24 The Linguist Vol/59 No/5 2020
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But this isn't a really satisfying reading,
so let's go back to the text and see what
else we can get from it. What if we did
not read the two lines as the dual and
kept the word sn-nw? With nsw ('king')
following it, we would have sn-nw nsw,
which sounds like the Egyptian sn nsw
('brother of the king').
Sn ('brother') is normally written with
different hieroglyphs, but it looks as though
the writer is exploiting different readings of
the same signs to allow us to understand
this phrase in two ways. We can read it
either as 'the syngenes and dioiketes of
the king' or as 'the syngenes [which means]
brother of the king'. I like the second
option best because it both borrows the
Greek word into Egyptian and explains what
it means.
This may seem like a lot of effort to go to
in order to understand an aural and visual
pun which was last vaguely amusing to
someone over 2,000 years ago, but it is a
good example of the kind of thing that can
emerge when you look really closely at
multilingual inscriptions from the ancient
world. The Corpus of Ptolemaic Inscriptions
project, and others like it, can give us a
fresh perspective on some of the most
familiar and recognisable objects from the
ancient world.
Notes
1 Funded by the AHRC, the project began in
2013, directed by Professor Alan Bowman at
Oxford University's Centre for the Study of
Ancient Documents. In addition to a hefty set
of printed volumes, all the information will be
published online for free.
2 https://rosetta-stone.dh.uni-leipzig.de/rs/the-
digital-rosetta-stone
Sometimes we have to
contend with mysteries
like this when we
work with texts whose
authors are long dead
Joanna Biernat-Sowka asks if linguistic
or a hindrance, as she explores a world
W
e know it is common for children
to invent new words and phrases
in order to express themselves,
but it is increasingly apparent that adults,
too, create large numbers of new words,
particularly in the fast-moving world of
business and social media. Abbreviations
have become especially noticeable in
corporate and office environments. We spot
them on a daily basis in emails, letters,
leaflets, advertisements, notes, flash cards
and phone conversations.
Next to standard abbreviations, including
FYI ('for your information'), MD ('Managing
Director') and OOO ('out of office'), are
offerings such as FBM ('fine by me'/'agreed'),
GA ('go ahead') and LMK ('let me know').
Entire sentences may be represented by a
combination of letters, with 'sorry I missed
your call' reduced to SIMYC and 'I could
not agree more' to ICAM. During the
pandemic, WFH ('work from home') came
out the office with the rest of us, becoming a
household expression.
This phenomenon raises some questions.
Should we understand it as a sign of laziness
or are we just being creative in our language
use? In the age of real-time data transfer,
businesses have to show greater flexibility
and reflect the growing speed of
Say it short
