CONLOQVIVM

12:18 AM

@Cerberus Ah, thanks!

12:40 AM

@brianpck You can always edit your old messages if you want to.

I ended up asking a very experimental question about Google Translate. I'm not at all sure if it's going to work, but there's only one way to find out...

I know my title looks like a rant, but it is a compact form of a genuine question. If someone has suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them.

@ktm5124 Hi!

@JoonasIlmavirta Salve!

@ktm5124 Have you ever tried Google Translate with Latin?

12:56 AM

@JoonasIlmavirta I've heard about its poor reputation, so I've mostly refrained.

@ktm5124 That's presumably wise. I was hoping someone at the site would have played with it some more.

Your new question is interesting.

Thanks! I thought of it because I was deliberating between the two when responding to you :)

I somehow imagine that the first quote is from a discussion of three people: Marcus, Tullius, and Cicero.

@ktm5124 I thought that might be the case. :)

Do you want to include vale?

The names are mostly arbitrary. I just thought of Roman names that I knew.

I see. Marcus is a given name and Cicero is more of a family name (cognomen).

1:02 AM

@JoonasIlmavirta Ah, vale. Maybe!

But it doesn't matter for the question.

@ktm5124 At least I've seen both ave and vale for goodbyes.

And I mean both. Catullus, 101: ave atque vale!

Hah.

I might exclude vale, since the question is mainly about greetings.

Or is vale also commonly used as a greeting? I've only seen it for "goodbye".

That's fine. There can be a follow-up about goodbyes, but it's good to see reactions to that one first.

@ktm5124 I'm not sure.

1:15 AM

@JoonasIlmavirta Ave atque vale doesn't really mean good-bye and good-bye.

More, "Hail and farewell."

e.g. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_and_Farewell

@C.M.Weimer Oh, I see. I didn't expect them to be synonymous; I just remembered them used in some form of "goodbye" together.

He's greeting him for the last time before saying good-bye.

Such a touching line.

The whole poem, in fact, multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus

@C.M.Weimer It is.

I had forgotten the exact nuance; I just remembered the ave atque vale when @ktm5124 asked about the greetings.

I now reread the whole poem. It is indeed a touching one.

Reading Catullus solidified my desire to go into Classics. I still have my beat up, heavily annotated, coffee-stained OCT that I try to read in full once a year.

OCT?

1:27 AM

Oxford Classical Text

I see.

amazon.com/Carmina-Oxford-Classical-Texts-Catullus/dp/…

The working language in all of my Latin studies has been Finnish, so I'm not that well familiar with foreign material.

OCTs are great, then, since the intros tend to be written in Latin, especially the older volumes.

Are the older volumes Latin-only, or do they have supporting material in English?

1:30 AM

I think they stopped that, though. At least the new Herodotus volume they put out a couple years ago had an English introduction.

Latin only.

Latin introduction and Latin apparatus criticus.

Q: Are requests for (grammatical) made-up Latin words/phrases on-topic?

Perhaps English is more of a common language for classicists now than a couple of decades ago.

Latin Language Meta

While mentally composing some text (in English), I got the idea to insert a modern English idiom translated into a ridiculous made-up Latinate word to express sarcasm. It should ideally be grammatically (as) correct (as possible) to minimize head-scratching. The object of the request would be ...

@JoonasIlmavirta Unfortunately...

The world would be a better place* if Latin were still the lingua franca of Classics.

* (OK, probably not, but still.)

@C.M.Weimer Some of the world at least. I share some of the sentiment.

The English language has been sacrificed for science. I'm occasionally irritated how simple English one must use in science to avoid misunderstandings. I'd prefer some more style...

@JoonasIlmavirta Eheu, I can scarcely listen to my wife's papers anymore. It's not simplistic, it's often just wrong!

And yet, it's the standard in the field. Since I can't change it, I hate listening to it!

1:45 AM

I can relate to that.

I recently had a slightly elaborate sentence structure in an article, and the copy-editor "corrected" it into nonsense. When I submitted my corrections to the proofs, they asked me if they could correct my mistake (which I allegedly reintroduced in my corrections). I gave a short grammar lecture in an email and never heard of the copy-editor again.

They need real professionals behind the scenes. Sadly, I know all too well that college kids are likely copy-editing, at least in the US.

And I do like occasional mild humor. I'm not sure how well the editor and referees take it, but we'll see...

@C.M.Weimer It was a big western publisher, but it seemed that the copy-editing was outsourced to an Indian sweatshop. The mathematical stuff in a sentence have a syntactical effect on the surrounding English, but the copy-editor did not seem to be aware of it.

To be fair, they did spot some typos I had left behind. But I think they added more than they removed.

I was not entirely pleased with the fact that I as the author and the scientific editor and referees work for free, the journal puts insufficient effort into its only job, and then puts the whole thing behind a paywall.

ends ranting and remembers to breathe in

2:08 AM

To appropriate Vonnegut, "Welcome to the Monkey House."

Cerberus

2:25 AM

@C.M.Weimer Wrong, even? Do you happen to have an example in mind?

@JoonasIlmavirta Let's hope that practice will end soon...

@Cerberus The use of RNAs. Kills me.

Instead of e.g. types of RNA.

Cerberus

Ah, like that.

Ugly indeed.

I think.

Indians also like to say "softwares", don't they?

Scientific prose is often rather ugly.

Should have stayed Latin!

Cerberus

Indeed!

3 hours later…