Dil incelemesi, dilin kökeni tatışmalarını Platon gözünden öğrenmek için çok uygun bir kitap. Aynı zamanda bazı kelimelerin o şeylere verilmesinin sebeplerini de anlatıyor, grekçeye ilginiz varsa mutlaka okumalısınız. Sadece klasik Platon diyaloglarındaki gibi bir akış bulamadım, bildiğimiz diyaloglarından biraz daha farklı.

Socrates is also satirizing the endless fertility of the human mind in spinning arguments out of nothing, and employing the most trifling and fanciful analogies in support of a theory.

So is the introduction to Cratylus dialogue. Socrates goes on a lengthy monologue as expected about the origins of words and their meanings. Essentially it's a satire on etymologists. Plato underhandedly accepts influences of foreign language (like Sanskrit) on Greek but doesn't explore in detail.

A bit lengthy for the subject matter but interesting.
[I kinda miss haughty Socrates...]

İsimlerin kökeni ve isimlerin doğru kullanılışı, etimoloji üzerine Sokrates, Hermogenes ve Kratylos arasında geçen bir diyalog. Sokrates diyalogun önemli bir kısmında Antik Yunan panteounun isim köklerini ve neden tanrılara bu şekilde seslenildiğini irdeler. Diyalogun çıkış noktasındaki “isimlerin kökeni” ile ilgili çözülemeyen bir sorun var gibi gözükmektedir bana, Sokrates diyalog boyunca isimlerin tanımlamalarını yaparken ve kendi içlerinde bir anlam barındırdıklarını sergilerken, bu açıklamada aslında yine başka isimlere başvurmaktadır, bunu yine diyalogun sonlarında güncel tanımlamalarda kullandığımız ve “tanrılardan gelmesi” dışında kökenlerini bilemediğimiz “ilkel” kelimelerin çıkış noktasını sorgulayarak çözüme sunar. Aslında bu da Antik Yunan dilinde mitolojinin önemini ve sıfat ve adların günlük kullanım ve mitolojideki homojen gelişimlerini gözler önüne serer. Sokrates’e göre isimlerin yapıcıları olan sanatçılar, yani yasa yapıcılar, zanaatlerinde zaman zaman başarılı, zaman zaman da başarısızdır.

Genel olarak etimolojik duran ve güncel yaşantımızla karşılaştığımızda nispeten çözülmüş bir sorun olarak gorsek de, “isimler varlıkların özünden mi gelir” ve “isimlerin temsil ettikleri varlık ile aralarındaki bağ ne kadar kuvvetli olmalıdır” soruları, diyaloga benim öncül beklenti olarak koyduğum felsefi ruhunu kazandırmaktadır, bu nedenle gerek Antik Yunan panteonundaki isimlerin etimolojik kökenlerini ana dillerinde tanımış olma açısından, gerek de tartışmanın Sokratik doğasından oldukça keyif alarak okuduğum bir eser oldu.

Tartışmanın kapanışına doğru Kratylos’un ana argümanına karşı Sokrates, diyalogun başında yararlandığı Herakleitos teorilerinden yola çıkarak isimlerin ve cümlelerin, dolayısıyla dilin statik olmadığını, değişime açık olduğunu savunacaktır. Ve bizler nesneleri bilme ve öğrenme çabamıza isimlerinden değil, sürekli değişime uğrayan özlerinden başlamalıyız.

Ending arguments redeem the very boring extended parody of etymologists that comprises 60% of the book

The opening and closing arguments were neat, but the middle part where Socrates makes fun of grammarians stretched on for too long.

Fucking boring.

Detta är en etymologisk genomgång knuten till en kritik av idén om etymologi som determinerade tankestruktur. I någon mån kan jag läsa den som en föregångare till P:s idélära, och i någon mån en skämtsam kritik av Protagoras och Herakleitos. Sokrates sätt att dra sig undan de frågor han inte gillar påminner mig om Euthyphro, vilket gör att jag vill tro att detta är mer S än P; varför skulle Platon låta en hero som brillierar igenom ett ämne undvika frågor och begreppsglida?

Det var inte ett offer att läsa denna text men inte en intellektuell njutning heller. Läs den om du roas av etymologi eller har behov av att kritisera relativister samtidigt som du ogillar Aristoteles. Annars finns bättre användning av din tid.

This longish conversation explores the spectrum between words that sound like what they name (onomatopoeia) and words that are seemingly random and only "correct" or "true" insofar as they become conventional (what I think most linguists would say about most words today).

Between those two poles, more waypoints come up than you might expect—in the space of ideas, not geography or character development. The occasion is a debate between Socrates and his friends Cratylus and Hermogenes. Mostly Socrates chats with one of them at a time, and if there's any interest in the plot, in terms of why they're meeting and where they're going, I missed it. As a script, it's very readable and doesn't feel too specifically unnatural, but it lacks the easily pictured setting and sense of friendship and banter in Phaedrus.

Honestly I had no idea where I was, so I guess I pictured an empty market square or a sunny orchard grove. Or whatever would be the ancient equivalent of a rant via text messages. Socrates is quite entertaining. A few of his arguments are excellent, and he does say "by the dog of Egypt" at one point. (Since learning that if he existed, the historical Socrates probably said this often, much like the character in the dialogues, I've started looking out for his little trademark version of "by golly." The dog he's referring to is the god Anubis. No one else in the historical record said that. It's a quirk that probably belonged to the real person.)

Not as much, but Cratylus also looks at the spectrum between individual letters and complete sentences, the relationships among entirely different words for the same thing, and the supposed growth of language from atomic concepts like "moving," "still," "hard," "soft," and "round." These are suggested as the meanings of individual letters, which can be combined to form metaphorical molecules: that is, nouns! Socrates analyzes many of them—names of people, gods, and everyday items—in succession, and this is the bulk of the text. If you want creative word associations, or if you like ancient Greek, you'll probably find this valuable. I mean to go back one day and mine the fairytale etymologies for happy associations.

This playful episode gives an idea of how language and mythology merged, or co-emerged. How did the names of gods like Athena and Poseidon sound to golden-age Athenians? Did they carry obvious meanings (like "Hope") or hints of meanings (like "Thurgood")? Yes.

It's worth mentioning that the Greek alphabet is a super early example, probably adopted from the Phoenician system pretty much immediately after its invention. The Greeks and the Phoenicians were big traders and neighbors, so a speedy adoption should be no surprise. The early alphabets have much in common, but especially relevant is something they all have in common with hieroglyphs: the funny little shapes have sounds, but they also have concrete meanings like "ox" and "window" and "nail." By Plato's time, these seem to have faded in Greece—but maybe not entirely. Today, we would not even think to say that a word is a composite of the meanings of its letters (ox-window-nail, anyone?), nor would we say that the name of a god can be analyzed into meaningful components to reveal that the name is a shrunk, streamlined phrase. For us a word is a composite of the sounds of its letters. If anything, we accept that syllables can have meaning, but never letters. (The one exception would be an acronym, our closest modern equivalent.) My suggestion is that we are more distant from hieroglyphs and Phoenician than Socrates was. Alphabets were sparkly and new. This dialogue gives a window (or, dare I bring back this lame example from Hebrew letters, an ox-window-nail?) on a world that experienced ideas and language differently, and so experienced life differently.

On that note, it's curious to hear Socrates soapbox about letters, given that he objected to writing. More jarringly, he has been captured in letters... again and again. (And people believe he never existed and is just a character dreamed up by Plato. I wonder what he'd think of that.) It's a bit like overhearing an Amazonian hunter-gatherer, one who has told you that photographs are repulsive soul thieves, shooting the breeze about tilt photography versus deep focus shots at a cocktail party. The irony would be lost if you didn't know the part about stealing souls.

For me the most intriguing aspect is just that ancient Athens is suspended between a time when every noun could have been the spirit of that object or phenomenon (you become familiar with the patterns and names for "fire" and "snow" and "lightning" and "whirpool" and "archery" and "goat" because you get to know those spirits) and today, when we do not confuse words with actual spirits. In ancient Athens, Rome, Egypt, Babylon, etc, the names of gods are also the names of giant bunches of phenomena. They are more or less the royal, ruling spirits of those noun groups. In other words, those facets of life. In other words, pieces of life = spirits.

That is ultimately the old view of the cosmos that Socrates and company (courtesy of Plato) are grappling with, and they find that things just don't quite line up. They're puzzled. Today I think we're comfortable with why.

Cratylus is often described as being about etymology, but it's really "folk etymology." Some of these just-so stories about the origins of words probably make sense, and I'd have spent more time on them if I knew Attic Greek. Apparently some or much of the reasoning is meant to satirize exactly this kind of linguistic/cultural speculation, which must have been popular at the time. I couldn't tell how serious it was meant to be, how much Plato intended the claims and their justifications to amount to preposterous sophistry. But I was going to call many of the arguments early on "wretched" (and I almost stopped reading after the one about Trojan men as categorically and self-evidently wiser than Trojan women) before I picked up on what seems to be the general understanding today that a lot of this is satire.

That interpretation might be supported by Socrates' warnings at the end that, in effect, names of things are slippery and you shouldn't trust them or rely on this kind of thinking too much—and maybe also by the amiable goodbyes, with the characters promising to update each other if they figure anything out. Socrates (the fictional character) is certainly not above presenting an elaborate argument and then telling you it was terrible and you shouldn't have fallen for it. (He does this in Phaedrus, for example.)

The casually tossed off sexism I mention above about the wisdom of Trojan men versus Trojan women is annoying but maybe interesting to pick up and turn over. Plato was supposedly quite feminist for his era, and certainly compared to his student Aristotle. This argument would have been normal and accepted at the time. But I can't tell whether Plato intended it as sophistry. It is part of an especially long and entirely unbelievable argument about the value of names given by gods, even though we don't know what those names are. So it does seem ridiculous overall. On the other hand, women at the time were rarely allowed an education (they were at Plato's Academy) and were not allowed to vote. That is far from a joke, and clearly most readers of the dialogue would have agreed with the statement—so if it's satire, it would have been lost on most of them. Satire that's lost on everyone isn't effective. And the idea of divine "true names" that Socrates is presenting is very similar to Plato's own theory of forms, which was initially a major part of his philosophy, something he let go maybe around this stage of his life. Without scholarly input, I'm around 50/50 on how this was intended. But it's the kind of thing that's going to catch a modern reader's ear, and I feel it's at very best a missed opportunity to say something useful.

Wherever the satire/opinion divide may fall, there are some fascinating thoughts about the connections between map and territory (not a metaphor used in the text, but the same idea), the map being words. It's interesting how often a concept comes up that we have a good term for today—root word, natural category, edit distance, encoding, schema. It's a little bit like listening to a very smart child describe something absolutely real and true, but not the way an adult would, so the child avoids all the usual jargon and cliches. Where else would the speaker go so far as to say your name can't be too good, or it would be a clone of you, an image identical to you inside and out, and cease to be a name at all?

Cratylus is one of Plato’s early-middle dialogues. It is somewhat puzzling for the modern reader, since much of the dialogue is taken up with fanciful folk etymologies of Greek words. Socrates is investigating whether the names of the Gods, heroes, citizens, or natural elements are meaningful, and in the process spins off etymology after etymology, each one more implausible than the next. The intention seems to be mockery; just as Plato earlier reveals the faulty logic of the sophists, so he exposes the emptiness of grammarians. I wish I could say that the satire has lost its bite with the passage of time; but, alas, folk etymologies remain common, and I have heard argument-from-word-origin too many times for comfort.

Still, the dialogue can be fairly dull if you do not know ancient Greek. But the beginning and the end retain philosophic interest. Socrates investigates the connection between words and things. Cratylus holds that names are essential and elemental, even god-given, while Hermogenes first maintains that the signifier is arbitrary. Socrates effectively confuses both parties, until nobody is quite sure what they think. Along the way, several theories are entertained that now seem hopelessly naive, such that legislators gave original, onomatopoeic names long ago. Nevertheless, given the time in which it was written, this dialogue shows a remarkable prescience in its view of language and Plato’s willingness to consider multiple factors. One wonders, then, to what extent Plato himself took it seriously—where the satire begins and ends—since questions of language are absent from his mature system.

By chance, I have just heard a recent version of the onomatopoeic theory of names (that the sounds of names imitate what they signify), put forward by Daniel Tammet (famous for his mental math and memory abilities) in a TED talk. Tammet suggests that names have emotional tones in their sound that even non-native speakers can grasp. He uses the Icelandic word "hnugginn" as an example, which apparently means "sad." According to Tammet, respondents with no knowledge of Icelandic are more likely to associate this word with negative emotions when given a choice. This certainly wasn't true in my case, since the word reminded me immediately of "hugging." I think Tammet would profit from this dialogue.

On the importance of names and use of the right words and names

Идея искать смысл в словах возникла не сегодня и не вчера, она владела умами с древнейших времён. Платон предлагает вниманию беседу между Сократом, Кратилом и Гермогеном, сообщая всё известное ему об именах богов, природных явлений и героев эпических сказаний. За давностью лет понимание прошлого всё сильнее стирается. Изменяется произношение и написание, а значит утрачивается первоначальное значение. Некогда каждое имя имело всем понятное понимание, после трансформаций превратившись в ничего не значащий набор звуков и символов. Не знакомому с греческим языком произведение «Кратил» покажется китайской грамотой. Впрочем, суть излагаемого Платоном яснее ясного.

(c) Trounin

In my opinion this is one of the most obscure Plato’s dialogues, there are a lot of unclear parts and there are some differencies between the different interpretations and translations. The whole conversation is centered on the relation between things and words and on the fairness of these last ones. Plato’s position is not very clear until the end of the dialogue and there is a very long excursus in the middle of the conversation consisting in the biggest part of the book. It’s not clear whether this is a real attempt by Plato to analyze words’ etymologies or if it’s just part of his irony, but in my opinion this was pretty painful to read and difficult to understand if someone does not know ancient greek. The real conversation with Cratylus does not start until near the end and it’s the most important part because here we can find Plato’s real opinion on the topic. I think there are more important dialogues in Plato’s thinking and this is not one of the most readable and enjoyable, it’s still a pretty solid work and can teach something to anyone because this work is still deeply analyzed today and it’s mentioned in a lot of books written later on. So, I suggest to start from other dialogues such as Phaedro, Symposium and Phaedo, but if you want to read Plato I think Cratylus is a must, a quite annoying one, but still an important piece of art.