CONLOQVIVM

cmw

01:31

@SebastianKoppehel Priscian has scriptare.

Cerberus

@CannedMan In Holland we do: nom, gen, dat, acc, abl.

@CannedMan Hmm we mostly learned French and German in the same way we learned Greek and Latin in school.

Except that we did more writing in German and French, maybe.

Speaking and listening were somewhat marginal.

@CannedMan Hmm I see no dualis?

@cmw I agree with you that stories are much better than contextless sentences. But what book doesn't use stories?

@cmw Hmm what do you mean by "grammar is now neglected in one's native language"?

We learned plenty of grammar, mainly in primary school.

Analysing sentences, too, which was repeated during the first year of high school (age 11-12).

But of course we never learned various aspects of Dutch grammar that foreigners would learn. But I think it has always been this way?

cmw

@Cerberus Wheelock, Mastronarde, etc. use short paragraphs, but it's relatively minimal compared to all the disjointed sentences.

Cerberus

@cmw Oh, that's such a pity!

All books I have seen use stories divided into units which would be a few paragraphs each.

And I feel the best books use stories adapted from literature/mythology.

First because those are the most interesting, secondly because they actually teach you about literature and culture, too.

cmw

@Cerberus Consider yourself lucky! Many of my students had no idea what a participle was.

Cerberus

The book I learned Latin from had stories about a family in Pompeii, with a dog called Cerberus. Those were unfortunately rather boring and devoid of cultural/literary value, except...when Vesuvius exploded in the last book and everyone died.

That was fun.

@cmw Ouch!

cmw

01:44

@Cerberus That's the Cambridge one, I think.

Cerberus

I think most Dutchmen would know what a past participle was, though not a present participle, which is used rarely in Dutch.

@cmw Yeah I much later learned it was a translation or adaptation of some British method.

Our Greek book began with the works of Herakles.

cmw

@Cerberus I've used it in tutoring, but never actually taught it.

Cerberus

I still remember some of it, which is really great: it taught me stuff about Greek culture.

@cmw So I would not recommend it.

Even though I am in it.

cmw

@Cerberus It's good, but iirc it overfills. Does some things that aren't actually classical. But I'm not so sure about its specifics.

Cerberus

Ho Herakles ouk estin anthropos. Oude esti theos. Ti estin Herakles? Estin heros!

Something like that was the first paragraph.

@cmw No, I meant our Greek book, Pallas.

That was great.

cmw

01:49

@Cerberus Ah, missed that. Got it.

Cerberus

What was your first Latin/Greek book like?

cmw

@Cerberus Ecce Romani and technically Teach Yourself New Testament Greek (picked up at the library before taking a class properly), but properly Athenaze.

Cerberus

I haven't seen any of those; do they use stories based on actual literature/mythology, or homely stories, or no stories at all?

Joonas Ilmavirta

@cmw That's been a continuous source of frustration whenever I took a language class in university. It takes the teacher a tremendous amount of time to explain things from scratch when students don't know what a noun or a verb or an infinitive or a pronoun is. And I was just a fellow student, so I can imagine how bad it feels for the teacher.

cmw

@Cerberus Ecce Romani is based on a family around 80 CE. It's full story, though it does have some exercises and a few other adaptations.

The third year course (these are meant for high schools) is a full adaptation of ancient texts, starting with Ephorus, but includes Sallust, Caesar, Cicero, and others.

Athenaze is an expanded prose re-telling of Aristophanes' Acharnae.

Adam

02:07

From a beginner's perspective, I would love to see a book using the natural method like LLPSI, but with more mythology/ancient texts and an introduction to declination/conjugation/etc that follows a more uniform approach.

cmw

@Adam Try Latin Via Ovid.

Adam

@cmw I have it in my amazon cart to buy in the next few weeks ;)

I'm just alternating around between wheelock's, 38 stories for wheelock's, and LLPSI

I also picked up Scribblers, Sculptors, and Scribes for even more ancient text

cmw

It's imperfect! I had to issue several corrections when I taught the class.

Adam

Welcome to chat, @herisson!

@cmw What kind of corrections? Incorrect translations?

cmw

@Adam Some, yes. Some mistakes in explanations.

It never got revised.

Adam

02:17

Ahh, bummer

cmw

It's not every chapter, but it was noticeable.

Adam

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Wayne State University Press; 2nd edition (September 1, 1982)

40 years now without an update 😢

cmw

Yeah...

I thought about writing them and seeing if I can update it, but I left Academia before seriously entertaining the idea.

Adam

02:42

@cmw Ahh. They don't even need to have it reprinted - offering a free PDF download of corrections is still good.

Cerberus

03:07

@JoonasIlmavirta I really wonder how these people could have a high-school diploma that allows access to the university level.

And wouldn't it be better to send them a letter upon admission that they need to learn x, y, and z if they don't already know them, with a recommendation for a book?

@cmw Excellent!

@Adam At least LLPSI has some mythology, right? I remember seeing Icarus and Daedalus, though I don't know the books well.

Vegawatcher

I find it interesting that everyone but me seems to love the natural method. I have given a little serious study into learning a dozen or more languages and don't have the patience for a natural methods. Consistent exposure to a materials is still necessary, but I find that doesn't help me progress much until I have almost learnt everything about the basic grammar.

cmw

03:29

@Cerberus They do indeed.

@Vegawatcher You'll find me in the opposite camp! I love a good grammar! I just don't think disjointed sentences help much.

Cerberus

@Vegawatcher I think I'm with you, at least to some extent.

I think the traditional method worked well for me.

Maybe immersion (speaking and talking a great deal) might also be nice, but I'm not sure.

Vegawatcher

The method I have developed for myself is to create a hybrid language that makes the structure of the target language and its logic more transparent, but in a way that speaks to my gut. Then exposure begins to simplify and deepen my understanding.

Cerberus

I also think there sometimes is a mismatch of expectations: I want to be able to read Lati, French, German; I care less about listening or speaking.

Or even writing.

Vegawatcher

I can't stand explanations that say, well that's just the way it is

Cerberus

You may not like such explanations, but many people use them. You'll have to accept it; that's just the way it is.

Adam

03:34

@Cerberus It does starting around Capitulum X, if I recall correctly.

Cerberus

@Adam Good.

And does it ever stop doing that?

Vegawatcher

I think the real key is that learning a language requires some large amount of positive feedback to make the necessary drudgery worthwhile. As you learn, you're in a silent race between the two before you lose interest or get to where you want to be. I like grammar because it's a puzzle and I enjoy learning new solutions.

Reading too many elementary sentences, even in story forms starts to feel like drudgery and I get bored.

herisson

@Adam Salve!

Cerberus

@Vegawatcher Hmm then maybe skip ahead some?

herisson

@Cerberus The argument I've seen is that the practice in the other three quadrants is beneficial to reading proficiency as well

Cerberus

03:39

Or use a book that move forward faster?

@herisson Yes, and it may be true.

Writing some Latin at university did improve my reading a bit.

But one wonders about efficiency.

Learning grammar explicitly is so damn efficient, at least for me.

Vegawatcher

Learning about discourse grammar was what gave me the key to get over the hump in modern Mandarin and classical chinese and to understand much of the word order in Latin and Greek. That made reading more like enjoying literature than decoding sentences.

Adam

@Cerberus I don't know since I haven't ever progressed further than that, but a quick flip-through shows some illustrations that tell me there is more content like it.

Cerberus

When I'm listening to a Spanish song, looking up some verb endings greatly helps me.

@Vegawatcher Hmm what do you mean by discourse grammar?

Something like pragmatics?

Pragmatics

In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted.Pragmatics encompasses phenomena including implicature, speech acts, relevance and conversation, as well as nonverbal communication. Theories of pragmatics go hand-in-hand with theories of semantics, which studies aspects of meaning, and syntax which examines sentence structures, principles, and relationships. The ability to understand another speaker...

Vegawatcher

Yes, pragmatics, but more oriented to syntax.

Cerberus

@Adam Good!

I just hope the homely scenes about children do not return haha.

Adam

03:42

haha, they don't age well

Cerberus

@Vegawatcher E.g. topicality?

@Adam Hah.

Vegawatcher

For instance, Chinese technically has no tenses or moods, so who do they understand each other? Through manipulating discourse cues and a basic topic comment structure

herisson

@Cerberus I find learning grammar to be helpful, but I prefer a more conceptual approach rather than brute force memorization. Maybe reciting tables of declensional endings work for some people, but for me reading Cser's dissertation on "Aspects of the Phonology and Morphology of Classical Latin" and the breakdown of the inflection patterns of Latin into smaller parts felt more intuitive and effective

Cerberus

@herisson Oh, yes, I also loved that as well. I teach it, too—it's quite efficient.

herisson

Well, I feel like I have noun/adjective endings pretty much mastered by now anyway. I keep procratinating verb morphology because it's so much bigger and feels more boring

Cerberus

03:44

At least for Greek. I never memorised most tables.

Vegawatcher

in Latin, why say exeunt omnes, rather than omnes exeunt like a "regular language"? the answer is that verb first is used to focus on and event and not one what happened to some one. "Exeunt omnes" answers what happened next, not what did everyone do

Cerberus

@herisson Greek or Latin?

herisson

@Cerberus Latin, I haven't studied Greek grammar at all yet. I feel like a bunch of Latin verb inflections are just miscellaneous vowels with -r-'s and -s-'s sprinkled in

Cerberus

@Vegawatcher Right, topicality can often be indicated using word order.

@herisson Haha yes.

Vegawatcher

I loved putting declensions and conjugation morphology into historical context that made things feel less arbitrary and easier to organize in my head

Cerberus

03:46

You never need to memorise every single ending; just remember that e.g. the present subjunctive of -a- verbs replaces the a with an e.

@Vegawatcher Agreed.

It's also how I still read Greek verbs.

Does it have an s that doesn't belong there? Future or aorist.

Does it have an odd i? Optative. Etc.

Vegawatcher

Amen to that

Cerberus

I'm not going to memorise all possible endings.

Although some irregular verbs require some memorising of tables...

I wish I could muster the willpower haha.

I remember we had some verb forms that could be 7 different things.

I think e.g. iasthe could be many, many things. I forgot how many.

Vegawatcher

I was thinking about posting about μι verbs in Greek. I think I have memorized or can deduce 98% of everything else at site, but can't depend on recognizing whether some μι verbs are aorist, imperfect, perfect, or imperative.

I've tried to bite the bullet and memorize it several times, but can't retain a number above 80% of the forms

Cerberus

Hmm can you give an example of a form that you would find hard to determine?

Vegawatcher

In Latin, I always no the form, unless I don't know the theme vowel of the verb or it some weird half Greek form.

Cerberus

03:50

Perhaps you can just guess most forms in context...

Yes, Latin morphology is much, much simpler.

Vegawatcher

Usually I can usually guess and reading the Greek Gospel's has finally gotten to the place where I find it fun and transparent, except for weird vocabulary about objects no longer cultural relevant to me, like well buckets and water cisterns

Cerberus

Haha right.

Vegawatcher

I have gotten to the same place in Caesar until he starts talking about the dimensions of bridges or breastworks or siege towers. Then I'm back to decoding and trying to work from the English translation back to the Latin for every phrase

Cerberus

Good for you.

Vegawatcher

I'm trying to work through Against Cataline. I read through once and am now doing so a second time to understand more fluently. I do it through Perseus, but would love a resource with more notes about stuff not obvious in the text, like Senate rules on voting and consular limitations.

herisson

03:57

Aside from verbs, something else I thought might be an interesting project to tackle for myself is getting better at predicting vowel length in roots/stems. I found this thesis, but there are so many exceptions to the rules the author gives that it hardly seems worth learning them: ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/…

@Vegawatcher Nice! The gospels are useful in how much commentary and translation is available

Vegawatcher

I only understood today that in the beginning Cicero makes reference to the senate house because he had called the session in a special building only used at times of crisis and so possibly easier to defend

That thesis looks real interesting. I will definitely give it a read. I think I know 70 percent of vowel lengths from memory or the form, but that is not enough to be confident.

Cerberus

@Vegawatcher Wow, you read a lot!

As to notes, get a commentary, or an edition annotated with comments.

Vegawatcher

Herisson, yes, the gospels are good because of the commentary, but it is often conflicting!

Cerberus

@herisson Thanks for the link.

herisson

@Vegawatcher Ah, that is an issue! The different religious implications of different interpretations might make the meaning of some passages a more disputed topic

Cerberus

04:02

I sometimes want to be able to predict those vowel lengths better. Why do you?

Vegawatcher

For instance, no one seems to agree on the reason for the uncommon Greek construction in John 1:1 "and the Word was God."

herisson

@Cerberus I'm not sure it's a useful motivation, but I just dislike the idea of getting it wrong when speaking

So I try to read aloud (at least in my head) when reading, and so I get annoyed when I'm reading an unmacronized text and don't feel confident about what length I should be using

Cerberus

@herisson Hah, do you regularly speak Latin, and that praecisely?

Vegawatcher

I would love a definitive grammatical and discourse explanation. The one I heard that seemed definitive doesn' t seem to be accepted generally. I don't know if the objections are theologically based or based in a sound understanding of Greek in general or just personal jealousies.

herisson

@Cerberus I don't! That's why I think it's fairly silly of me, I would only be "getting it wrong" in my own head.

Poetry is often nice for this purpose since the scansion can give away the vowel length. I'm still only beginning to get accustomed to Latin poetry, but I'm starting to get the hang of identifying hendecasyllables

Vegawatcher

04:06

I agree about the macrons. I've finally made the decision to try to use them when typing after finally figuring out how to do it efficiently

Cerberus

@herisson Hah being silly is allowed.

checks rules of Latin.

herisson

@Vegawatcher What part of the Greek is unusual? Is is something to do with articles?

Vegawatcher

Yes, the final word for God has no article. In Latin the order would be et deus erat verbum.

One authority claims that when the noun predicate is verb initial, the article is understood but must be deleted. Others try to make theological hay out of it as if it was a choice that says something

It is actually one of the things that lead me back to Greek and determined to get over the hump of semi-fluent reading. I was studying a Coptic version of the New Testament and getting translations that startled my memory of the texts in theologically significant places. The book said to check the Greek, and lo and behold, I saw the Greek differently

herisson

@Vegawatcher Interesting, have you studied the Coptic language then?

Vegawatcher

Another example is that Coptic is consistent in using an indefinite article with substances. I saw it used with references to the Holy Spirit, which shocked by theological understanding. I looked at the Greek and realized the article was often missing there as well leading me to wonder if talking about the personhood of the Holy Spirit was such a cut and dried issue.

Herisson, yes. I am a freek about learning languages, but generally hop around before I really get good. I had made a good study of "classical" or Middle Egyptian, which has no vowels, and so finally decided to read a grammar on Coptic to get some vowels in

Coptic also has a very large bit of greek vocabulary, because of mixed populations in the north of long-standing that I had not been aware of

Adam

04:16

By no vowels, you mean that the written language had no vowels though they would have been part of speech?

Vegawatcher

I also read once that Coptic had aspects of a polysynthetic language. I had never studied one of those and thought it would be cool. I think I understand now why the claim was made, but it is overblown.

herisson

@Vegawatcher Although I have Christian background, I was never taught very precisely how I ought to conceive of the Holy Ghost

Vegawatcher

Yes, ancient Egyptian did not write vowels, so Egyptologists use weird conventions to pronounce word and write them formally

Coptic is written in Greek script with a few consonants from Demotic Egyptian, so the vowels are as transparent as in Greek

Adam

I'm still trying to find what method or combination of methods will work the best for me for learning Latin. I've had a small amount of education learning German and Polish (8 weeks as a pre-teen for the former and one semester at college for the latter), but nothing signficant non-native language education otherwise.

herisson

Something else that seems interesting when looking at references to the Holy Spirit in different languages could be the gender of the word. It seems Greek uses neuter πνεῦμα, while Wiktionary tells me Hebrew רוּחַ can be feminine or masculine

Adam

04:19

The natural method is more enjoyable because it makes one feel like they are already learning and breathing the language, though I felt like with that alone I wasn't getting a proper understanding of grammar, vocabulary, and syntax.

Vegawatcher

Polish, I hear, is tough. I've studied basic Russian, but hear Polish is harder, except for the alphabet

Adam

That semester was about 20 years ago now, so I remember very little. Learning some of the character pronunciations was definitely interesting.

Vegawatcher

The hard part of Latin is how to interpret noun endings and the weird word order. The rest is just technical stuff

Adam

I didn't do too bad at that, though I think that's mostly because I benefit from being a musician with ears trained to replicate sounds.

@Vegawatcher Word order once you get past simple sentences definitely slows me down, but I'm sure I'm being hindered some by the importance of word order in English.

Vegawatcher

Herisson, yes that is right about πνεῦμα and רוּחַ, but the root connotations are similar, except that I think רוּחַ can be a normal word for "wind."

herisson

04:22

I find vocabulary challenging, as it often is in language learning in general, even though any English speaker has an automatic head start with Latin vocabulary

Adam

That head start can bite you in the ass, though, when you get a word whose meaning changed.

Vegawatcher

In Coptic it read in some places like "some Holy Spirit" came upon Zachariah

I've decided that I have to know the etymology of very new Latin word I encounter and so am constantly flipping through Wiktionary. That happened with flagitium, when I forgot its meaning again for the nth time and wanted a way to remember it

herisson

@Adam True! I read an article arguing that "porcus" has a different nuance than just "pig", which is not obvious to a speaker of modern languages who just recognizes the root

Vegawatcher

I'm still struggling with īnfestus, confestim, and morbō confectus

herisson

@Vegawatcher I'll try to guess without looking. Something to do with whips, or perhaps with slowing down ...

Adam

04:27

Honestly, the hardest part is dedicating enough time to gain fluency. You can't really half-ass it.

herisson

Hmm, looks like my guess wasn't very close!

Vegawatcher

Haha, it means: "something shamefuel

herisson

@Adam Yes, that's why it seems like a good idea to find material that is engaging

Vegawatcher

flāgitium n (genitive flāgitiī or flāgitī); second declension

A disgraceful action, shameful crime, scandal.
circa 100-110, Tacitus, Histories: Book 4‎[1]:
Obsessos hinc fides, inde egestas inter decus ac flagitium distrahebant.
The ties of loyalty on the one hand, and the necessities of famine on the other, kept the besieged wavering between the alternatives of glory and infamy.
Shame, disgrace, outrage.

Etymology
From flāgitō

Adam

You can see how the English word could have evolved out of that

Vegawatcher

04:31

Flāgito meant to keep whipping someone with a demand or accusation

herisson

@Vegawatcher Ah, it looks like a frequentative, but it seems there's no plain *flago corresponding to it. I wonder if it's a coincidence

Vegawatcher

That's the think and that it is from the same root as flāgrum, whip.

That's the thinking, I mean

herisson

That makes sense, I was familiar with "flagrum". I believe it's one of the misleading words where the vowel is short by nature, but some dictionaries mark it with a macron-breve because it is followed by "gr"

Vegawatcher

On this subject, I am still trying to decide what Cicero meant by "ēlūdet" in the famous: Quam diū furor iste tuus nōs ēlūdet?

Any strong opintions?

Elude? Mock? Play us for fools?

perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/…

In the very first line

oops, of forgot the word "etiam"

I mean I forgot

cmw

@herisson Once you get the pattern, it'll all make sense, with just a handful of head-scratchers.

Latin is thankfully much, much more regular than Greek.

herisson

04:43

@Vegawatcher It looks like it's often translated as "mock", but I am not sure of the reasons for that.

cmw

@Vegawatcher A little bit of all of the above.

herisson

@cmw I look forward to it. I am absorbing the more common verb forms, such as the future, from reading, but the less common ones are still a guessing game for me when I encounter them

Perhaps putting a bit of work now into studying the patterns would ameliorate that

Vegawatcher

herisson: Are you talking about Latin?

herisson

@Vegawatcher Yes

cmw

@herisson From your replies, I would have guessed that you had already mastered forms. I guess you dove into the difficult material first?

herisson

04:47

@cmw I don't have much staying power, unfortunately, so I've read fragments of various texts rather than anything all the way through

Unfortunately, I find it easier and more pleasant to read about languages than to actually gain proficiency

cmw

@herisson I sympathize, and was the same.

Vegawatcher

I learn paradigms by understanding the underlying logic, so for the future, the first two conjugation use the stem plus the present tense of habere. For the the third, they use an old subjunctive form based on ē (which wouldn't be distinctive for the first two conjugations) except for the first person singular in -am that is just a weird exception that is identical to the current subjunctive.

cmw

Fortunately I actually did the Classics route in university and thereafter, so that gave me the solid grounding, but had I done something else, I might never have learned what I had learned.

Vegawatcher

I prefer reading about them as well. But when I have found texts that really interest me, I have made the plunge

cmw

@Vegawatcher What else have you plunged into besides Latin and Greek?

Vegawatcher

04:53

For me, it was the Gallic Wars paired with YouTube videos from Kings & Generals about the famous battles

I have been reading through the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but have stalled half way through

cmw

@Vegawatcher When I was teaching, I tried to incorporate some of the underlying logic, but often times that just lead to getting too deep into the weeds. The modern university environment isn't actually the most conducive for in-depth learning.

Vegawatcher

I learned enough Arabic to read four fifths of the Qur'an, but then got bored. I had learned the basics through a course teaching you to read modern news texts.

Yes, there is a balance between the weeds and underlying logic, and different people prefer to learn differently. For instance, I detest flash cards

cmw

I've been meaning to get back into Hebrew and Akkadian. Haven't touched them in over a decade. But glad to see another who has an eye for learning a variety of languages.

herisson

I am glad I stopped by the chat today. Valete!

cmw

@herisson Vale!

Hopefully we'll see you again soon.

Vegawatcher

04:59

Vale

Cmw, that sounds great. Have you studied anything else as well? I got three fourths of the way through a book on Akkadian (Huenegard?) and got bored and left it. I picked up basic Hebrew recently to work laboriously through Hebrew Bible texts

I found Arabic more logical, more consistent, and better understood than the Hebrew. Some of the poetry is very nice too, and has rhtyhms not too different from Latin and Greek

cmw

@Vegawatcher Huehnergard is what I used as well. Lambdin for Hebrew, though I have an old Oxford grammar as well that I use sometimes.

Old Norse and Old English rounded out the more in-depth studies. I wish I had gotten into Egyptian (Allen's text is standard if you're wondering).

Vegawatcher

Huehnergard is great, but quite a lot. I stalled at reading the legal texts and never got to Gilgamesh :(

cmw

Arabic never interested me. Of the modern languages, French of course, German I've mostly forgotten, a little Swedish and Thai.

Vegawatcher

Yes, Allen is what i used. I found it great, but very dense

Thai is very tough I hear

I was once conversationally fluent in Swedish because of a college roommate, but have forgotten almost everything

cmw

@Vegawatcher Thai has a few things going against for European speakers - an unfamiliar alphabet, a tonal system, and two very different registers of formality.

Vegawatcher

05:10

A little Old English for curiosity's sake and because I learned basic German

cmw

The Thai you'll learn in books is not what you'll hear on the streets of Bangkok or Chiangmai. And of course if you ever travel, then you'll see major regional differences. Isan, for example, isn't even Thai, but rather a dialect of Laotian.

@Vegawatcher I set that aside when my dreams of emigrating to Finland were put on hold. But I'd like to take it up again.

Vegawatcher

I don't think I could do Thai. For family reasons, I also know a little of two Mande languages from West Africa. The tones are too difficult and the grammar a little weird, but not daunting

cmw

@Vegawatcher I feel that most African languages, except the Hamo-Semitic/Afro-Asian varieties, are a major blind spot in my knowledge.

Vegawatcher

Finish sounds very interesting for syntactic and phonetic reasons, but I don't know if I have enough social interest to go in depth. I have too many places to go that are ahead of it in line.

cmw

I should get on that. Which two languages did you learn, and were you able to practice with native speakers in your family?

Vegawatcher

05:13

Swahili is easy to pronounce and approachable

I learned Vai and Kpelle and still can say basic things

cmw

@Vegawatcher Swedish is another official language of Finland, and I forgot I do know conversational Russian, too.

Both of which prove useful for the region. Lots of Russians there. (Ask Joonas for more information!)

Vegawatcher

Vai has two tones and a unique writing system I have almost forgot completely. Kpelle has very unusual consonant mutations because it has a low tone morpheme for defnite nouns or third-person inalieanable position that voices consonants and just changes the tones on sonorants.

cmw

I didn't know about the Vai syllabary. That's interesting!

Vegawatcher

I bave tried basic Russian three or four times, but always lose interest by the time I learn about conditional structures. I don't have enough social interest for the payoff

cmw

@Vegawatcher I never bothered with formal grammar - just learned it for my ex's family. So I'm limited to daitye hlieb pozhalsto or however it's spelled.

Vegawatcher

05:18

It is still very much in use. It is just possible that there were conceptual links with the Cherokee syllabary, but that is not the tale the Vai people tell

Give me bread, please?

cmw

@Vegawatcher Exactly.

Vegawatcher

Great that you had the family connection. It makes things so much more interesting

My blind spot are Amerindian languages, but they all seem really tough with little payback

After Akkadian, Sumerian, and Chinese, I don't have the strength for learning Mayan

cmw

@Vegawatcher Do you own the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages?

You and @herisson might get a kick out of it.

Vegawatcher

haha

Oh, and American Sign Language, but I can't keep that up. The subtle grammar is too tough and I have no connections to the community

I also am semifluent in Liberian English which is a dialect quite different from standard English. I occasionally had to translate between my family members and less educated people who could not code-switch at all. It has pitch accent I have been told

There are fun Youtube videos of Americans interacting with Liberians speaking 100% English that is 90% not understandable without some exposure

cmw

@Vegawatcher Huh, interesting.

Vegawatcher

05:33

Heu, dormitūrus tē salūtō. Have a good night or whatever time of day it is where you are!

cmw

@Vegawatcher Same here, in fact. Vale!

Canned Man

09:40

@JoonasIlmavirta I completely agree. One metric that is used, is how many can speak it fluently; by that metric, if Latin is dead, so are most of the Sami languages – obviously that is flawed.

Another ‘metric’ used, is whether there are native speakers, i.e. whether people grew up with the language as their mother tongue; that too must be flawed, as there are numerous native American and tribal African languages that are taught more than naturally internalised through upbringing, and though many of these languages are for good reasons considered threatened, they are for equally good reasons not considered dead.

So what really is a dead language? And can a language be made to come alive again?

Sebastian Koppehel

10:45

Cxx

Sebastian Koppehel

11:25

Hm, no idea what happened there.

Canned Man

12:16

Just blame it on the cat.

Cattus fēlīciter fēcit.

tony

13:00

@Vegwatcher: Also interesting in the Cicero quote: why use "iste" = "of yours" and "tuus" = "your"--any thoughts?

tony

13:30

@Canned Man: I wondered about this. Given the worldwide interest in Latin; the wealth of Latin books on sale (Amazon), how can Latin be described as "dead". The point seems to be that when a language stops evolving; when the grammatical structures are locked in stone--immutable--the language is classed as "dead".

Vegawatcher

14:30

@tony I think of a dead language as one in which it is no longer possible to query speakers about nuances of interpretation and pronunciation, because other ways of handing down languages tend not to preserve these. I would say that the Old English version of the Christian's Lord's Prayer is dead, not because we don't understand every word, but because we can no longer be sure of the exact pronunciation

@tony I love this particular example because it captures some of the genius of Latin and the power of Cicero's rhetoric during a very dramatic scene. Please excuse my if my reply is long. To be precise, I usually need to express my chain of reasoning and the assumptions I am making.

Canned Man

@tony I think another problem with how a language is declared dead, is that we do not even have a solid definition of what a living language is. Is Klingon a living language? Sindarin? If a language continues to develop defines it as living, then indeed both of them as well as Latin is living; Latin is still developed, still attains new vocabulary, still sees old vocabulary used in ways not previously thought possible. a prepositional phrase on par with an accusative plus infinitive?

Vegawatcher

@tony There is a semantic component of "iste" and an implication of the word order of both "iste" and "tuus." Let me address the semantics first. "Iste,"mean in this case something closer in conversational terms to Cataline than to Cicero or the other senators. In English, we have only "this" or "that" and so cannot translate this nuance. Cicero uses it to distance himself and the senators in the audience from Cataline's behavior and imply he is isolated.

cmw

14:50

@Vegawatcher It's not a perfect translation, but it's helpful to think of it as: hic=this, ille=that, and iste=that over there or that, with a strong emphasis.

Vegawatcher

@tony Using "iste" after "furor" semantically implies that it relates to all those types of things of Cataline and implies a pejorative reference. One reason some modifiers take post nominal position is when their semantic range is independent of what it is modifying like "Romanus." If the range is dependent on its referent, it is usually prenominal like "magnus." A big elephant is still smaller than a big city.

@tony Making "tuus" post nominal probably makes it "tail material," implying that it is obvious that "furor" would apply to Cataline, but reminding the audience that it is his madness and other behaviors that are at issue.

@cmw I think "iste" is like Spanish "ese" and tends to be associated with the second person and things at that moderate distance from the speaker. "That over" implies remoteness, like "yonder," and associates with "illīc," or "illāc" or Spanish "allí" or "allá."

cmw

@Vegawatcher Yonder is a bit deprecated in English, but agreed, there is a distance, either physically (that over there) or metaphorically (ugh, that one).

Vegawatcher

@cmw I just mentioned "yonder" because it is said that older English had a three-way distinction closer to what Latin has and I think modern speakers still have that feeling about it. In my father's birth dialect, he still very occasionally used "yonder" in that way to refer to things remote from the conversational "area."

cmw

Maybe archaic is the better term, rather than deprecated.

Or antiquated.

Vegawatcher

15:06

This list is handy reference that lays out a lot of the demonstrative and adverbial distinctions: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Latin_correlatives

I just noticed "quota hora" as a way to ask about clock time. I had not known this expression before.

cmw

@Vegawatcher It's found only in Horace's Satires.

Vegawatcher

Are you saying that the phrase is just limited in the historical record or that it might have been coined by Horace? Is there another way to say: "What time is it" to get an answer that will indicate the hour?

cmw

@Vegawatcher I was saying it as that's probably why you didn't hear of it before.

cmw

15:37

It's probably legitimate, though. He's saying it as if he's quoting Maecenas (word order most likely altered for poetical reasons).

Vegawatcher

16:11

Aah, thanks

Adam

17:21

What work is Auct. Harusp. Resp.? I can't figure it out from the abbreviation.

FlatAssembler suggested deletor as an option for destroyer; it looks like that isn't attested but the feminine deletrix is attested in whatever source that is.

cmw

17:56

@Adam It's the De Haruspicum Responsis, and it's thought to be written by Cicero (and is included in his manuscripts).

I don't know why it was ever doubted.

Adam

@cmw Is that what the Auct. means?

cmw

@Adam Auctor = author

Adam

Ahh

cmw

Or perhaps more properly in the genitive.

It's used similar to the English "Anon."

Adam

Of the Author of:

cmw

18:04

Concerning the [anonymous] author's responses of the haruspices.

Adam

18:21

Are you familiar with this book by Duran? Looks like it was recently revised; it's another book full of adapted and original text designed to follow as you become more fluent. Based on the description I'm assuming it could be done while following Wheelock or additional reading.

cmw

@Adam I am not familiar with that one, no. I do think that style is best. Hard to say if it is implemented properly without reading it.

It's essentially the graded reading approach. It's what we all do as readers anyway.

Adam

18:35

@cmw I'll consider getting it since it's inexpensive and would give me more reading options.

cmw

18:52

@Adam You're using Wheelock, right?

There's also a Wheelock's Latin Reader.

Adam

@cmw Oh, I forgot about that one.

I am using Wheelock and LLPSI for the most part, although I'm using LLPSI more like an additional reader.

cmw

19:16

@Adam Not a bad way of doing it.

Adam

@cmw Honestly, still figuring out what's most effective for me.

Adam

19:56

Unrelated to books, but I see the site got a visual update to how thread meta data is shown.

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