CONLOQVIVM

12:01 AM

@QPaysTaxes I should get a foot pedal for some of the stuff on the mod dashboard.

@QPaysTaxes You greatly overestimate my programming skills.

Actually, you assume I have non-negligible programming skills.

Ah, the green crack box returns. Withdrawal symptoms are tough when you rep cap early in the day.

Whoo, 350!

Silence as everyone else already with that rep stares awkwardly

6 hours later…

5:58 AM

Can we get rid of the all the "why" questions for historical or biological processes? "Why is this a subjunctive but not an indicative" is great, but "why are there subjunctives!?" seems incredibly unhelpful. More simply put, there is no why. Maybe force "how/what historical processes/what linguistic phenomenon" instead?

Q: What did the Romans use to close their letters?

6:38 AM

It's not the fault of any one question, and I don't like pointing fingers, but a good example is the "Why are there no native Latin words with a Z?" question. To be fair to the asker, my answer was accepted, but I did receive a comment saying, "As is, your answer does't tell us why z wasn't a phoneme in Classical Latin."

That's not asking how, the commentator really wanted to know why, which isn't a good question to ask at all. I think the wording of the OP invites people to wonder what reason there is for something to exist or not exist. It's a perplexing POV imo.

2 hours later…

Ben Kovitz

8:48 AM

@chirlu @chirlu Which macrons are missing from "Ignis solis propinqui"? I just found two and fixed them, in pāginā and cēram. Are there others?

chirlu

9:25 AM

@BenKovitz The final a in illustrata.

6 hours later…

Undo

3:42 PM

As anyone who's written a proper letter knows, one begins with a salutation and ends with a close. What did the Romans use to end their letters? That is, where we'd write Love, Boy What would the Romans write? NB: I'm looking specifically for closers to use with a significant other,...

grrr @QPaysTaxes you're triggering my signature-editing instinct >.>

1 hour later…

Latin Language Meta

5:08 PM

Q: Should our tags be in Latin?

On other Stack Exchange language sites, tags and tag wikis are in the language the site uses. French Language, for example, names their tags in French. Currently, Latin Language Stack Exchange has tags in English. Should we rename our tags to Latin? For example, should etymology because etymolog...

discussion tags

5:52 PM

@QPaysTaxes Yep, one more day and we can start that.

unless someone gets several accepts today

@QPaysTaxes I know what you mean, but in some ways that's a good thing. It certainly reminds me that I need to be studying more, and it establishes the tone that this is an "expert" site. But after the private beta, I suspect we'll start to get more "beginner" questions no matter what.

2 hours later…

7:34 PM

@QPaysTaxes Go ahead and answer anyway, especially if you have a source to back you up!

7:51 PM

@QPaysTaxes Don't worry, he didn't actually write it :)

@QPaysTaxes There is a Linguistics.SE

Ben Kovitz

Multiple answers are good.

This is a new idea for me. I'm not sure this question is sorted out yet.

1 hour later…

9:28 PM

@QPaysTaxes That had been my thought; I wasn't sure, so I didn't make any suggestions.

This points cap is annoying...

@C.M.Weimer Yes, you seem to have lost about 100 rep within the past hour or so because of it.

At times, it's very unfair.

@C.M.Weimer I'm just about out of votes for the day, so no worries; I'll be catching up on your recent work in a few hours.

@HDE226868 Maybe I'll just let others have some fun instead.

9:47 PM

@QPaysTaxes Yeah, I saw that suggestion, and it makes sense. I was considering nominative, because people might be more familiar with that form, but it's not as accurate.

Also, we need to figure out how we can avoid macron usage in tags.

@QPaysTaxes Ugh.

Use ---.

@QPaysTaxes Ah, right.

10:09 PM

@QPaysTaxes Woops! Sorry about that -- was a little quick on adding that tag

Matt Gutting

@QPaysTaxes I'm not quite so convinced on the ablative; if

@QPaysTaxes hate laptop keyboards :-(

and now of course I forget what I was going to say.

@QPaysTaxes @Undo beat me to it, and wrote exactly what I was going to write.

Undo

Great minds...

Q: Are culture questions on-topic?

@QPaysTaxes Actually, he forgot one thing, so I answered anyway.

Latin Language Meta

Specifically, questions about Roman culture. My gut reaction is "yes", because idioms are part of and based on culture, and so learning about the culture of the time is a good way to read and write idiomatic Latin. Specifically, I asked this question before realizing that roman-culture might n...

discussion questions tags on-topic

10:25 PM

@QPaysTaxes I have may have found a relevant footnote.

I'll wait until others have a crack at it, @QPaysTaxes.

You're a high schooler studying Latin, right?

What text book are you using? Ecce Romani? Cambridge?

Ecce Romani is good for starters. It was how I got my introduction to Latin.

Ah, fun. Good ol' Cornelia et Flavia. That was my high school textbook.

Titus you mean?

The dad dies? I don't remember that!

Eucleides gets stabbed once, but it's a dream, Titus dies after drinking 'heavily.'

It's been almost 15 years for me, so it's probably my memory that's hazier.

@HDE226868 How did you get started on Ecce Romani? High school, too? And are you still hanging around Myth.SE?

@C.M.Weimer I started in middle school and got three years in, but when I moved to the county STEM school, I had to switch to Spanish.

Shame.

10:31 PM

I'm still on Mythology, answering from time to time and often cringing internally about the close vote queue.

We have only Spanish now; French is being phased out.

We didn't get much of a cultural education. Well, the teachers tried - I had a different teacher each year, and I've had 14 language teachers in 13 years - but there just wasn't enough time.

A few months ago I floated the proposal to turn this into a general Classics Q&A, to include ancient Greek and other appropriate cultural questions from the Mediterranean, but people seemed solidly against it.

@C.M.Weimer That seems kind of cool.

@QPaysTaxes Mythology survives, does it not? I feel like the situation here would be similar.

Although Mythology has nil traffic.

Mythology is unusual, and partially strangled.

I'm thinking now though that a Stack isn't the best place for it. Forums used to be, but they're a dying breed. Before that e-lists. So many years ago...

Also, while we're at it, "olivum sanguine viperino cautius vitat" = "avoids the olive more cautiously than a viper", not "avoids a viper"...

That's pretty much the crux of the issue, along with the context of athletics.

10:47 PM

Oh, I see that you did.

@QPaysTaxes Regarding the edit: You mention Horace again right after the source is given as Odes, so your new first re-addition might be unnecessary.

Oh, okay.

That's something for meta.

chirlu

@QPaysTaxes I started the edit before you changed the post.

Feel free to reject it since you added Odes yourself.