From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Nov 24 2001 - 16:51:55 MST
On Sat, Nov 24, 2001 at 11:58:26PM +0200, scerir wrote:
> For "sciavo" or "sciao", means, in Venetian dialect,
> ?servant" or "slave?.
>
> The Latin word "sclavus" became the Venetian
> "sciavo", then "sciao", at last the Italian "ciao".
>
> So when we say "ciao" we are saying something like
> "your humble servant"!
Interesting. This form of greeting seems to have been very widespread.
The swedish (somewhat slangish) greeting "tjenare" is derived from
"tjänare", which also means literally servant. There are some old forms,
such as "din mjukaste tjänare" (your softest, i.e. humblest, servant)
occasionally found in letters.
So, among us freedom loving independent extropians, what would the
proper non-hierarchical greeting be? "Your ambitious peer"? :-)
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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