Sinuhe 2011

[Rob A.]

We're just puny humans, brute-forcing our way and occasinally refining our ways, and those that come after us will look at us and laugh at our relative barbarism, too. History of medicine has silly things like that. But I testify, that at least the Egyptian human did not change, and that we Egyptians in everyday life make self-deprecating jokes about how we are still like Pharaohs: the new president kills the last, removes his pictures from school classrooms and government offices and puts his own (deletes his name), removes his hovimiehet and brings his own, and how Egyptians pretend to make everything from zero (Egyptians have a saying: "we are who painted the air boya". boya is Turkish for paint, in Egyptian dialect of Arabic we have Turkish loanwords.) rather than standing on the shoulders of others. We have a word for this (a person pretending that he built it all from zero, that he does the impossible, being too full of him/herself), and I don't know how to translate it but: pharaofy or something like that. Like Pharao with -ly or -sti stuck to the end, but in Egyptian Arabic. We're still Pharaohs, when our president stays president until either exile (the first one after independence from England), death/assassination (the two after him), or jail (the fourh and fifth).

Nice....I can see why you would like this book, Sinuhe.....and the conclusions I've come to after having been on the Earth for a few years now are that humans down through history have all been pretty much the same....variations on a common ....all to common...theme. And now with more modern research the indications are leaning towards Neanderthals being much more like modern humans than was previously supposed.... Which would push this human behaviour ...good and bad....back to at least 600,000 years ago. I guess some progress has been made. Maybe...

Many of us think we accomplish what we do because of our own great abilities....but in reality we benefit from the successes and mistakes of past generations... Most European languages have that expression you mention, "standing on the shoulders of giants"....which comes, I think, from Greek mythology....

For example, if Einstein hadn't come along, or John Bell, or Nils Bohr.....I can't see how I could possibly have grasped the Theory of Relativity, which actually seems like a "no-brainer" now that it has been clearly explained....almost common sense.... but, hey, I'm "standing on the shoulders of giants". The Latin version is pithy...Nanos gigantum umeris insidentes...."Dwarves sitting on the shoulders of Giants."

The "frontier" of physics is now involved in interpreting the Entanglement Theory which I just can't grasp....but some future "Einstein" will be able to clearly explain that...assuming the theory is sound....

[maximumforum]

http://i.imgur.com/E8m9Qol.png

In middle of the 3rd line from top, halkinenä. Is this just halki + nenä? no results from google, and it doesn't make sense in English but does it mean where the man is standing in the rows, or something like that?

[jahasjahas]

"sinä siellä, halkinenä" = "you there, with the split/cracked nose"

I'm imagining it means someone whose nose was broken in the past and has healed in an ugly way. He specifically said that he doesn't like "your hideous and cowardly faces".

[Pursuivant]

The ancient Egyptians had also a habit of chopping off thieves' noses and ears.... But the split-nose is a veteran soldier, so someone whacked him with a scimitar and split his nose.... And now he's going to give grief to the recruit scratching his butt when Horemheb talks to his dungbeetles...

[maximumforum]

Yeah, I read that already. There's funny stuff in this book, last night I was reading about the slave who always wanted sex and the guy who took her from Sinuhe and then wasn't seen for 3 days.

[jahasjahas]

I should probably finish the book myself too, so I wouldn't have to guess so much...

[maximumforum]

http://i.imgur.com/e4M2GPC.png

On 1st line, vihisivät. vihistä? I saw this earlier and I couldn't figure it out. Is it something to do with the sound projectiles make in air?

[Jukka Aho]

http://i.imgur.com/e4M2GPC.png

On 1st line, vihisivät. vihistä? I saw this earlier and I couldn't figure it out. Is it something to do with the sound projectiles make in air?

Yes. They whizzed by. A bit uncommon choice of a word, though. Or maybe it has fallen out of use. I’d probably use frequentative verbs such as suhahdella or viuhahdella, although the latter has been extended with the connotation “doing a naked streak in a public place” and then hijacked to almost solely mean that.

[maximumforum]

Hän makasi henkitoreissaan eikä voinut enää puhua eikä liikuttaa käisään.

What is henkitoreissa? I found henkitorvi.
google translate thinks that it's a proper word, that if I type it any other way it says "Tarkoititko: henkitoreissa", and gives "bottomed" as the translation.

[Pursuivant]

Pretty much "bottomed out" or more "on his last breath".

[maximumforum]

http://i.imgur.com/Ehdcawc.png

I'm confused with the 3rd from last line starting with "Et...".

What is "ollen voine"? I kinda feel that it means "being able to", but I can't understand it. Ollen is instructive of olla and voine is negative potential of voida. So maybe "being probably unable"?

suuripiireisyys is majority, right? What is teräväpiirteisyys, rohkeapiirteisyys, kaunispiirteisyys, hämäräpiirteisyys (< from Nykysuomen Sanakirja at "piirteinen".) Is that a pompous way to say sharpness, braveness etc? Or is it more like a tereväpiirteinen, sharp-featured, like describing someone's face or something that has features of the adjective but not the adjective itself (face can't be sharp, but can have sharp features)? So then would teräväpiirteisyys be sharp-featuredness?

So:
"You are probably unable to forbid us from our faith a kind of majority, if so I get to say"

Hm?

Another thing. When the heettäläinen arkistohoitaja was telling Sinuhe about the heettäliset, he said "köyhä, likainen paimentolaiskana". Paimentolainen is okay, but what is paimentolaiskana? paimento + laiska + -na? paimentolais- + kana(?)?
Is it just a one-time thing or a general form, and can you give me other examples if there are?

[AldenG]

Näin ollen is one of those adverbial phrases again and means "that/such being the case" or more simply "therefore."

Et voine is "you can't really" or "I suppose you can't."

It might have been clearer to you if he had written Näin ollen et voine.

Suur(i)piirteisyys in this case means "flexibility of application" and in general means "approximateness" or lack of attention to detail or a kind of carelessness. A more common form of the concept is suurin piirtein, "in broad features/terms," "more or less."

[jahasjahas]

http://i.imgur.com/Ehdcawc.png

I'm confused with the 3rd from last line starting with "Et...".

What is "ollen voine"? I kinda feel that it means "being able to", but I can't understand it. Ollen is instructive of olla and voine is negative potential of voida. So maybe "being probably unable"?

First you have to recognize that "näin ollen" = "therefore". "Et voine" is the negative first person singular form of "voida" in the potential mood. The positive version would be "voinet".

suuripiireisyys is majority, right?

suurpiirteinen (note that the most common spelling indeed uses "suur-", not "suuri", which might be why you didn't find a definition)

1 (ihmisestä) broad-minded
2 (likimääräinen) approximate, rough

That's according to the MOT Englanti dictionary. "broad-minded" here usually means "not caring about details".

Thus we get

"Therefore you surely can't forbid our religion from having a certain broad-mindedness (=not caring about such minor details as "what is wrong and what is right?"), if I may say so."

Another thing. When the heettäläinen arkistohoitaja was telling Sinuhe about the heettäliset, he said "köyhä, likainen paimentolaiskana". Paimentolainen is okay, but what is paimentolaiskana? paimento + laiska + -na? paimentolais- + kana(?)?

You misread. It has to be "paimentolaiskansa", "nomadic people". paimentolais- (the "compound suffix" form of paimentolainen; compare "hevonen" -> "hevos-", "ihminen" -> "ihmis-") + kansa.

[maximumforum]

Got it, thanks. Part 1 finished in a month (since my first post to this thread)! Delicious book.

Can someone comment on this?

What is teräväpiirteisyys, rohkeapiirteisyys, kaunispiirteisyys, hämäräpiirteisyys (< from Nykysuomen Sanakirja at "piirteinen".) Is that a pompous way to say sharpness, braveness etc? Or is it more like a tereväpiirteinen, sharp-featured, like describing someone's face or something that has features of the adjective but not the adjective itself (face can't be sharp, but can have sharp features)? So then would teräväpiirteisyys be sharp-featuredness?

Edit: Another offtopic question (should I start a different thread for these kind of questions? I feel that they're too menial to deserve a thread each)
täydentää vs täyttää, what's the difference?

[AldenG]

Got it, thanks. Part 1 finished in a month (since my first post to this thread)! Delicious book.

Can someone comment on this?

What is teräväpiirteisyys, rohkeapiirteisyys, kaunispiirteisyys, hämäräpiirteisyys (< from Nykysuomen Sanakirja at "piirteinen".) Is that a pompous way to say sharpness, braveness etc? Or is it more like a tereväpiirteinen, sharp-featured, like describing someone's face or something that has features of the adjective but not the adjective itself (face can't be sharp, but can have sharp features)? So then would teräväpiirteisyys be sharp-featuredness?

Edit: Another offtopic question (should I start a different thread for these kind of questions? I feel that they're too menial to deserve a thread each)
täydentää vs täyttää, what's the difference?

I was thinking someone better qualified would get to these first, but I guess not on this occasion.

The only one of these I definitely recall hearing is teräväpiirteinen, which describes (for instance) someone with sharp or angular features.

Kaunispiirteinen is (to me) one of those "oh - really?" words that sound like something someone made up. But if you say it's in Nykysuomen sanakirja, I suppose you could use it to describe a boat or a ship, where you want to draw attention to the elegance of overall lines. It wouldn't surprise me to be corrected on this one, though. Personally I'd be more tempted to talk about siro or sirous.

Rohkeapiirteinen seems foremost to describe a description, where in English you'd talk about a description being drawn in broad or bold strokes or a painting literally being painted in bold strokes, with an intent to suggest both vagueness/approximateness and boldness. Given how little it was used when I was in Finland, I'd suspect it has migrated from another language. But I'd imagine it could be a synonym for plain old rohkea in describing a person.

Hämäräpiirteinen reminds me a lot of a Swedish expression I can't recall at the moment (on the tip of my tongue) that you'd use to describe something where the outlines are fuzzy and the whole thing feels dubious -- a scheme, a life story, a person's business interests... I'd prefer epämääräinen, though hämäräpiirteinen does feel more expressive.

Täyttää is principally to fill, as a cup or requirements or criteria. It's also used to describe reaching a birthday ("filling" a year). I don't know how common that is in other languages, but it corresponds directly to Swedish.

Täydentää is to supplement.