V2, Chap 15 (Sahha), I, p 460

[Mark Kohut]

great f'in' stuff...thanks...



----- Original Message ----
From: Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com>
To: Pynchon-L <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sun, February 6, 2011 5:30:55 AM
Subject: V2, Chap 15 (Sahha), I, p 460

Getting started a day early....

A few words about the chapter title ("Sahha" [Sic]).  The word is
meant to represent the Maltese valedictory interjection ("Cheers";
"Bye";"Health") and it is misspelled.  Pynchon almost certainly knows
its misspelled for reasons I'm about to explain.

Maltese is a language spelled with an alphabet of 30 letters, some of
which are the conventional Latin letters with diacritical marks.  One
of these letters represents the sound called the "voiceless pharyngeal
fricative" - this letter (which I can't represent in this posting
unfortunately; you'll have to follow one of the links below to see how
it looks) is customarily called "h with stroke."  The "sahha" of the
chapter title should actually be spelled: "s-a-h with stroke-h with
stroke-a".

However, "h with stroke" also appears, very significantly, in quantum
mechanics, when it's called "h-bar" and where it represents the
"reduced Planck constant."  In this guise, it's fundamental to the
measurements of black body radiation, photoelectric effect, and most
famously as a measure of uncertainty in quantum systems.  In other
words, the title of this chapter when correctly spelled looks, to the
eye of a trained physicist, like some unknown term of quantum
dynamics.

Here's how to pronounce the word:
http://www.forvo.com/word/sahha/

On the Maltese language:
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/maltese.htm

On "H with stroke":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%A6

On the "Reduced Planck constant":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_Planck_constant#Reduced_Planck_constant

-- 
Richard Ryan
New York and the World
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