[lbo-talk] Bar-bar-bar Barian (Was Re: Cockeyed Optimism)

[Chris Doss]

"Barbaros" originally meant "stutterer," I believe. This is not unique to Greek; the Russian "nemets" (German) is related to "nemoi" (deaf).

--- On Thu, 1/22/09, andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:


> From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Bar-bar-bar Barian (Was Re:  Cockeyed Optimism)
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Thursday, January 22, 2009, 12:32 AM
> Well, skin color wasn't such a big deal. Fluent in Greek
> could mark as an effete intellectual snob among the Romans.
> The Greeks thought anyone who didn't speak Greek was a
> barbarian, in fact the word comes the Greek's mocking of
> the way foreign languages sounded: ba-ba-ba. 
>