WHEN DOES A LONG JAMBIYA BECOME A SWORD?

kronckew · 13th June 2010, 01:37 PM

yes, that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

what we call them is by and large a western conceit born from a romano-germanic need to measure, classify, correlate and codify everything.

reminds me of the term 'falcata' coined by a victorian englishman to designate the spanish form of sword he wished to differentiate from the greek kopis, in spite of the fact that spain had been settled by eastern mediterranean peoples who had been very familiar with the kopis and it's variants. if you spoke to a native in spain who was from their period, or even later, falcata would be a unknown foreign word.

the term the people who used these weapons used is more appropriate, but in likelyhood, like dha, just means 'knife' in whatever size they are. it is us westerners and particularly us collectors that need to further break them down and group them into sword length dha, knife length dha, short-sword length dha, etc. where the locals would likely just call them a long dha or a short dha. even flyssa is more a term for the tribe than the weapon, more properly a(n) (e)flyssan knife/sword/weapon.

semantics can be so confusing. so can transliteration of local non european languages and terms into our roman based alphabets.

it all boils down to using terms that communicate meaning between all of us from all the unique backgrounds we come from here. a hard task at best.

13th June 2010, 01:37 PM	#1
kronckew Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Room 101, Glos. UK Posts: 4,183	yes, that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. what we call them is by and large a western conceit born from a romano-germanic need to measure, classify, correlate and codify everything. reminds me of the term 'falcata' coined by a victorian englishman to designate the spanish form of sword he wished to differentiate from the greek kopis, in spite of the fact that spain had been settled by eastern mediterranean peoples who had been very familiar with the kopis and it's variants. if you spoke to a native in spain who was from their period, or even later, falcata would be a unknown foreign word. the term the people who used these weapons used is more appropriate, but in likelyhood, like dha, just means 'knife' in whatever size they are. it is us westerners and particularly us collectors that need to further break them down and group them into sword length dha, knife length dha, short-sword length dha, etc. where the locals would likely just call them a long dha or a short dha. even flyssa is more a term for the tribe than the weapon, more properly a(n) (e)flyssan knife/sword/weapon. semantics can be so confusing. so can transliteration of local non european languages and terms into our roman based alphabets. it all boils down to using terms that communicate meaning between all of us from all the unique backgrounds we come from here. a hard task at best. Last edited by kronckew; 13th June 2010 at 01:51 PM.