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12:00 AM
@Cerberus If I've fumbled any of the Latin here, please let me know. I found that I had been randomly mis-writing second for fourth, or masculine for feminine, when I proofread it, and now I can no longer see the mistakes. :(
0
A: Why is tribo feminine?

tchristThe short answer is Latin. The longer answer is quite a bit more nuanced. The various fourth-declension -us feminines in Latin like tribus and manus were much more apt to retain their original gender than the rather uncommon second-declension -us feminines were. That is why we have a mão, as mãe...

There isn't really a good reason why everybody kept la mano in the feminine despite the ending. My own guess is because it was too common a word to forget how to do it right. :)
 
Probably, yes.
I'll read it.
 
Thanks.
If you need help with the embedded Portuguese references, and Google Translate isn't good enough, just ask. But I bet you won't.
 
@tchrist I haven't read the Portuguese yet, but I see no errors.
 
Thanks!
 
I would say feminine words of the 2nd and 4th declensions are aequally rare.
Lots of trees in the 2nd.
 
12:11 AM
True.
 
Domus is a mix between the two declensions.
 
Yes, I deliberately didn't mention it.
 
How many others of the 4th are there?
 
Than manus and tribus?
 
Yes?
 
12:12 AM
Damned if I know; those were the only two that came to mind right away.
 
> But tribus is from the fourth declension not the second, and so it largely retained its original gender.
I'm not entirely sure that and so is what you meant: it doesn't follow.
 
Maybe it's just commonness.
Even French got confused at times, so it's hardly canonical. But I don't think most of these are from learned corrections.
I think they "just happened" for the most part.
 
You suggested feminine words of the 4th kept their gender because they were less rare than those of the 2nd; but that last part is not really true, so I just have no idea why it happened this way.
 
Oh.
There are two senses of rare. I don't think I was consistent.
Commonly used words versus few compared with all of them.
 
"And so".
 
12:16 AM
manus is hardly rare, for example.
 
True.
Two senses.
 
And domus is so common it's messed up. :)
But Western Romance didn't retain the noun as a common word.
It's of course in learned adjectives.
 
But I still don't think you can base its resulting gender on which declension it is, because I think feminine words are aequally rare in both declensions, so there is no reason left why one declension should keep its feminines and the other not.
 
Okay.
 
However...
 
12:18 AM
Corsican and Sardinian did keep domu but it's masculine there.
 
This could be an interesting question for Latin.SE.
 
Which?
 
Why did feminine words of the 4th tend to keep their gender?
 
Ah good.
 
Or: did they?
(In case there are more we didn't think of.)
 
12:20 AM
There must? be. I just can't think of them right now.
Exitus and visus were masculine. And VISA is something else. :)
apparatus prospectus also.
 
There are few words of the 4th that aren't regular formations from supine stems, like those.
 
Interesting.
 
(Actually, the supines are words of the 4th declension.)
 
heh
obitus obituary
 
-us words can have all genders, and they can be of all declensions except the 1st and 5th.
 
12:24 AM
adventus
les, lots of those
@Cerberus me, I know this
 
Yeah.
 
In Romanian, tribus became a heteroclite noun.
Like with Italian l'uovo in the singular looking masculine but le uova in the plural looking feminine. I'm sure you see what happened there.
But all the Romanian "neuters" can be analysed as heroclites.
 
I am aware of such words in Italian, le braccia.
Le lenzuola.
 
yeah
There's a whole "class" of them.
 
It has always struck me as odd how they use a feminine singular article for the neuter plural.
Why not la braccia, if you must keep it heteroclitic?
 
12:29 AM
In the plural?
 
Yes.
 
The problem is that Italian kept no neuter articles.
 
Nor endings.
 
And it reanalysed the -a neuter plurals as feminines that didn't know they should be -e ones.
Right.
 
@tchrist Which is odd.
I believe the Proto-Indo-European plural neuter ending -a is actually from a feminine mass-noun ending.
 
12:30 AM
Western Romance always made you pick. Eastern sometimes produced heroclites.
 
One can still see it happening in modern languages, les medias, data is.
 
Yeah.
Spanish and Asturian do have a singular neuter article for certain abstractions, but nobody else does.
 
So why not do that, make it either la braccia, le braccie or il braccio, la braccia or il braccio, i bracci?
It just doesn't make sense.
 
"Why" is often impossible to answer.
 
@tchrist Good.
 
12:33 AM
lo posible means "the possible" or "that which is possible"
 
Why as in in how did it happen, while it didn't happen anywhere else.
 
Lo fácil means the easy part.
 
Can you think of any other language that uses a plural article with a plural noun but article and noun have different genders?
 
And there are the three deictic neuters, which are singular: esto, eso, aquello. It's for talking about the whole thing. There's even an ello neuter nominative pronoun for the same.
 
Italian and Spanish also have lo, do they not?
 
12:34 AM
But in Spanish it is a neuter when an article.
 
Describing something inanimate?
Lo que siento es normal.
 
Right.
That's neuter.
 
Lo stesso.
 
That is not!
But you can't say "il" before st-.
So it's masucline.
Hm.
 
Hmm I suppose it is because of st-.
But il can mean "he" or "it" always in Italian and French.
 
12:36 AM
Kind of, yes.
 
Still, is there no lo in Italian that can only be inanimate?
Lo non so.
 
That's just it.
 
I think lo non so can be "I don't know it", but not I don't know him?
 
Interjection: lo
  1. (archaic) look, see, behold (in an imperative sense).
Adjective: lo (not comparable)
  1. Informal spelling of low.
Pronoun: lo
  1. him (direct object)
  2. lo
  3. it (third-person singular neuter direct pronoun)
Article: lo n sg (masculine el, feminine la, masculine plural los, feminine plural les)
  1. (definite) the
Noun: lo inan
  1. sleep
 
Hmm "him".
 
12:38 AM
> lo m sg (plural li, female la)
Says masculine.
 
> My father, but I don't know him.
Mio padre, ma non lo conosco.
You're right.
I never knew that.
But I know little about Italian.
Reverso is quite useful.
 
"No lo conozco" is definitely "I don't know him", but "No lo sé" is "I don't know it" as in that thing.
 
Are you sure?
 
Yes.
You can't "know" a person with saber. :)
You need the other verb.
 
It could also be the praedicate frame of that forces a neuter reading?
Ah, yes.
So that is contextual, not inherent in lo.
 
12:41 AM
In northern Spanish you sometimes have a three-way system where they say no le conozco for a male person/pet.
Using lo only for non-people accusatives.
But this is very confusing if you're not used to it, because le is normally reserved for datives.
"Lo digo" is always accusative so "I said it", and "Le digo" is always dative so "I told him".
Or her.
"I said to him", if you prefer.
Well, present tense. You know what I mean.
 
I see.
 
You don't switch to the accusative just because you only have one object.
I told him something. I told him.
Those both take "him" in a dative.
 
It's hard enough keeping pronouns apart between all the Romance languages...
 
My god yes.
And street Italian is very different than literary Italian is in that.
 
Je l'ai vue.
 
12:45 AM
Assusative.
 
Je l'ai vu.
 
Wait.
 
Je le lui ai donné.
 
You can't do that.
Only if the direct object comes first do you match gender.
 
And doesn't it?
 
12:46 AM
And the French pronoun ordering thing drives me nuts.
> Je le lui ai donné.
 
The pronoun is the direct object, so it comes first and the attribute second.
> vous devez écrire "Je l'ai vu" en parlant d'un bateau, et "Je l'ai vue" en parlant d'une voiture.
 
No te lo he dado = I didn't give you it.
 
@tchrist Je ne voudrais pas le lui donner.
Je ne l'ai pas vue.
 
In Spanish and Portuguese, dative precedes accusative.
 
Je n'ai pas voulue le lui donner.
 
12:49 AM
Voy a dártelo.
I'm going to give you it.
But in French, you switch that.
Wait no, because te.
Gah.
 
I can never remember in French, have to say it in my heads.
 
Je vais te le donner?
Maybe.
 
I don't think so.
Je vais le te donner
I will give it to you.
 
I don't think you can have te in the second position, ever.
 
It did sound odd.
But I don't think it can be first position when it's indirect subject.
 
12:52 AM
 
Hmm.
 
Notice they don't care whether me or te are accusative or dative.
 
Regardless of case?
 
YES!
 
Right.
 
12:53 AM
So confusing.
 
want to see snowing?
 
I think it's because you never give it her.
 
That's not how I remember learning it in school, strange.
 
I don't know anything anymore, honest.
 
I only very little.
 
12:54 AM
@Bohemianrelativist In the dark?
 
Little enough to believe you immediately.
 
the snowing is so abundant now.
 
@Bohemianrelativist ’Tis the season!
 
@tchrist yes. it has been wee hours here, but I see the snowing is so abundant. Everywhere is covered with a layer of white.
 
@Bohemianrelativist Haven't seen any snow for more than a week here. But it's coming soon enough.
Make no mistake: haven't seen rain either. This is the drought part of the year.
 
12:56 AM
this is the first time I see so rich snowing.
 
Oh wait, right, this is you not Johan!
 
last time I saw snow is around Dec. 10.
 
Yeah, I'm sure this is new to you, coming from where you come from.
 
but this time the snowing is richer.
 
For some reason I thought you were our Swedish friend at first. It snows a lot in Sweden.
 
12:58 AM
> Wow this is actually great!
what does meno mosso mean it isn't in theory books
How on Earth can I reply to that politely.
It is literally in the dictionary.
 
I am from subtropic zone, so hadn't seen snow before. The first time I saw snow is late November, when the snow was very light.
 
@RegDwigнt Reference the Bryophytes?
@Bohemianrelativist Yes, I know. But you don't talk about it much, so I will not do so either.
You've mentioned it, but a long time ago.
 
The score doesn't even say "meno mosso". It says "meno mosso (♩ = 64)". What kind of direction could that possibly be.
 
Something about serving up a moss menu.
@RegDwigнt What was it previously? 80?
 
Pretty much, yes. 82.
 
1:01 AM
I just can't get used to the idea of musically illiterate musical scores.
Love that internetz!
 
@tchrist do what?
 
More to the point, it says "più mosso" in other places. As well as "poco rubato", "meno rubato", "tempo giusto", and "a bene placito". And those raise no questions.
 
@Bohemianrelativist Reference your nation of origin.
@RegDwigнt With metronome numbers too?
 
Yes, MuseScore is too stupid to understand Italian. It needs maths.
 
gah
 
1:02 AM
@tchrist I prefer snowing than raining.
 
@Bohemianrelativist I think I may as well, at times.
But snowing is a killing frost, usually.
 
because snow wouldn't make my shoes wet, but rain does.
 
Stuff like that.
Very heavy snow will eventually soak you.
 
Depends on the shoes really. My shoes are soaking wet immediately the second I leave the house.
 
What "shoes" I wear is 100% connected to how yucky it is out.
 
1:04 AM
@RegDwigнt How tautologically pleonastic of them.
 
I only have two pair. Nice ones and not so nice ones.
 
You move from shoes to hiking boots to snow boots.
 
@tchrist these days the snow has been heavy - when I walked through the road, my feet would be buried in snow in place where the deposition of snow is thick.
 
Wearing light tennis shoes in snow fails quickly.
 
@Cerberus Inorite. Shouldn't have bought them at the Greek cobbler's.
 
1:05 AM
@Bohemianrelativist Most of us here (me, Rob, Reg, Johan) are used to that. Cerb isn't so much, nor I thik Xanne.
My hikers are waterproof but if the snow goes up your pant-legs you need moon boots.
"moon boots" = "snow boots"
 
the deposition of snow looks like shaved ice I ate in my subtropic country.
 
@tchrist Not in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Two very different items!
 
Skimo boots.
 
Yes, that's a photo of me buying my shoes.
 
1:07 AM
@RegDwigнt You shouldn't be buying silly Greek flying shoes.
 
Where you got it from.
 
Nor should you be buying them from a whale, Ketos.
Can you read the Greek?
 
@Cerberus yeah be like that, you filthy Capitalist. I support our economically struggling brethren!
 
Cetaceans (from Latin: cetus, lit. 'whale', from Ancient Greek: κῆτος, romanized: kētos, lit. 'huge fish', sea monster) are aquatic mammals constituting the infraorder Cetacea (). Key characteristics are their fully aquatic lifestyle, streamlined body shape, often large size and exclusively carnivorous diet. They propel themselves through the water with powerful up-and-down movement of their tail which ends in a paddle-like fluke, using their flipper shaped forelimbs to maneuver.While the majority of Cetaceans live in marine environments, a small number exclusively reside in brackish water or...
 
1:09 AM
@Cerberus well it's backwards, so I can't.
 
Turn the ox!
 
One is Andromeda, and the other is whatever.
 
@RegDwigнt Some words are!
Who do you think the other is, when you look at his wingèd shoes?
 
Who do you think the other is, looking at the file name?
Perseus_and_andromeda_amphora.jpg
 
Oh, too bad.
Cheater.
 
1:10 AM
Stupid dog!
 
You were supposed to read it.
 
I did read Andromeda.
But then I realized I didn't have to.
 
Despite the missing m.
 
And the other thing doesn't say Perseus anyway.
 
No?
I don't know why they closed the Es.
 
1:11 AM
It says Gvrmvim
Or is that a P not a G.
 
It says PERSEUS.
 
Oh those stupid fuckers can't write the sigma the right way up, eh.
No wonder they all died.
 
Just as in KETOS.
Which in classical Greek would have been written with an eta, but they didn't have that yet.
H was still H.
 
See, that is why you just read the English file name. Quod erad desonmtrandus.
 
Waaah.
Qui es defenestrandus.
 
1:13 AM
Sub usbra alarus tuarus, Iehova.
@Cerberus KETOS I can't read. It's too dark. And also not backwards for some reason.
 
@RegDwigнt Tu tuatara?
Tuatara are reptiles endemic to New Zealand, belonging to the genus Sphenodon. Although resembling most lizards, they are part of a distinct lineage, the order Rhynchocephalia. Their name derives from the Māori language, and means "peaks on the back". The single species of tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) is the sole surviving member of its order, which originated in the Triassic period around 250 million years ago and which flourished during the Mesozoic era. Their most recent common ancestor with any other extant group is with the squamates (lizards and snakes). For this reason, tuatara are ...
They're really weird.
Fifth kind of reptile.
The lone survivor of an entire taxonomic order.
 
Oh wait, I call bull.
O TAURE!
 
@RegDwigнt Funny, eh?
To them, in that age, it mattered little which way you wrote.
Just as it didn't to the Egyptians.
 
1:18 AM
Yes, yes, νόδηφορτσυοβ.
4
 
heh
 
Yay.
One hears ambulances now drive without sirens in London.
 
Certainly you meant to say one does not hear ambulances now drive without sirens in London.
 
> I was on a diabetes awareness website and it asked me if I accept cookies. It was a trick question.
 
One of my grandmas was an art historian or whatever you call that. Knew the story of every pebble by the roadside in all of Moscow and beyond. One of the books she gave me was the entire Greek mythology. Like, all of it. I was maybe eight. Read it all cover to cover many times. There were lots of pictures of amphoras and sculptures and whatnot on every other page.
Meaning to say, you can't catch me off-guard with Greek nonsense. Spoken Greek nonsense, yes. Written Greek nonsense, not really.
And the book was in Russian of course, which is just Greek anyway.
Not meaning to say that I can still list the twelve deeds or the nine muses off the top of my head. The five rivers, maybe.
 
1:31 AM
@M.A.R. I missed the food talk today
dumplings and bread and cabbage
@RegDwigнt the names of the fates and furies?
isn't medusa... one of a group?
 
The Soviets did have a surprising amount of animated cartoons for children covering Greek myths.
Not sure what was the deal with that.
But yeah Medusa was there. And the Argonauts and all the other usual suspects.
 
It's still the same ship
My parents had a bunch of books that were on shelves that were just ... impractical to reach. So I never bothered.
Probably came from some book of the month club
 
@Mitch Medusa is one of the group consisting of her head and body. Not sure what the operation is, but if it's a group it must've been invertible.
 
not interesting at all once I was able to bother to pull them down
@RegDwigнt ok that's a challenge
instead of making shit up I'm going to trust wikipedia...
 
@Mitch our shelves reached from floor to ceiling. I just used a chair to stand on.
That's how I read all of O. Henry and all of Mark Twain and Conan Doyle.
 
1:37 AM
...which says she was one of the Gorgons
which sounds vaguely familiar
 
The Last Mohican was also quite high up. And Asimov.
 
and the other two were Stheno and Euryale
which is not familiar at all
 
The middle shelves were the most boring usually. Like, the collective works of Lenin. Or Gorky. Not sure which is worse.
 
if they looked anything like their names, they must have been really ugly
 
@Mitch well yes, that's her name in Russian. Medusa Gorgona.
Горго́на Меду́за (точнее Ме́дуса, др.-греч. Μέδουσα — «защитница, повелительница») — наиболее известная из трёх сестёр горгон, чудовище с женским лицом и змеями вместо волос. Её взгляд обращал человека в камень. Была убита Персеем. Упомянута в «Одиссее» (XI 634). Своё имя морская медуза получила из-за сходства с шевелящимися волосами-змеями легендарной горгоны Медузы из греческой мифологии. == Миф == === Происхождение Медузы === Младшая дочь морского старца Форкия и Кето (по другой версии, дочь Горгона и Кето). Единственная смертная из горгон. По поздней версии мифа, изложенной Овидием...
See, in Russian you don't need to remember anything, because it's all spelled out for you.
 
1:43 AM
@Cerberus: What were we talking about some time ago regarding writing that would reach the end of the line and then on the next line start at the right side and go backward, still in order?
I'm just reading that the hieroglyphs in Ancient Egyptian could work that way, and I was having trouble recalling our discussion. Now I don't know the proper keys to search for that in chat.
 
@Robusto yeah, as the bull goes. To plough the field.
Hence the name.
 
@RegDwigнt Russian. Pfft.
boustrophedon
 
Maybe I'll go look up the twelve deeds actually. I only really remember the stalls and the lion. And the witch and the wardrobe.
 
the girdle of some lady?
maybe the witch
 
I certainly wouldn't remember the @Cerberus.
Oh yeah, the birds and the boar is what I'm missing this whole time.
 
1:48 AM
there's a checklist somewhere
 
@RegDwigнt That one above was the Erymanthean boar, wasn't it?
 
And it only occurs to me now how many of them are just animals of some description.
 
like for the instructions for starting up a nuclear reactor
 
@Robusto yeah I remembered the hydra and the bull and the dog, but not the boar.
 
why do want an old russian book when I'm sure that...
 
1:49 AM
@Mitch Thank you.
 
@Mitch Russians don't need instructions for starting up a nuclear reactor.
 
apples
 
Every submarine and hoover runs on nucular. You just plug it in. Hey presto. Everyone knows that.
 
@RegDwigнt nuclear in a box
 
You guys don't even have a nuclear ice breaker. Pathetic!
 
1:51 AM
> 2.1 First: Nemean lion
2.2 Second: Lernaean Hydra
2.3 Third: Ceryneian Hind
2.4 Fourth: Erymanthian Boar
2.5 Fifth: Augean stables
2.6 Sixth: Stymphalian birds
2.7 Seventh: Cretan Bull
2.8 Eighth: Mares of Diomedes
2.9 Ninth: Belt of Hippolyta
2.10 Tenth: Cattle of Geryon
2.11 Eleventh: Golden Apples of the Hesperides
2.12 Twelfth: Cerberus
all animals except for the apples and the girdle
but maybe 'rawr'?
 
Thanks that's useful, but what were the 0.1 through 1.9?
 
@RegDwigнt Here's a nuclear ice breaker: Hey you startup any nuclear reactors without a checklist before? Let me show you. It's easy, I'm Russian
@RegDwigнt irrelevant details
he gets his pod racer ready for the races
The Twelve Labours of Heracles (Greek: οἱ Ἡρακλέους ἆθλοι, hoi Hērakléous âthloi) are a series of episodes concerning a penance carried out by Heracles, the greatest of the Greek heroes, whose name was later romanised as Hercules. They were accomplished at the service of King Eurystheus. The episodes were later connected by a continuous narrative. The establishment of a fixed cycle of twelve labours was attributed by the Greeks to an epic poem, now lost, written by Peisander, dated about 600 BC. After Heracles killed his wife and children, he went to the oracle at Delphi. He prayed to the god...
 
@Mitch oh right, the Tatooine Tripod. That's it.
 
"After Heracles killed his wife and children" whoa whoa whoa... that seems a little dark, like he opened the cupboard and found the vodka bottle empty so he killed them?
 
@Mitch This was when men were men.
 
1:56 AM
@RegDwigнt dumbest form of transportation. ever.
@Robusto and women and children were victims
 
@Robusto yeah I think Cronus was the first and last guy to not kill his dad. What a wuss.
 
@Mitch Qué será será.
People were always doing awful shit in myths.
Especially men. And women.
 
I mean, if you left out the awful shit there wouldn´t have been any Greek tragedy at all. Zero. Zip. Nada.
 
and that would be a tragedy
 
1:59 AM
So Trump is like Daenerys Targaryen. Got it.
 
or gollum
 
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