Language Learners' Library

Found an example:

Ancient Greek σάκκος (sakkos) => Latin saccus => sacculus => saccellum => French sachel => English satchel

Think how many mouths it’s been through next time you put it in yours :stuck_out_tongue:

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  1. Other languages (than the ones listed in 1 – 4)

Wow that is complicated. Is there any that use all 5?

That’s a very interesting question.

All words in Indo-European languages (that’s all Germanic languages, all Romance languages, Greek, Hindi / Urdu, and some others) originate by definition in a reconstructed pre-written language called Proto-Indo-European, so we could take 5) for granted. But if that sounds like cheating, a number of ancient words originate in either Egyptian, Etruscan (an old Italian language influential on Latin), or one of a number of Semitic (Middle Eastern) languages.

If our word started in a Semitic language (let’s say Old Persian) it could then enter Ancient Greek, then Latin. But here’s the tricky bit: if we want to go from French to Old English, we don’t have a very wide timeframe between the birth of French from Vulgar Latin and the transition of Old English into Middle English. However! We can get around this difficulty by taking our aged French word and jamming it into a compound word with a Germanic-rooted English one.

So Old Persian => Ancient Greek => Latin => French =||= English (from Germanic) => Our all-sources word

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Well, thanks for the discussion c:

I’ve got to get to bed, so I’ll make a shoutout to @BHydden to move this into the Language Learners’ Library. Goodnight!

Hope I split it at the correct point :slight_smile:

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Thanks for moving them.

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Just one more thing I was thinking about and I wanted to post before I slept.

I was dwelling on what we were talking about and I came up with six different processes which create new words.

I) Naturalisation. This is when you adopt a loanword but you change it to fit the phonetic or grammatical rules of your language.

II) Evolution. This is the gradual shift of sound and form within the same language. So Old Latin oinos becomes Classical Latin ūnus.

III) Inflection. This is when you alter a word using prefixes, suffixes, diminutives, and other grammatical modifiers. It was used heavily by Latin.

IV) Synthesis. This is when you take two words and fuse them together, like cat + girl = catgirl. It’s used heavily by English.

V) Generation. This is when you have a multi-consonantal semantic stem which you enrich with vowels; so, s-l-m becomes salaam.

VI) Invention This is any flexible process by which new base words are “invented” (often based on existing external words to some degree) in conlangs like Interlingua and Esperanto.

It’s sunt arbores horti mei. All adjectives get declinated too!

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I wanna try it in ancient greek, as that language is even more about participles than latin.

ὁ κλέπτων δρωμεῖ. ho kleptôn drômei ‘the stealing.one he.runs’
ὁ ἀνὴρ ὑδρίαν πρίαται κεκλεμμένην ho aner hydrian priatai keklemmenên ‘the man a.hydria-acc.sg.f he.buys. stolen-participle.perfect.passive.acc.sg.f’
ὁ ἀνὴρ ὑδρίαν ἐπρίατο κεκλεμμένην ho anêr hydrian epriato keklemmenên (like above, but in the aorist)
ἀνδρα λαμβάνω κλέπτονντα andra lambanô klepsanta ‘a.man-acc.sg. I.catch-present stealing.one-present.active.acc.sg.m’

I’ll continue later, once I find a good word for “to stop.” The greek participle is quite an army knife, even more than these english phrases can show it. I can do ‘once the vase was stolen, the police showed up’ without starting a subordinate clause. ὑδρίας κεκλεμμένης ἡ ἀστυνομία ἦκεν.

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Just gonna bookmark this post and come back later. I really have to get round to moving all challenges to the header.

Let have a go. I can’t find much good info on participles :expressionless:

I) Vir auferēns currit.
II) Vir vās aufēctus comparat.
III) Vir vās aufēctus comparāvit.
IV) Virum auferēns prēndō.
V) Virum prēndam, quem vās auferat.
(Virum vās auferisse prēndam with a preposition?)

VI) Mercātor vās aufēctus comparābit nōn.
VII) Vās aufendus tegō.
VIII) Virum vāse aufēctus ferīvī. (past tense)
IX) Vir gemmās in vāse aufēctus celāvit.

It’s time to Roll the Writ-Wheel!

@Vsotvep! Give me a dicebot roll of 1-750!

If I’m not mistaken, every sentence could be translated using a participle, so I’d say, keep trying :slight_smile:

Some pages that I looked at yesterday: this one & this one

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@discobot roll 1d750

Did you know that the maximum number of sides for a mathematically fair die is 120?

:game_die: 96

Looks like today’s featured script is SignWriting!

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Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.

Uhm, no @discobot, you can make a mathematically fair die that has more sides, it’s just really hard to distinguish it from a smooth shape

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“using dice rather than pig knuckles”

I bet u don’t even play the game of Ur

Actually I have to self-pedantise, the royal game of Ur was played using a sort of odd triangular-pyramid based system, that wasn’t actually d4s.