A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior

How "Free Speech Culture" Is Killing Free Speech: Part One Blurring The Lines Between Official Censorship And Individual Criticism Built The Intellectual Foundation For Trump's Assault On Free Expression

ICYMI: Part One of my thoughts on how the “free speech culture” movement contributed to the moment of historical censorship www.popehat.com/p/how-free-s...

Roel you Son of a Ditch

I finally surrendered to the Ghost of Things Contemporary and published a poem about a current event

I even know one couple (Patrick and Mallory Owens) who intentionally raised their daughter as a native Latin speaker.

Yes yes it was. I should say that there are actually lot of people who are able to converse in Latin. There are even conventions where we go to meet each other. It’s not *quite* as weird as people made it out to be. He’s far from the only person in the church I’ve interacted with in Latin.

A poem of mine about Nabokov has been published in the Threepenny review

C’est de loin la meilleure traduction française de Dante que j'ai jamais lue. Elle saisit quelque chose de lui qu'aucune autre version française n'arrive à rendre.

Fortement recommandée.

A poem I wrote about vanquished soldiers through history is now published in the New Verse Review

I knew which Jamie this was before I even checked your bio

Where would I go to understand the versification principles of rap music? I know traditional English literary versification but the system rappers use is hard to figure out beyond "there's a basic four-beat thing going on".

Weirdly this will be relevant to my dissertation about pre-Islamic poetry

Two Poems by Mushrifuddin Sa'dī Translated by A. Z. Foreman - The Los Angeles Review Ghazal to the Camel DriverOh camel-driver, slow your pace. That's my soul's peace that goes away.The heart I had now leaves with her, a piece of me she stole away.Parted against my will from her, help...

Two poems by Saadi translated by yours truly in the Los Angeles Review

I have seen takes you people wouldn't believe.

Bill Kristol on fire with AOC's talking point.

I watched David Brooks' eye glitter remembering Bloody Sunday.

All those moments will be lost in time, like Hannania's Mea Culpa.

Time to cry.

Toxic nazgulinity

Another specimen of me reading in a reconstruction of a form of Iron Age Hebrew pronunciation in all its ejective glory: the beginning of Genesis 29.

Specifically, they say it was done w/ the 1st half-verse as a call-response, then w/ the rest as responsory w/ Hellelujah. This isn't common today but both Talmuds attest this & the Rambam endorses it. The actual user-base of the Tiberian reading tradition probably chanted hallel psalms like this

The Babylonian Talmud (Sukkah 38b and also Tractate Sofrim believed to be composed in Palestine) and Jerusalem Talmud (Shabbat 16) inform us on the specifics of communal chanting of hallel psalms in the early synagogue.

And here's Psalm 117 performed with responsory which is probably how it was done in synagogues in Palestine/the Land of Israel in this period.

For another specimen of reconstructed Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation, here's me reading psalm 120 from the Aleppo Codex.

For another specimen of reconstructed Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation, here's me reading psalm 120 from the Aleppo Codex.

Not only did I decide that Jabberwocky needs to exist in Middle English, but I also decided that it needed to be recorded.

Lots of Old English words, particularly poetic ones, don't have reflexes that survive into Middle English. This was one very weird way to fix some instances of that.

OTOH here's a shot at how the passage might have sounded like in the Iron Age

I make some assumptions here (incl. that the passage existed in this form then). There's uncertainty re: some major sound changes' chronology

Heads up: don't listen if you don't like hearing the tetragrammaton pronounced

A reading of the famous "Once More Unto The Breach" speech from Shakespeare's Henry V in a reconstruction of very early 17th century pronunciation. The king gets surprised mid-speech.

(This is a relatively conservative accent for the period, w/ even the long mid-vowels still relatively low.)

Those melodies btw are filched from modern reading traditions. It is a certainty that these pronunciations of Hebrew were normally chanted (though the actual melodic contours cannot be reconstructed) and many things about them only even make sense in a melodic delivery.

If you're wondering about the labiodental vav & uvular resh, yes, those do seem to have been features of Tiberian reading

The Babylonian reading though had alveolar resh & labiovelar vav. Here's the same passage in a (very tentative) reconstruction of Old Babylonian pronunciation from the period...

The beginning of the Shma read by me in Khan's reconstruction of Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation. This pronunciation is the one the vowel diacritics we now know originally represented. This is the closest I think we can come to an idea of how Hebrew was read in liturgy in 10th century Abbasid Tiberias

Speaking of which, here's me reading the villainous opening speech from Richard III in a reconstruction of early 17th century pronunciation.

Modern writers' workshops: "Don't make your villain too over the top or on the nose! People don't do evil for evil's sake"

Shakespeare's plays: "Hi audience! I'm the villain! My favorite pastimes are puns and murder! Evil is so fun. Watch me do some now”

My god this man is such a whiny little baby

Every time I do self-translation it feels almost like performing surgery on myself. No matter how good a surgeon you are, you're doing some pretty janky shit.

“The Goths were Arians”

Dude racial terminology like that isn’t cool anymore

“ARIANS! I mean A-R-I-A-N-S”

Jeez stop insisting on it it’s creeping me out.