Editing 2168: Reading in the Original

{{comic
| number    = 2168
| date      = June 26, 2019
| title     = Reading in the Original
| image     = reading_in_the_original.png
| titletext = The articles are much shorter, but I assume that's because this version predates the merger with the Hawaiian text that created the modern Hawaiian-Greek hybrid wiki-pedia.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a HAWAIIAN-GREEK HYBRID. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Many academics and aficionados argue that studying old texts in the original language is more valuable than reading translations. The argument is that translations are rarely able to fully capture all of the nuances, linguistic subtleties and intent of the original author, and may even alter the meaning in some way. The drawback to this is that it requires the reader to be sufficiently fluent whatever language the text is written in, which is frequently an archaic dialect, and so only really useful for studying old texts. Mastering an obsolete language solely to enhance your reading experience is a big commitment, and so has become something of a signifier of a truly dedicated scholar. By the same token, bragging about such signifiers is often taken as a mark of self-involved academic arrogance. Because many of the foundational texts in Western civilizations (the New Testament of the Bible being the most notable) were written in Ancient Greek, commenting that you only read works "in the original Greek" has long been an indicator of high-level literary scholarship. 

The joke in this strip is that Cueball has apparently taken the time to learn Greek, so that he can read Wikipedia in that language. However, he is not reading the "original" version of Wikipedia articles, but their equivalent in the [https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%A0%CF%8D%CE%BB%CE%B7:%CE%9A%CF%8D%CF%81%CE%B9%CE%B1 modern Greek language edition of Wikipedia]. The dedication to appearing to be a committed scholar is contrasted with the ignorance of not understanding that Greek is not the original language of every text.

The title text is an etymology joke, since "Wikipedia" was coined from two particles, "{{w|wiki#English|wiki}}", from Hawaiian, and "[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-pedia pedia]", from Greek.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is addressing Megan. He is holding a hand with a thumb up out toward her. Megan is spreading her arms out as she replies.]
:Cueball: It's in the "Languages" box in the lower left. It took a while to learn, but I find I get so much more out of it by reading it as it was '''''intended'''''.
:Megan: That's not how that works!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:People get mad when I tell them I only read Wikipedia in the original Greek.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Language]]