Could he not just be dropping a relative pronoun between the two parts of the phrase, effectively shortening from "against whomever who may challenge us" or "against whomever it is who may challenge us"? Again, not a native English speaker so I'd love to be corrected here. " I think it helps to replace the object phrase at first: "Against them" -- who is them? They are "whoever may dare to challenge us". So the pronoun 'whoever' introduces the object phrase (defend against --> them; them = whoever may dare to challenge us). Maybe it helps to imagine the sentence in a language that still has a working case system, e.g. German: She would ask: "Gegen wen?" ("wen" = accusative case) He would respond: "Gegen wer auch immer es wagt ..." (against whoever may dare...) ("wer" = nominative case) (needless to say he probably wouldn't put it like that in German, but this is a more literal translation) So the pronoun is in the accusative case in the question ("wen"), but in the nominative case in the answer ("wer"). However, in the answer the entire object has to be in accusative case, because "gegen" always demands accusative (I think this is called case government. The preposition "gegen" governs the entire object phrase). However, the corresponding object "wer auch immer es wagt" is its own object phrase, which is why it doesn't change. Idk if this is called zeugma, linguistically, but the pronoun "wer" is kind of split between two forces: Gegen (Demanding accusative) and the verb of the object phrase "wagt" / "dares" (demanding nominative). It may sound strange to have a nominative form follow the preposition that demands accusative case, but the case of the object phrase over all is still accusative, regardless of the pronouns case. Hope this helps. Grammar can be convoluted sometimes.

HotD is based on a book (that is actually half a book, as Martin seems unable to finish a work) called Fire and Blood. This book is written as a fictional history book by a Maester that collects from many sources, and has almost no dialogues - although, as a history book, it contains "this one here said he said that on that occasion, but that other source there said otherwise": therefore dialogues are mostly written by the show writers in this case (contrary to the first seasons of GoT). GRRM does not use clear references for historical figures and mythologies in his books, but they use the same themes and replace the original references with vague worldbuilding citations. He also does not use "volcano", but "fumes" or something like that. As English is not my mothertongue, I'm not able to avail GRRM's grammatical correctness, but it's nice he uses old formulas, like "six and ten years old", like Old English or today's German. Some of their characters have distinct maneirisms, indeed, like saying "o'er" instead of "over" and so on. In short, most of dialogues and details in HotD comes from the show writers, as the source material is written not as a novel, but as a fictional history book. Some events that tooks long chunks of an episode is portrayed as a short sentence of one or two lines on the book. This time showrunners have much more freedom and responsibilities for the plot details and dialogues.

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Thanks! Very helpful

I can answer all of your questions. The common tongue is translated to english for the show and book and they have equivilent references in their language they just use ours for translation

Buongiorno, Luke! Very stimulating content, as usual! The misuse of who/whom is one of my grammatical pet peeves. It is irritating when someone wants to be SO correct that they end up making a mistake. A similar case is using "... and I", when the correct form would be "... and me" in all those cases when the pronoun is not the subject of the verb and thus requires the accusative/dative form "me". E.g.: "Let's keep this between you and me".

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

I agree, I find that error even more irksome.

@aknightofislamicarabia5543

Жыл бұрын

@@polyMATHY_Luke Almost nobody understands that "and I" is not a set phrase you can just pluck out of the ether and stick wherever you need to refer to yourself with another person, and is actually subject to the rules of the language. I don't think I've had a single English teacher (all native speakers, mind you) understand this subtlety. It's always "between you and I".

Magnifico! I didn't know you were a fan of the show/books. Another reason to fall in lvoe with you :P Thank you for make that kind of contents!

I read Fire and blood and the world of ice and fire a long time ago so I can't confirm whether the "mistakes" are there, but GRRM definitely approved the dialogues because he is involved in the production of HotD. And btw...watching it made me want to brush up on my High Valyrian...I did try to learn it with Duolingo😂

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Haha how did that go? Thanks for the comment

Жыл бұрын

Wait, can you learn High Valyrian in Duolingo???

@legocitykilldozer

Жыл бұрын

@ yes it's kinda fun though I would prefer them adding bigger living languages such as Farsi from adding fictional ones

@servantofChristMichael

Жыл бұрын

@@legocitykilldozer agreed, I was less than thrilled to see "High Valarian" and Klingon listed on Duolingo but not Serbo-Croatian, Afrikaans, Zulu or any of the Bantu African languages, all of ehich have more than enough recources and a very significant population of native speakers as conoared to the fictional languages that sre offered 🤷🏻‍♂️

@markoz673bajen8

Жыл бұрын

You mean bi lingo. I'm fruition for codec.

Hi Luke! Can you make a video on Sardinian and the Latin features it has retained that Italian has lost? 😊

Brilliant observations!!

@LukePolymath, I'd love to see a video about etruscan language and culture influences in Rome. Have you made one? Do you recommend another vid? If you didn't, I suggest you try something great as usual. They are relatively unknown, but I'm certain your watchers would love it!

You are great man 👏🏼

Great vid man

Wow these are all very interesting!

The song of ice and fire is my favourite franchise in general. I've read the main books in greek so sadly I can't say much for the english from them but I can say something funny for the greek. So, Tommen had a fawn as a pet and the greek translators decided to make it "φαύνος" which certainly isn't a baby deer. And it had me thinking for a sec wait.. there are satyrs in Martin's books?

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Huh! Very interesting. Thanks

Жыл бұрын

What a missed opportunity for the series to show some satyrs prancing around!

@apmoy70

Жыл бұрын

Fawn, φαῦνος, I can see it (by a long stretch, they're similar phonemically); much better than translating it νεβρός (which is Ancient Greek for fawn), which is very similar to νεκρός (dead)...come to think of it 🤔

@paulmiler7139

Жыл бұрын

A faun is nearly the same spelling plus pronounced in English the same way plus a faun is pretty much a satyr so maybe a translation error where the translator genuinely thought he meant faun rather than fawn and didn’t know the spelling was different.

About the part regarding who/whom: I myself use a slightly uncommon set of interrogative pronouns. Like everybody else except the fine whomever-gentleman in the show, I use 'who' when substituting the nominative subject of a sentence. When it comes to the oblique case, I hear most people either using 'who' as well, or 'whom'. So, this seems like the standard in English now, but because I'm German, I just cannot use 'whom' with an 'm' for the accusative case. In contrast to a great deal of people, I only use it for the dative case (which seems rarer than to use it for an accusative situation), which also made me ditch prepositions in some situations (saying "whom I give" instead of "to whom I give") as I would in German. The weirdest part however comes in the accusative case. Even though I did not want to use 'whom' explicitly, I still wanted to express the idea of 'Wen' distinct from 'who' in English, which made me slip in 'whone' in one situation or another. To my knowledge, this form died out before middle English, but I naturally just used it because of correlation with German. So sorry in advance for anybody that hears me say 'whone' unironically in speech, I'll try to stick to 'who' whenever I don't confuse myself over it.

@annascott3542

Жыл бұрын

Whone - what a funny little word, as a native English speaker who loves the English language, I’m surprised by this. I’m also really impressed with your super advanced knowledge of English grammar as a non-native speaker!

@MaxMustermann-go8xf

Жыл бұрын

​@@annascott3542 Ironically English historical linguistics seems to be easier for Germans to study, because they have two perspectives: the modern German one and the modern English one. English is quite conservative when it comes to consonants, while German is more conservative with its vowels. The consonants in German have shifted a lot, just like the vowels in English. So if a native English speaker wanted to study the history of their language, it would be useful to study German as well.

Another beautifully interesting video, bravo! 🤩

Gratulor magistro pro videos tuis valde bonis.

Just like in period war movies (ancient or medieval) when the order is given to the archers to release the arrows, and the command is "fire!" as if they were using firearms 🙄 I think the correct command is "release" isn't it? Or "loosen"

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Right! “Loose!” is what I normally hear

After I heard somebody speak of 'lynching' in a movie about late 18th century (Poldark), I'm never too impressed with onscreen dialogue 😑

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

You’re right, it’s a 19th century term en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/lynch

The volcano part just made me realise that the greek word for volcano "ηφαίστειο" (hephaestio) clearly comes from hephaestus i just never connected it before this

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Cool!

I notice this sort of thing in fantasy fiction a lot: idioms that are normal in our language due to some historical event, but couldn't have come to have meaning in another world. A similar thing to this I just watched, in Game of Thrones an illiterate adult learning to read asks "why is there a G in night?" Now, we in real life know it's because some old version of English (some form of Saxon or whatever) had gh make some sort of throaty sound like in the European way of saying "Vincent Van Gogh" that we in modern English have since silenced. So if we wanted to be technical, a Westerosi "English" should never have evolved gh. But again...they should also not speak English soooooooo

Come to think of it, I would actually be so interested in hearing your thoughts on the Valyrian language in this show (and Game of Thrones) and what might have inspired it. It's easily one of the most beautiful languages I've ever heard spoken and it's clear the team who came up with it poured their hearts into it, but I'm curious how it compares to real-world languages because, on closer inspection, it doesn't seem to be as inspired by Latin as I thought it would be.

@mrsnulch

Жыл бұрын

@@abintr0 Yeah I understand the parallels between Valyria and Rome, I'm saying the language itself (High Valyrian), when I looked into the grammar and phonology and stuff, is nothing like Latin. I'm just curious what language inspired it basically

@mrsnulch

Жыл бұрын

@@abintr0 Oh true, Dracarys is definitely a bit of a reference to Greek / Latin! So it didn't totally come out of a vacuum. So David J Peterson invented Valyrian and Dothraki by himself? I shall look into this.

@mrsnulch

Жыл бұрын

@@abintr0 Would still be cool to hear Luke's take of course

@mrsnulch

Жыл бұрын

@@abintr0 Brilliant! I've been getting into his interviews, didn't know it was mainly just one guy. This is actually answering most of my Qs lol! Thanks my dude

@mrsnulch

Жыл бұрын

@@abintr0 It would be cool if Luke interviewed this guy

Love your video as always. I wonder if you can spare some time do a video reading the Latin inscription on Isaac Newton's memorial? That would be amazing! Thank you!

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

A great suggestion! I’m going to be busy the best couple months so please remind me.

@nzcsx

Жыл бұрын

@@polyMATHY_Luke Wonderful!

Regarding the "who is he to hector me?" I can tell you that G. R. R. Martin is really careful to only make references in universe. So I think that slip was from the scriptwriters.

As a linguistics geek, it’s a bit, just a teeny tiny bit, grating to see for example, like you said, obvious direct references to Greek and Latin mythology or culture and language in general in their speech. Or how English is “the common tongue” that has supposedly been spoken for a very very long time, but there’s very little variation in speech (except for small accent differences) across very different people, living hundreds of miles apart, in supposedly medieval times where travel and communication was limited. Or to see how the accents of the non-native common tongue speakers always sound like just a generic foreigner, broadly Mediterranean-sounding accent, as opposed to echoing the adaptation for the phonology of their native languages like specifically Dothraki, specifically Valyrian, Dornish, or Free cities accent etc. Of course George R. R. Martin was not a super huge linguistics nerd, so it’s really forgivable but I wish it just had a bit more of those missing little details. Edit: plus it’s probably not practical to ask a writer to try and come up with and maintain believable dialectal variation between different people all the time, let alone do it consistently in a tv show

@ShoelaceWarHawk

Жыл бұрын

Are you considering the Northern English accents (inconsistently I know) used in the North small differences? Great point about foreign accents

@kkuwura

Жыл бұрын

@@ShoelaceWarHawk yeah, I actually do. Don’t get me wrong variations in dialect and accent in current England for current English are not marginal by any means. But if the common tongue had been spoken in Westeros, a huge continent with different people, for thousands of years, there’d realistically be way more variations. Hell, the language say spoken in Dorn and in the North would’ve been as different as German and English or maybe even, say, English and Hindi. But that of course is an obvious critique. If the theories of linguistics were applied thoroughly and accurately to any fantasy and/or historical series, the people in the stories wouldn’t be able to communicate properly, so it’s just impractical and pointless to do that.

I may be a little bit late but here's another little information to the Vulcano question. The word is only used once in a fictional in universe history book But despite the word I think the higher classes knew that there were mountains that could possibly errupt. Because if the recent history of the known world (explained by others here) But the Valyrians the culture the Targaryen came from and that is part of the discussed scene had a word for Vulcano. It was Jaehor. It's strongly connected with the word for deity or god (jaes) which collective form is also Jaehor

There is no reference to Greek mythology in Martin's original Ice and Fire series. He claimed that that his inspiration for the medieval setting and political intrigue mostly came from the War of the Roses or English civil war of 1455. He's a very good storyteller but considering the quality of his writing he's no Tolkien. However the myth of the dragon and the word itself is derived from the greek "drakon" which was mostly used to describe large snakes, such the Colchian dragon that guarded the golden fleece. Fascinating content as usual Luke, gratias ago tibi valde.

To hector! I’ve been wondering if there’s a verb derived from a proper noun in English, and now I’ve finally found one. My search started after finding four in Finnish and wondering if verbing names was a Finnish thing or a universal thing. The four people that got verbed in Finnish are Jesus (jeesustella, to act holier-than-thou), Rambo (ramboilla, to act recklessly), Elvis (elvistellä, to show off), and a Finnish dude named Muilu (muiluttaa, to kidnap and beat a person and then drop them off at the Soviet/Russian border).

@onesob13

Жыл бұрын

Might be a little weak, but there's also "to google"

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Delightful! It’s especially common in languages like English and Ancient Greek, but very rare in languages like Latin.

@kkuwura

Жыл бұрын

There’s a term for words derived from names: eponyms. And in our case, the verbs derived from people’s names would be eponymous verbs. I searched them up and English apparently has loads, and they are not like really obscure words you’ve never heard of. To boycott, to gerrymander, to galvanize are all eponymous verbs.

@ShoelaceWarHawk

Жыл бұрын

@@polyMATHY_Luke Do you know if there’s a reason for that?

@Aakkosti

Жыл бұрын

@@kkuwura Ah, excellent, thank you! You’re right, I know all of those words. Two of them are also verbs in Finnish.

Soon Luke's comments will be full of ancient Roman languages because like teaches us ❤️

Nice

i kindly ask you if you could take a look at the latin lyrics in "gehrman the first hunter" theme from bloodborne, i'd love to see you react to it. maybe "Laurence the First" theme too if you like

I know I’m a bit late to the party. When you called Vulcan “the smith,” it made me wonder how much of the religion came up in HOT D. The seven gods are the mother, the maiden, the crone, the father, the warrior, the stranger, and the smith. I never thought to attempt to link them to the Greco-Roman pantheon.

This isn’t a nitpick this is completely valid as a piece of literature

It started Greta and it’s quite captivating! I really hope they won’t do what the did with the last season of GoT… I don’t know who was Hector in this universe but the story of destruction of Old Valyria reminded me the fact of the volcanic eruption at the island of Thera here! The explosion was so destructive that destroyed the island giving it the shape it had today, it wiped out the Minoan civilisation on Crete and it changed the weather for several months because of the ash! And also the fact that Valyria was a place with immense technology and advanced civilisation compared to the other kingdoms kinda reminds me the story of Atlantis. When Atlantis sank its advanced civilisation was lost forever…

@magister343

Жыл бұрын

Vayria was on a peninsula, not an Island, although the Fourteen Flames changed the landscape so much that its ruins are now on an island separated from the mainland by the Smoking Sea.

0:55 World of Ice and Fie is postapocalyptic Earth, so they probably know who was Hector.

George is way too particular about his fantasy world lexicon to use terms like Hector and Volcano, and my instinct is that that grammatical mistake is also an error of the show’s writers

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Thanks! That helps

He says "Whomever may..." in response to "Against whom?" meaning he was right to use 'whomever' because an 'against' was implied.

“Do you speak to your cat in High Valeryan or Dothraki?” 🤣😂 Funny!! I did spoke my cat in French, for practice! Should we suppose you spoke them in Latin or Ancient Greek? It would be so cool! Thank you for noticing, I actually leaned in that episode that “hector” was used as a verb in English, I didn’t know. There is also a “nestor me” ? I find arrogant the Greeks! Every time I have read the Iliad (as a child, teen or adult), I find he is the real hero, responsabile and patient, defending courageously his family and the city from the problem his brother Paris brings, who doesn’t do much. He could just have given Helena to her husband and save the city instead, but he tries to handle the situation, and act the best he can. I find him similar to Ned Stark. Too righteous to survive. He didn’t deserve to die 😋

I now really want someone in the small council to say, "Well I will not cross the Rubicon to save this city should you endanger its people!" And then hopefully we get confirmation that there's a tiny creek outside King's Landing called Rubhikkon.

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Haha

@magister343

Жыл бұрын

I think the closest thing to Caesar crossing the Rubican probably was probably the Dragonlord Aurion's attempt to bring an army from Qohor to take over the capital city and declare himself Emperor of what had been an aristocratic Republic, but he was never heard from again because the Fourteen Flames had already erupted and no one visiting the ruins of Valyria ever lived to tell the tale.

I did a search on the pdfs of a few of the GRRM books - and no "Volcano". I believe though that it's a classic case of nature - I would assume in places with frequent volcanic eruptions like Iceland or Guatemala the local languages are more likely to have words for "volcano". The Romans did have Etna and the Lipari islands that erupt frequently but I guess apart from that the Mediterranean region is mostly rare eruption Volcanos like Vesuvius and Santorini. For "hector" I'd say if you were translating something from say, Japanese, in to English and conceptually "hector" was the correct word to use using wouldn't imply the Japanese knew the Trojan Prince and I would grant the writers the same freedom here. And ahhhh how the English are ignorant of our frequently used rump subject/object forms like I/me she/her he/him ;-( No half competent writer gets those wrong.

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Indeed!

In the novels, Martin tries to use words and phrases that grounds his fantasy in its own world, but ultimately the audience is going to be mainly English speakers and people used to Hollywood and British genre conventions. Also, I would bet that today few young people associate the word hector with the Trojan hero. Even the use of the word to mean "to bully" is a distortion.

Honestly, I think you're making a bit of a storm in a teacup. This is not the first time someone has used terminologies and names in fiction where they don't quite make sense. A good example being that of Lord of the Rings, where it's specifically stated that the Fellowship splits on February 26 and that the One Ring is destroyed on March 25th the next year. The problem being that the names February and March are very specific to our world and don't make sense in Middle Earth. Although granted, at least Tolkien has a justifiable reason for it, that being that the whole series is actually translation of an original work he somehow found.

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Right, there you go, the exact kind of justification I mean. Not being read in the books, my video’s purpose is to pose these as real questions, not rhetorical ones.

Ok, I don't know why but I swear Luke kinda looks like Furio in the Sopranos

So the language they’re speaking is the common tongue. So if it was completely realistic the entire book series would be written and spoken in a language that derives from ancient Andal, First Men, Rhoynish and Valyrian, the four cultures that influence the westeros we see on screen or in the books. I doubt anyone involved knew they were using words that wouldn’t be possible in that world because of their etymologies or grammar, but then every word in the show that isn’t spoken in Valyrian or Dothraki would also fit into that category. My own understanding is that fantasy writers just use their own language as a stand in for their characters’ main language out of convenience, unless and until the story requires some different language to be used. The volcano example is interesting, because the old Valyrian culture that the King and his family descend from (and whose language they still sometimes speak) started around a place called the “fourteen fires” ie 14 volcanoes, so any word for volcano in the common tongue would very likely have a Valyrian origin. Weirdly, I can’t find a translation in any Valyrian dictionary to say what this would be, but they do have words for fire and mountain. Hector I just doubt they would have noticed they were referring to the Greeks, and you were probably right with the whomever thing, it was probably the writers just trying to sound fancy.

Can you review The Prince of Niccolo Machiavelli?

You really should talk to @Preston Jacobs about this!

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

I’m not familiar. Put him in contact with me

I'd say that since most people--probably including a lot of people who do know Greek mythology--don't know the etymology of "to hector", it's just a verb. So it doesn't stand out to me unless I go out of my way to keep my etymology-detector on all the time. Not at all like Falco calling Fox McCloud an "einstein" in Star Fox 64. :)

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Heh, well, I guess it depends. “Bogarting the mic” or “Jimming the camera” are pretty inseparable from the persons they describe to me. But I appreciate your view.

Any thoughts on the Greek in 3000 Years of Longing?

A proposito di ciò di cui parli a me colpi quando Olenna si riferì all'alto passero definendolo zelota. Anche in questo caso dubito che il concetto possa far parte di quel mondo 😂

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Ahh infatti

Volcano is also fire 🔥火 mountain 🏔️ 山 in Chinese. HotD as a story isn't in any of the books. It's loosely based off of some backstory characters and offhand information in one book which is being expanded on in the show, similar to what Amazon was doing with the Lord of the Rings knockoff. It's extra content since HBO rushed the initial series. The books aren't even finished for the original series.

Talking about volcanos and mythology, I visited the Museum of the Acropolis this summer and I noticed that Enceladus was written wrong in English, it was written Engeladus, as it is written in Greek. I asked a curator how it is pronounced in Greek and if it meant something. In Greek it has this NG that sounds almost like a NK (Luke must know better, I just learned some sentences of modern Greek for the travel 😅). And he told me that it meant something similar to that who makes the earth tremble with his voice, or something like that. Cool!! I was a bit sad because the word has been modified in other languages and the meaning is lost (if you guys like etymology learning Greek is so revealing ☺!). But then I realized that the C in the English word comes from Classic Latin, and it was pronounced like a K, so the Romans did it right! 👏🏻👏🏻(they use to do things right!) Then “the goths brought caos” and the pronunciation was distorted. In any case, it is nice to know that Enceladus (or Enkeladus, as it should be) was buried by Athena under the Etna, which explains why the volcano is continuously in eruption 🤗 and surprisingly, we didn’t know when we named it, the Saturnian moon Enceladus is cracked and expels jets of gas so it must have volcanoes under the ice… or a Titan roaring 😳!

@arelendil7

Жыл бұрын

Luke is there any other mythological names or places with a meaning hidden in the word?

George R.R. Martin doesn't really care about linguistics nor the origin of words, it's the reason why everybody in Westeros speaks 'Common' even though there's no reason for Northmen (First Men) to have the exact same language as Southron (Andal) people. Even most Wildlings speak common, though they barely have contact with people below the wall, with only some of them speaking 'the Old Tongue' (the original First Men language), but that's basically only one tribe (The Then, the most 'sophisticated' Wildling tribe in the books, the crazy cannibals in the show). It's the only book series I've ever read to mention the drink hippocras, which derives it's name from Hippocrates and does so a few times.

As far as the latest observation is concerned, I personally have no thorough insight of the commonplace presence (or not) of these shortings in germanic languages; in ancient Greek texts, however, this precise phenomenon has been observed

About the nomenclature of what a volcano is, does the same thing applies to Japanese, or Tagalog or any other language upon the Ring of fire? Or in the Polynesian languages, Indonesian languages etc. Shouldn't those languages have the term much sooner than the Westerners?

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

I would think so! Maybe someone will be able to tell us

@TeutonicEmperor1198

Жыл бұрын

@@polyMATHY_Luke hopefully someone will! thanks for the answer

@kkuwura

Жыл бұрын

That’s an interesting point. I went ahead and looked at translations in Indonesian, Japanese, and Icelandic, and many more that don’t derive the word from “Volcan” have something like “fire mountain”, “a mountain with fire”(I looked at Tagalog and they seem to just say “bulkan” so that is an outlier). Now I wonder if Valyrian had a similar construction as these languages since they had to deal with volcanoes firsthand

@xepharnazos

Жыл бұрын

I had that thought too, that certain peoples like the Icelanders and Hawaiians could quite easily have had a conceptual concept of "a volcano" without needing to understand the geological nuts and bolts of it.

@TeutonicEmperor1198

Жыл бұрын

@@kkuwura well, the term "fire mountain" is very self explanatory and it would be obvious why people would have constructed this term! I wonder if in the pre Islamic faiths of e.g. Indonesia (where "fire mountains" and vanilla mountains are in abundance) volcanoes were also deified or if there was comprehensive link to one another to explain what was going on with those "fire mountains"! And if that's the case, why the preislamic name didn't survive to this day while in the Western world the prechristian name it does! The fact that the Philipinos use the name of a God from a pantheon they 've never believed in, it's so funny! Thank you Spanish colonialists!!!

Fantasy dragons: ALL GOOD Greek and Latin terminology: NFW!!!!!

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Haha right, I admit the possible absurdity of being outraged (which I’m not).

@scotthjackson5651

Жыл бұрын

@@polyMATHY_Luke yeah, yeah... of course you're not :p

What has always bothered me is the name Criston for this very reason

Honestly, I just wish the dialogue writers would get their head out of Shakespeare's proverbial and right dialogue like we saw in GoT. Not to say GoT was always fabulous, but I never recall the dialogue being quite this bad. Where's Tyrion's witty banter? Where's Bronn's crass bravado? Where's Cersei's wicked tongue and Olena's razor sharp mind? It seems the writers are more concerned with appearing "old" than actually writing good dialogue, and that's a real shame, especially since they can't even use the phrases consistently. The constant use of "mine" instead of "my", while attested historically is just weird and irritating in this show. It more like watching an annoying period drama than a real GoT spin off. Which is a shame, because in most other ways, the show is giving me hope.

The word Romance was used in GOT!

Well, it''s the same in Star Wars. What can you do?

Can't say that I speak High Valyrian. Much less to my cat. But I guess you know that they offer a High Valyrian course on Duolingo. As well as Klingon 😅😅😅😅

I'm not sure about R.R. Martin, but I'm certain that J. R. R. Tolkien took these details pretty seriously.

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

I tend to agree

Well, if they can use noa-names, I don't see a problem with referencing Greek mythology.

The people in Hollywood don't understand subjects and verbs and so forth !?? :-)

Nihil intellego hūius reī. Hās fābulās ignōrō.

if we're going to assume "against them whoever may dare" why can't we assume "we will defend against whomever may dare"? He's responding with a sentence fragment. Not grammatical, but people don't speak grammatical. If we're just gonna infer the rest of the sentence we can make either fit.

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Right, “we will defend against whomever may dare” is not standard English. The correct version according to standard English grammar is “we will defend against whoever may dare.” That it’s a sentence fragment is irrelevant; sentence fragments are not wrong in speech, only in prose writing that avoids colloquial expressions.

They aren't speaking English though. Whatever references they make are understood to be merely in translation.

I think for the first question it's the directors or writers who threw it in.

@Rhaenarys

Жыл бұрын

2nd question yes volcanos is in the books, it's not explained what they are, it's implied the people just know. I think this is more of just English translation of whatever actual language they're using, as the books don't necessarily say they speak English, just the common tongue.

@Rhaenarys

Жыл бұрын

3rd question, while I can't say for sure if he uses that exact phrase in the books, yes, his characters are well fleshed out with actual depth, and yes, lingual differences, I would call it, not grammatical mistakes.

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

I greatly appreciate the responses

This series is written by Hollywood writers; G.R.R. Martin would never be so sloppy. He put in an enormous amount of effort into developing the world and how people speak in it and inventing terms of phrase for its peoples.

@enrajbroin

Жыл бұрын

Please GRRM knows absolutely nothing about linguistics and kind of sucks at it. He doesn't care if words in English have ties to Greek or mythology. It's the only fantasy series (or book series in general) where I've ever seen the drink hippocras mentioned... you know a drink named for Hippocrates.

I find the KZread theory videos more entertaining than the shows because they mostly cut out all the boring political intrigue and focus on the fantasy stuff that Martin doesn’t seem to like to give clear answers on. I’ve heard about the books for probably 15-20 years now, and I have avoided them because the only thing I ever heard about them before the shows was that people liked them because “all the characters are bad.” It never sounded interesting and after watching the lore videos on KZread I feel confirmed in that. There’s some decent stuff there, but Martin isn’t going to focus on it or give in depth explanations. It just doesn’t seem worth my time to wade through so much I find boring for a bit of good stuff here and there.

I'm sorry, but the screams nitpicking to me. English has not only Greek references that are used in everyday language, But references from Latin, romance languages, and other languages around the world that Don't fit in westeros. But you know what, I don't really care to nitpick that fact, because taking those references out would not only make the story more complicated but also less understandable. For example, since the days of the week reference ancient mythology (Saturday references Saturn, ETC.) Do we need to replace the days of the week too? That just seems needlessly complicated while providing no clear benefit. I rather the author focus on making a great story instead of contorting English to strip out all greek references.

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Yup, those are exactly the considerations that are worth thinking about. How far does one go? To hector is a direct reference to Greek mythology, so if that’s okay, it would be equally appropriate to make other direct references to Venus and to use the word “odyssey”, etc. Does one draw the line at references or vocabulary added to the language after 1500 AD? I’m not saying this is a bad choice. I acknowledge in the video these are small details, and they probably occurred because the screenwriters weren’t careful or didn’t think it through. It happens.

Did you learn ancient Hebrew already?

Man I think you overestimate tv show authors. They have no idea what they are doing. Martin instead knows better and would not do such mistakes.

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Heh, well, you're probably right, but I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt. I could be wrong.

@maricallo6143

Жыл бұрын

The show was too cheap to employ proofreaders? 🤣 Mr. Martin surely also had his work scrutinized by the likes of them, there's no telling if he's perfect at English grammar.

i don't know why but i think your italian guy :)

@dmnddog7417

Жыл бұрын

He is Italian-American.

English is not my language, and yet, it drives me crazy when people can't make the difference between who and whom. It's not rocket science, it really easy, just use your neurones!

It’s actually all on purpose look at the cultural anthropological inspiration

Lingua Valyria? Haha, solum Latíné cum féle loquor 🤘😎🤘

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

Licet!

In the case of the 2011-2019 television series I was struck by a contrast (a cultural matter rather than a linguistic matter): (Disclaimer: my familiarity with the Game of Thrones television series is only through watching reviews and clips here on KZread.) In our actual history people of all levels of society believed: witchcraft is a real thing. Storytellers would populate their stories with sorcerers, wielding magic powers, and those stories were not regarded as fantasy. From a modern perspective: all those suppositions of witchcraft were without basis. In general we can say that from our perspective medieval people were very superstitious. Every king, every person in power, had a court astrologer, and in addition practioners of other forms of divination were consulted. In the Game of Thrones world it is the other way round: magic *does* exist, but all of the protagonists act as people who are convinced that magic *is not real*. It seems none of the kings consult practioners of divination. When preparing for battle no thought is ever given to the possibility that the enemy might secretly have a way of using magic. In that regard the protagonists of the Game of Thrones world are strikingly modern; unencumbered by superstitions. I suppose the problem of magic is a world-building problem. In the Game of Thrones world: a sorcerer with actual magic powers will use those powers to build an army, start an invasion, and overthrow kings, turning himself into a sorcerer-king. Inevitably that evolves to a story with sorcerer-kings battling other sorcerer-kings. But that is not the kind of story that George R. R. Martin wanted to tell. George R. R. Martin was seeking to tell a story of a world where magic used to be common, but over time knowledge was lost, and in large parts of the world magic has not been seen for centuries. The world is at a point where even stories about sorcerers are fading... But far away a danger to the world is building strength, biding its time. I'm guessing the protagonists of the Game of Thrones world do not believe in magic because that is what George R. R. Martin needed.

They should have invented a language to use in the series instead of English.

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

As fun as that would be, it’s rather impractical both for actors and audience

@juandiegovalverde1982

Жыл бұрын

@@polyMATHY_Luke as a Spanish speaker, I’m used to subtitles.

Aren't you surprised that all those inhabitants of fantastic worlds speak English, and with a strong American accent ?

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

No, because English is taking the place of the imagined language of that place. This is a frequent literary and cinematic device. For example, in the movie Amadeus, all spoken German is treated as English, while Italian and French and Turkish etc are unchanged. The same idea is used in the show Barbarians. Given these constraints, I have made my commentary.

@karllegrand

Жыл бұрын

@@polyMATHY_Luke Understood. But then, wouldn't the whole English language take the place of the imaginary language, including idioms such as "to hector someone" ?

You should learn high Valyrian.

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

I’ve thought about it. It’s a nicely constructed language

@juandiegovalverde1982

Жыл бұрын

@@polyMATHY_Luke it has a taste of Latin and Greek.

Reading comments in ye videos gets me Bible Smacked.

I think the fact that the English language in general is already something which is inseparable from our own history should be enough. It would frankly be impossible for language like English to form in a fantasy world without circumstances being nearly identical to real life. Whether or not there was a Hector in their world shouldn't really matter because we as the viewer have to understand what is being said, otherwise everything might sound like the Darmoks from Star Trek Next Generation. Hector is already the anglicized version of a Greek word, so language should also be seen as anglicized in fantasy for our own understanding regardless of the lore implications.

I would argue that if you omitted "them" in "against them, whoever may..." you would be obliged to go with "against whomever may...", because at least something has to be the object of "against". Or is such a sentence structure nonsense in English?

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

You know, I think you’re right, and it’s possible I wasn’t being sufficiently inclusive of what can be found in English literature

@ShoelaceWarHawk

Жыл бұрын

This was my reading of what he said too! Against who? [Against] whomever may… Looks accusative (oblique) to me in the first clause, even though it’s nominative in the second

SALVE LVCIVS! QVAMODO RECTE HANC PRONVNTIO SENTENTIAM?😁😁 “NOMEN DOMINI APVD HEBRAEOS QVATTOR LITTERARVM EST IOD HE VAV HE: QVOD PROPRIE DEI VOCABVLVM SONET, ET LEGI POTEST IAHO” (CCL 72.191 - Jerome Comm.) QVAESO FACERE PELLICVLA ET INSCRIPTIO AD ME PAENITET ME PAVPEREM LATINAE😰 GRATIAS!!

@Brandon55638

10 ай бұрын

Prōnūntiātus classicus rēctissimus est sed licet prōnūntiātū ecclēsiāsticō ūtī sī velīs.

Season 7 was even more horrible that season 8.

Do native speakers REALY make errors? Imo no, I like descriptivism.

@jakubolszewski8284

Жыл бұрын

Oh, ok, I'm just sensitive on this topic xD. If it is like You say, then it is stylistic error hahae.

You really don't mind people living in a world reminicent of medieval Europe where dragons and magic exist actually speaking 21th century English in general and "to Hector" is too much for you to accept? The explanation is quite simple: whatever language those people *in universe for real*, just take the English as a translation of that in-universe-language. And "to Hector" is just the linguistic and sociocultural equivalent of whatever word was there originally.

@janmayenese

Жыл бұрын

People care about different things. Some people care about material culture, some care about language, etc.

You're being apologetic of professional writers who don't know their own grammar, which almost makes you worse than them 😱😱 REEEEEEEEEE! Not really, but I still find it funny that you would do that, almost as though you're bashing the quality of Hollywood writers in general 😂

@polyMATHY_Luke

Жыл бұрын

I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. While I think my interpretation of their mistake is correct, I could be wrong. The purpose of my video is to ask you the question, and I appreciate the comment