Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origins 47. The word origin today is barbarian.
Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. Today the word barbarian is mostly
used to mean somebody who is cruel or violent or or also uncivilized too. We call
we might call somebody a barbarian. Let's continue here. The origin of the
word barbarian goes all the way back to ancient Greece. I was used in reference
to describe all non-Greek speaking people which included Persians. And
remember Persians today they are Iranians. Egyptians
Medes and Phoenicians. Okay. The word derives directly from the Greek word
Barbaros. Okay. Which meant a Babbler or you know, people who just talk like a lot
of nonsense. Babble on (blah ,blah, blah ) babbling on. So a babbler, remember
Babble means to talk quickly in a way others cannot understand or to make
sounds like a baby, (ba, ba, ,ba ) kind of like that too. To the Greeks it was a foreign
language that sounded like bar, bar, bar, bar. So that's where they got the idea of
barbarian from or Barbaros. That's how it came about. Later during the Roman
Empire, now remember the Romans conquered the Greeks and after the Romans
conquered the Greeks, they actually adopted a lot from the Greeks. I think
they kind of respected the Greeks. They adopted a lot of their their gods, their
religions their temples, some of the technology and stuff like that. So they
kind of you know, they kind of went together pretty well. So during the Roman
Empire, it meant a foreigner who lacked Greek and
Roman traditions. All right. So it was kind of combined after that, especially
tribes who were a threat to Roman borders like later on. You know later
probably as the Roman Empire was getting weaker
you know, around the 500s. Around that time. Around 500 AD or so. They were thought to
be violent and non-educated. Okay. So and yeah. So we... I just give like one
sort of example. In his early days of acting , Arnold Schwarzenegger played the
character of " Conan the Barbarian" Yeah That's actually, it's actually from
Marvel. They haven't made a Marvel movie of him like in a long time. That was in
the eighties when most people didn't even ...weren't really aware of Marvel so
much in the movies. Because you know, you didn't need any special effects for that.
But you wonder if they... Marvel has an opportunity to bring this back as they
did have the character Conan the Barbarian that was very popular during
the time you know, that people were you know reading comics. That character and
they did make a movie of him. Obviously if they make it now, probably
Conan, I mean Arnold will probably not play it anymore. But he did actually make
two movies of it and the the first one was actually pretty good. The second one
was so-so. But anyway that's, that's what we say.
Anyway I hope you got it. I hope it was informative. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank
you for your time. Bye-bye.