Well, défació just underwent a phonological change into défició, but I don't think tht "undo" is a recognized meaning of défició.

"Just" as in "simply," not as in "nuperrime."

@JoelDerfner I hope I didn't come across as harsh when I commented on your answer to Undo's question.

@JoelDerfner What Ben Kovitz said is right.

Worse case scenario, we don't answer right away, but in due time it will get answered for sure.

Thanks for pointing out that I should have looked up deficio!

@HDE226868 They wrestle with this constantly on Vicipædia. Have a look there for some ideas.

@BenKovitz Ooh, thanks.

HDE: What name?

@C.M.Weimer I was just thinking in general.

It differs depending on when and where in history the Latinization is taking place.

J Konigsberg in the early Renaissance Latinized his as Regiomontanus, for example, though that style isn't mainstream.

Let's try a Medieval Latin version. As a random example, take Barack Obama.

(This is a completely random scenario; don't read too much into it.)

@HDE226868 With Obama, there's actually some Latin precedent to work with, according to the discussion of this page. There are two footnotes that they say go to further information.

Hmm, one of the links is out of date.

It looks like they're going with precedent set by Latin news services.

I would expect that Baracus has some old precedent, though. Barack is the Arabic cognate of Baruch, Hebrew for "blessed", and was probably been imported into Latin in ancient times.

I think this example well illustrates the process: there's no true general rule, only opportunism for quirks that relate to each name.

Maybe the A Team even serves as precedent here. :)

Yes, Baracus appears to have a lot of precedent.

@HDE226868 You didn't come across as harsh at all! I would have left a comment in response thanking you, but since I was about to delete the answer anyway there didn't seem to be much point. :)

@BenKovitz Wow, surprising! (Was away from keyboard) I'll admit to no research there; I was looking up stuff after I posted in chat, but figured that someone more knowledgeable would know if there was a general rule.

@BenKovitz HM, I didn't know about that.

@JoelDerfner Yeah, no point.

Good something to you all.

@Cerberus We'll fix the world's grammatical terminology one meta.SE comment at a time… :)

@Cerberus Well, if you subscribe to a nonlinear view of time, then you can really take your pick!

But good day/evening/night/morning/afternoon/teatime/elevensies to you, too.

@BenKovitz Yay!

@HDE226868 Does it mean I get doggy treats?

Then I'll subscribe.

@Cerberus Once I get back. Now I have to jump into my TARDIS and watch a movie.

By the way, do y'all agree that Cicero is a paragon of 'proper grammar'?

'Night all - at least for me.

Sleep well!

@Cerberus I'd say he's definitely a good example of proper classical grammar.

@Undo Right!

Is he the first person you'd think of?

Or are there other authors?

Caesar is the other classical example of classical authors.

Would you ascribe the same authority to Caesar?

Probably, yes.

Interesting.

Do you think many people will hold that opinion?

@Cerberus Cicero mostly, Caesar to a lesser extent

There are more instances of "caesar broke the rules here" when we're going through his work in Latin class.

OK.

@C.M.Weimer Don't worry too much about that.

It's a good statistic, but it's not vital. Percent answered is a better signal

And this early in the beta, we shouldn't be looking at stats too much

@Undo Funnily enough, Cicero talks about Caesar as the only person who was better at oratory than he was.

@Cerberus Cicero too had his improper moments, especially in his letters where "real Latin" was written.

And of course his speeches are written down after delivery, cleaned up and whatnot. So they represent something different than what would be spoken, but in general, I'd call him a paragon of proper Classical Latin, with Caesar. It's a shame only Sallust really for Republican prose exists outside the two, and Sallust shares much in common with Cato, including archaicisms.

Hey, it occurs to me that most of the questions we're posting are fairly advanced. Would it be worth posting (and then probably answering ourselves) a few more basic questions, so that novice Latinists aren't put off or intimidated when we leave beta?

@JoelDerfner In my experience, most of the time established sites wish new users/novices were more intimidated. With apologies to Ray Kinsella, if you build an expert-friendly site, the beginners will come.

That said, we do have true Latin beginners here (like myself) who are periodically asking basic questions, which hopefully are of high enough quality that we can point novices to them as examples of how to ask a basic question.

I'm a more basic Latin Student, and have asked two relatively basic questions - and the response was excellent, and not at all intimidating. As a more novice student of Latin, the only intimidating questions are those in Latin!

What?

Tum wantat Englisham like linguam latinam soundat?

Or perhaps add endings to nouns like in Latin

I catam eato

Ew indeed

Maybe change all words to match Latin phonotactic rules, then add endings/SOV word order

Ego cattum edis quod cattum delecto

*edo

The first sentence I learn when I started learning German was "I have eaten my cat". It stuck with me.

Whaat? Not Caecilius est in horto???

The Cambridge Latin Course, which is the most widely used Latin learner's course begins with that sentence.

;-)

The CLC is great

It looks it

The CLC teaches basic Latin especially well - I, along with everyone who did it, will always remember "Grumio ancillam delectat"!

Cambridge and Ecce Romani aren't that different. Personally I would have preferred something like Wheelock's, but I'm a grammar nerd.

@JoelDerfner I agree with what @Nathaniel and @BobEret said. Keep the expertise coming. Those of us who are still beginners (e.g. me) will keep asking some more basic questions. The experts and more advanced folk should still keep posting at that level. I've seen a few sites get fewer expert questions than they deserve. It's not that basic questions are a bad thing; we just need you to keep asking the really challenging ones.

Trust me, I think we have enough beginner questions in store.

Expect many "What does 'res' mean here?" questions :-)

That sounds like a decent idea

It would probably be asked at some point, it would be better if a question already existed

That actually sounds excellent

Time to push the scope envelope a little on the roman-culture front.

The SE is incorrectly named then - if it contains "roman-culture" then a better name might be "Latin" - "Latin Language" seems a little restrictive to the whole Roman Culture thing. There is a good meta question about how far Roman Culture is related to the SE: meta.latin.stackexchange.com/questions/85/…

You're right, Sorry

Should I ask the Meta SE question about Latin Learning then???

*Too many ?.

Early we were talking about "Should we make a canonical "how 2 lern latin" question?" and you said you'd ask on the meta. Doesn't matter, I'll go do it now

Oh sorry

YAY

+1

@C.M.Weimer Ok. As I see it, Caesar closely followed standard grammar, but Cicero led it. Thoughts?

I am aware that his speeches were massively edited and polished later, and that he used more colloquial Latin in many of his letters.

> It's a shame only Sallust really for Republican prose exists outside the two, and Sallust shares much in common with Cato, including archaicisms

Why did you mean by this, exactly?

Sallust as a third "paragon"?

And why is that a shame?

I must admit I haven't read much Sallust.

Thanks for the input about basic questions. Though those of you who are calling yourselves basic have answered actual questions of mine that baffled me, so either we have a different understanding of the term "basic" or aliquis/aliqui perperam crédit.

Yeah, I don't trust their basicality either!

QPaysTaxes, shouldn't you check in on FourSquare so you can be mayor too?

@QPaysTaxes Haha gracias!

So how SE pick you: was that someone pressing a button, or an automated, stat-based thing?

I have to run now, adios!

Ah, congrats!

poof

@Cerberus You should read von Albrecht's book on Latin literature. He really gets into the style of each author: books.google.com/books?id=DrYatgm2MWoC&pg=PA457

hm, maybe this link is better

books.google.com/…

Google Books' limitations and all.

Actually, @QPaysTaxes, I believe that valeas is pushier than vale.

And now I'm deeply offended. :)

Regarding the luther tag, should it be turned into martin-luther? I know nobody will think that luther refers to someone like Lex Luther Luthor, but it might not immediately be apparent to whom it refers to.

@HDE226868 Changing it to martin-luther sounds good to me.

@HDE226868 Actually, how about reformation?

@BenKovitz Okay, yeah.