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Reposted by A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior

Popehat @kenwhite.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

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...

popehat.com

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

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

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

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

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

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

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.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

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.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

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

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

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

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

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.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

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.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

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

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

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.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

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.

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Reposted by A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior

A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

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

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

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

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

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.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

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

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

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.)

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

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.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

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...

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

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

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

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

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

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”

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

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.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

“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.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Also bank accounts are not expensive to have. Like who the fuck thinks that? This is like that “It's One Banana, Michael. What Could It Cost, $10?” meme played straight.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

This is either delusional or a lie. “Young men don’t have bank accounts” is flat-out not a thing and Mark “Ethereum” Cuban of all people is an unreliable narrator on this point

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

What do you call it when you get frustrated trying to hypothetically vocalize an Ugaritic text written in consonantal script? Irritable Vowel Syndrome

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

How big does a qamatz have to be before it constitutes a qamatz Gadol? Does it have to be a qamatz descended from Aaron?

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Think that the beginning of Ecclesiastes should be translated “Total bullshit, said Gatherman. Total bullshit. It’s all bullshit”

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

"She's a tongue that lived two thousand years And ran a blockade to kiss mine. They have turned into twins, like lips On which two hopes combine." — Salman Masalha on the Hebrew language (tr. Mine)

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

MAGA people seem capable only ever of acting like they are running a political campaign. Like, all they can do is play to the crowd regardless of how stupid it is from the perspective of actually achieving objectives.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

Two of my translations (a Yiddish poem by Avrom Sutzkever and a French one by Victor Hugo) came out in Lunch Ticket today. Also yikes I really need to remind myself to give half a damn when I take headshots.

lunchticket.org

Two Poems translated by A.Z.Foreman - Lunch Ticket

Two poems translated by A. Z. Foreman: The Heart's Voice by Abraham Sutzkever and Night of the Fourth: A Remembrance by Victor Hugo.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

If you were born in the 80s, science fiction authors mostly did not actually offer you a future of jetpacks, flying cars and 4-hour work weeks. They offered you a messed-up cyberpunk dystopia. Here you go, enjoy

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

This is very bad, and has the potential to really fuck people up who have ADHD or who are on the Autism spectrum as they work out ways to manage the way their brains are.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

If someone showed me this interaction and told me it was parody I would believe them. An increasing amount of online neurodivergence advice & discourse is basically bullshit. (A particularly stupid example is the periodically circulated thoughtmeme about autistic people being immune to propaganda.)

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Also, openly admitting that you were wrong just IS commendable behavior, straight up.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Whenever someone says "this isn't what I thought I was voting for" and regrets how they voted it is REALLY hard for me to resist jumping down their throat. But it's important to react positively to stuff like that and commend it. At this point, it feels almost immoral not to.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

"This world will never hold for you or me. So just hold God to heart, and let it be. Trust not this earthly kindom to be true. You will not be the first it nursed then slew. What does it matter, as your soul moves on, Whether you die in dirt or on a throne?" — Saadi of Shiraz

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

"Oh have I..." seems like the closest Modern English equivalent to the force of the "hwæt" clauses that often begin OE poetry.

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

I wrote a poem about two Old English poets, followed by translations of their work. The first eight lines to the Beowulf Poet use no Romance loanwords, which I only pulled off by inventing a non-loaned modern word for "Mercian".

brazen-head.org

For Two Old English Poets

A. Z. FOREMAN is a poet and translator pursuing a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages at the Ohio State University. His work (both original compositions as well as translations from Arabic, French,…

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A. Z. Foreman: Serious Philology, Silly Behavior @azforeman.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

I had a dream where I wound up giving another Shakespeare talk @rachelschine.bsky.social asked me with a scowl “What’s a Shakespeare?” Then Antara ibn Shaddad and Imru’ul Qays appeared and asked me to join their juggling team.

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