Lingua Latina sive in alia verba, " the Latin language"

[kladner]

Originally Posted by LaurV

BTW, Duolingo teaches Klingon and High Valyrian, if any of you got strange plans for the future... (beside of Latin, I mean, which is already quite popular with almost one million learners).

What?! No Elvish?

[xilman]

Meta comment: I am both surprised and pleased at just how many Forumites have a genuine interest in ancient languages and scripts.

It may be premature to suggest that all this material be moved to a sub-forum of Hobbies and threads devoted to Latin, Middle Egyptian, Sumerian and Akkadian be created within it. (Sadly, my knowledge of Ancient Greek, Hittite and Sanskrit is non-existent. Perhaps in a year or two ...)

If created, we could not only encourage others to learn to read the languages we could discuss mathematics as well. The basics of number theory and geometry were established by people who wrote in those languages. Special cases of theorems of Πυθαγόρας and Εὐκλείδης were well known to Egyptians and Babylonians. Babylonian tablets from 2000 BCE give an algorithm for solving quadratic equations.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by xilman

suggest that all this material be moved to a sub-forum of Hobbies

+1. You are supermod, so be my guest to create the structure.

Regarding "lots of ancient languages", my "knowledge" stops at Latin, and even that, the "expertise" is on the "average" level. Romanian is quite similar in grammar and it shares ~80% of the vocabulary, and we also had a full year Latin course in G7, when I was quite found of it, because the school book looked like a "big book of popular wisdom" (they used to teach us that way, and even nowadays, Latin is used mostly for aphorisms and proverbs, many Romanians actually imagine that Latin is not a language, but just a collection of wisdom and funny anecdotes).

But that's where we stop.

Regardless, I would be very found of a "Latin corner", on mersenneforum, of course.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by LaurV

+1. You are supermod, so be my guest to create the structure.
...

Regardless, I would be very found of a "Latin corner", on mersenneforum, of course.

Another proposal is that it could be a top-level forum within "Extra Stuff".

Related is that the top-level could be something like "Languages: ancient & modern, human and machine". I don't know whether the generality is justified but I do know that generalizing a structure which is a disparate mass of specialisms can be difficult. If it is justified, the Algol68 thread could be moved there as well.

Opinions? Suggestions?

[Nick]

Originally Posted by xilman

Opinions? Suggestions?

Good idea.
Chomsky's hierarchy fruitfully migrated from human to machine languages, for example.

[pinhodecarlos]

Amantes da língua latina.

Edit: above the thread subject in my mother tone.

[Nick]

Up until a few centuries ago, Latin was the international scholarly language.
But I doubt that the pronunciation used throughout the centuries was the same as in ancient Rome.
We have the Roman books and statues (which is how we know how to spell Caesar) but no recording of speech or music.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

'veni, vidi, vici'

Veni, Vidi, Concucurri.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Nick

Veni, Vidi, Concucurri.

Or as a certain German leader with Caesarian ambitions might have said when eying a map of France and certain territories ceded to it in 1919, "Veni, Vidi, Vichy."

(Admittedly a pun in poor taste, but we do our best with the material on offer.)

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by Nick

But I doubt that the pronunciation used throughout the centuries was the same as in ancient Rome.

I have been listening to the "History of English" podcast for a while. The presenter shows how for many things we can know how older things were pronounced.

1) Grimm's law shows how consonant sounds change over time.
2) English tends to be amber for other languages' flies. When English borrows (French in particular) words they come in and are fossilized. That is why when English borrows the word again centuries later, it comes in with a different pronunciation.
3) Language family trees that have very similar basic words tend to come from the same root and so the pronunciations are generally well within the Venn diagram.
4) Poetry that has rhyme and assonance point to the sounds of words. If we know that 2 words start with similar sounds, or rhyme that helps.
5) In the UK different scribes spelled the same word different ways and had different systems to show how to say them. When 3 different scribes spell things differently, again we can get a Venn of how it likely was pronounced. Add in the other factors and it tightens the area quite a bit.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

The presenter shows how for many things we can know how older things were pronounced.

Yes, some good points there.
The position a mere 130 years ago is summarized here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28994...-h/28994-h.htm