(1) If there is a suitable expression in English, the Revelators translated.There are many words unique to the Urantia Book, unique in the sense that those words do not appear in any comprehensive English dictionary, not even in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Some of these words are well defined and do not present a problem to readers. Other words are well defined, but one has to read the book thoroughly to grasp their meanings, a demanding task for a busy generation. Still others are not defined at all.
This page provides a feeble attempt to clarify the meanings of words that are frequently asked. It is OK to disagree. Comments are welcome.
Personalities of Nebadon did not use Hebrew or English 400 billion years ago when Michael initiated the construction of the architectural worlds of Salvington. Michael, Immanuel, and Gabriel are not transliterations of their true Nebadon names with English alphabet; the Revelators either translated the meanings of their names into English, or they adopted the existing names which are familiar to humans, and which closely approximate the meanings of the original names in the tongues of Satania, Nebadon, or Orvonton.
From the Urantia Book, we can make the following observations regarding the principles that Revelators adopted when translating their messages into English at the turn of this century:
(1) If there is a suitable expression in English, the Revelators translated.
(2) If there are suitable expressions in other languages, and if those are borrowed and well
established in English, the Revelators used them (e.g., Paradise from Persian/Iranian,
seraphim and Melchizedek from Hebrew, etc.). That is, these foreign words are treated as
English words.
(3) When there is no suitable expression in English, the Revelators created new words,
instead of transliterating non-Urantian words with English alphabet. In those instances, the
new words sound like English or adopted foreign words, and some root words or even parts
thereof were often used to create new words to represent new concepts. They did not sound
like extra-terrestrial syllables, although most of us have not heard such things.
For example, Melchizedek (righteous chief) is derived from Malek (Chief) and Zedek (righteousness). Although "zedek" is the root word, the Revelators chose to use "dek" as a new root, creating a whole class of words, such as chronoldek, Norlatiadek, Vorondadek, Lanonandek, etc. According to Jon Greer, "dek" alone has no etymology in any Indo- European or Semitic language.
Words such as "mota" and "absonite" are not transliterations of their counterparts in Jerusemese, Salvingtonese, or Uversaese. Finding no suitable counterparts in English, the Revelators created new words. These words "sound" like words in English or earlier languages (e.g., Greek, Latin, and Hebrew), and the meanings of the majority of the created words are either clearly defined or suggested in the text.
(4)There is no indication that the Revelators transliterated any proper nouns, although
they are the most likely candidates for transliteration.
Most of human languages are based on the dual system — of consonants and vowels — except Mandarin and Cantonese, which also use tones, in addition to them. Human voices are produced by vocal cords and formed by mouth, the latter being also used as a food- intake device. With the exception of some exotic birds, monkeys and other mammals that are closer to humans cannot imitate human sounds and words, due to different structure of mouth. The range of sounds humans can make, therefore, is probably very much limited by the fact that our mouth is also used as an energy input device. If mouth were not thus used, it might be capable of making much wider variety of sounds. Even the midwayers do not need mouths as a food-intake device, but are known to speak English fluently.
It is clear that in the mansion world we continue to eat and drink, and hence we must have an energy input device, but we may not have any waste disposal device as the food there is pure energy and there is no waste in morontia form, and there goes the whole culinary art. Since Adam and Even came from Jerusem, and they look more or less like us, and hence Jerusemese might be similar to our tongues here. However, Uversaese and Salvingtonese might have a totally different language structure.
Even the alphabet of Salvingtonese has 48 letters. To imagine the difficulty of approximating the names in Salvingtonese with our alphabet, we only need to drop a vowel, say u (or i), and replace it with o (or e), or replace a consonant, say f, by p, respectively, in the English language.
Imagine how much confusion would be created, if a foreigner were to pronounce "cop," when he means "cup," and a fugitive might bolt out of the room. She might bring you coffee when you ask for a copy of something. Every time we try to pronounce the real name of Christ Michael in Salvingtonese — if it were transliterated with our alphabet — there would be a laughter among the celestial beings. This is probably one of the reasons why the Revelators translated all proper nouns, despite the attendant problems. A Divine Counselor of Orvonton notes:
The Revelators would likewise avoid transliteration "which would be meaningless" to readers in other languages.
As a matter of fact, the Book suggests numerous extra-terrestrial designations of our Universal Father were translated, rather than transliterated:
Similarly, Andon and Fonta are not their real names in Jerusemese they received in Jerusem:
Such multiple concepts cannot possibly be squeezed into the five characters, Andon! Richard Keeler suggests that Andon may still signify a "man," as it contains the etymon "andro" or "anthro-" as in "android" or "anthropology." The above quotation simply suggests that when Andon awoke he received his real name, which contains the eight concepts in right order in Jerusem. Then Andon is simply his name that the Revelators chose to facilitate their presentation on our behalf.
Since August 27, 1998.
