No, to summon spirits and bind demons, one needs to resort to graeco-egyptian magical texts. Latin conjurs only imps.
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といっても - although one might say
村正の妖刀（むらまさのようとう）- Magic sword of Muramasa
発展途上（はってんとじょう）- developing
応手（おうしゅ）- response
～よりない - no other way but to do ~
Sentence of the day:
周囲の状況、全局の要請によって、「定石」は千変万化するのです。
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Because of the circles in which I spent my youth, I can’t read gaudeamus without posting this.
do you understand what you post?
@Sanonius I actually found a copy of the Hobbit in Latin, and I ordered it from Amazon. Shall I let you know how the first page goes when it comes?
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Not necessarily. It’s a learning process.
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Beginning with AlphaGo is a strange first lesson.
My god, what a British accent in that Latin…
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Certe
This is where the last challenge was, before we went off-topic for fifty posts.
Light bump: greatest territorial extent of the Byzantine Empire, which considered itself Roman but ruled in Greek. The Byzantines preserved great amounts of classical Greco-Roman knowledge, which eventually catalysed rhe Renaissance.
Challenge: Units & Coins
Quite simply, list all the units and coins.
@Sanonius @Vsotvep @stone.defender I need one of you to make a post before Discourse will let me comment again.
Gladly.
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Ok, let’s translate and analyze the sentences @S_Alexander posts.
定石を暗記するのは無意味でしょう。
Vocab
| English | Japanese | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| joseki | 定石 | じょうせき |
| memorisation | 暗記 | あんき |
| nonsense | 無意味 | むいみ |
The kanji for joseki mean “fixed stones” or “established stones”, thus it is a pattern that has been established through professional play. An alternative reading is 定跡 where “stones” is replaced by “pattern”, interestingly both pronounced the same as seki, so it’s not even ateji. The meaning is the same as in English: a set pattern of stones in a region of the board that is deemed equal for both players.
暗記 is where the SRS program Anki lends its name from.
無意味: literally 無 (no) 意味 (meaning), where 意味 is another particular favourite of mine, it means 意 (idea) 味 (taste): the taste of an idea. Lovely.
Structure
暗記 is a する-noun: a noun that can be made a verb by attaching the verb する (to do). Thus 暗記する is “to memorise”. The direct object of what is being studied is marked by the particle を, namely 定石, hence we have 定石を暗記する → “to memorise joseki”.
After a verb we can add のは to make a noun out of the verb (nominalisation). Let’s start with the second particle: は makes whatever becomes in front a topic. Thus the topic of this sentence (that what has the focus) is the whole thing coming before. The particle の acts as a noun: [verb + の] → [nominalisation of the verb]. Thus するの → “the act of doing”. In this case we mane 定石を暗記するの, which is “the act of memorising joseki”. Note that する first made a verb out of the noun 暗記, while adding の subsequently made a noun out of the verb, so instead we could also just say 定石の暗記は. I don’t know what the difference in nuance is between these two forms, yet…
The sentence ends with でしょう, which is the volitional form of です (the polite copula). Usually the volitional form has the nuance of being a strong suggestion (食べる = I eat, 食べよう = let’s eat). In the case of the copula, でしょう denotes a declarative statement that invites the listener to agree. It’s like saying “This is the case, don’t you agree?”. Hence, the addition of でしょう makes the sentence a statement that seeks agreement from the listener.
In conclusion: “Memorising joseki is futile [lit: nonsense], don’t you think so?”
三段に進める人は、碁を打つ人の二百人に一人くらいでしょう。
Vocab
| English | Japanese | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 一 | いち |
| 3 | 三 | さん |
| 200 | 二百 | にひゃく |
| dan rank | 段 | だん |
| to advance | 進む | すすむ |
| people | 人 | ひと |
| Go | 碁 | ご |
| to play | 打つ | うつ |
段 literally means “step” (also literally as in a step on some stairs) or “grade”, a 3-dan is someone positioned on the 3rd step / grade. The word for kyu, 級 / きゅう means “grade” or “class” as well.
進む is a verb meaning “to promote, advance”. It is intransitive; to promote someone or something, you use the verb 進める. It appears that this sentence uses the latter verb, but we’ll see below that’s not the case.
打つ usually means “to hit / beat”, but apparently it can be used for “to play / engage in” as well.
一人 has an irregular reading and is not pronounced as いちひと, but as ひとり.
Structure
三段に進む means “to promote to 3-dan”, and if placed in front of the noun 人 we get 三段に進む人: “the people who promote to 3-dan”. However, here we use the potential form of 進む, which is 進める. This makes 三段に進める人 to mean “the people who could promote to 3-dan”. It does not make sense to interpret 進める as the transitive verb, since the sentence would then mean “the people who promote others to 3-dan”.
碁を打つ means “playing Go”, thus 碁を打つ人 means “go players”. の connects this to 二百人 (“200 people”), to get 碁を打つ人の二百人 meaning “200 Go players”. くらい or ぐらい is an expression that denotes uncertainty. When placed after an amount, it means “about” or “roughly”, thus 二百人に一人くらい means “roughly 1 out of 200 people”.
でしょう is once again the volitional form, which here seeks for agreement with the listener.
In conclusion: “Those people who could advance to 3-dan, they are about 1 in 200 out of all Go players.”
周囲の状況、全局の要請によって、「定石」は千変万化するのです。
Vocab
| English | Japanese | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| surrounding | 周囲 | しゅうい |
| situation | 状況 | じょうきょう |
| whole situation | 全局 | ぜんきょく |
| appeal | 要請 | ようせい |
| joseki | 定石 | じょうせき |
| unending variety | 千変万化 | せんぺんばんか |
周 means “circumference” and 囲 mean “surround”, so this is a pretty clear word. 状 and 況 both mean “situation”, so another clear word. 全 means “whole” and 局 means “situation”, again no surprises here. 要 means “need” and 請 means “ask”, thus it keeps being simple. 定石 we already discussed in the first sentence.
But the fun one is 千変万化: 変化 means “variety” (both individual characters meaning “change”), 千 is 1000 and 万 is 10’000: 千変万化 is “thousand varieties, ten-thousand varieties”.
Structure
「定石」は is the topic of the sentence: it’s about joseki. 千変万化する means to vary with unending possibilities. Adding のです to the end of a sentence tells that information is given, similar to adding “it is the fact that” to a sentence in English. Hence 定石は千変万化するのです means “it’s a fact that joseki has unending variety.”
The parts in 周囲の状況 and 全局の要請 in front mean “the state of the surroundings” and “the demand of the whole situation”, which I think should be interpreted as the surrounding stones and the urgency of other places on the board. によって indicates dependency, and should be translated as “depending on X”, where X is whatever was placed in front of it. The parts 周囲の状況 and 全局の要請 are in conjunction in front of によって, like it is a list.
In conclusion: “Depending on the surrounding stones and the demand of the whole board position, there are in fact an unending variety of joseki.”
Did you write the sentences yourself?
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I’m a Switzer, how easy is that! Tschient raps fan ün franc - A hundred Rappen make a Franken.
Greek: ἓν τάλαντόν ἐστι ἑξήκοντα μνῶν ἢ ἑξακισχίλιαι δράχμαι ἢ ἑξακόσιοι καὶ τρισμύριαι ὀβόλων. One Talent is sixty Mines or sixthousand Drachmae or six hundreds and three myriads of Obols.
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Nice! Mine translations more or less match yours but I wouldn’t be able to deconstruct them so thoroughly. I especially like the phrasing of “unending variety of joseki”.
These sentences are from a joseki book. I go through the page or two of the book and list the words I didn’t know but might be able to remember. And I also choose one of the sentences (the one that sounds nicely and more or less can be presented without context) to be the sentence of the day.
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Japanese currency is nowadays measured completely in yen. The ye sound, however, no longer is used, and the final n is as a lengthy ng [ŋ], so Japanese pronunciation is actually like the English bang without the b. The word yen itself has the kanji 円, which means “round”, since coins are round. There used to be a division of the yen into hundreds and thousands, to get sen (銭) and rin (厘), but after the huge inflation of the currency during WWII the cost of a dollar in yen surged from about 3.5 yen to more than 600 yen, and thus these divisions were abolished in the '50’s. Nowadays a dollar is worth about 110 yen, and a euro is about 120, and a pound about 130.
The 円 coins are made of aluminium and feel like fake money. They’re also worthless and you’ll be stuck with a bag full of them at the end of a trip to Japan (since paying by card is not usual and tipping is foreign in Japan, so you’ll always get exactly the right amount back).
Then they have 5円 coins made of brass that have a small hole in the middle. The pronunciation is ごえん, which coincides with ご縁, meaning “fate” or “relationship”, thus 5 yen coins are considered lucky and are often the type of coin that is offered to the gods at Shinto shrines.
The 10円 coins are made of reddish brass, and the 50円 and 100円 coins are made of cupronickel. The 50 and 100 coins look almost identical from the side, which is very annoying when grabbing for the right coins in your wallet.
Finally the 500円 coins are is made from brass again. These coins feel like the real deal, heavy and large.
Finally there are bank notes, with values 1000, 2000, 5000 and 10’000.
In general, the Japanese number system just glues numbers together like you would in English. It’s a little more regular than English though (“three-hundred fifteen” is ordered 300 + 5 + 10, instead of 300 + 10 + 5). The largest difference is in how they count large numbers. In English we have new vocabulary for each factor of 1000: thousand, million, billion, trillion, (or for Europeans: thousand, million, milliard, billion, billiard), etc.
In Japanese they do this with factors of 10’000. For example, 6728435 is broken up in English as 6’728’435:
(six-million) ([seven-hundred twenty eight]-thousand) (four-hundred thirty five).
In Japanese it’s broken up as 672’8435:
([six-hundred seventy two]-tenthousand) (eight-thousand four-hundred thirty five)
[六百 七十 二] 万 ・ 八千 四百 三十 五
Here we have 十 / じゅう = 10, 百 / ひゃく = 100, 千 / せん = 1000 for the small numbers, and then 万 / まん = 1’0000 (ten thousand), 億 / おく = 1’0000’0000 (hundred million), 兆 / ちょう = 1’0000’0000’0000 (thousand billion = trillion)
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ハマリ - falling into trap
構想（こうそう）- plan, idea
運命共同体（うんめいきょうどうたい）- (sharing a) common destiny
Also, similar kanji: 構, 横
Sentence of the day:
天元に石があるときなどなら、もう通常定石の「型」は役立ちません。
Also, 牛角三連星 (horned sanrensei?):
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a pound about 130
Oof. About five years ago it was 230, if I remember rightly. Is the yen just really strong right now?
I was thinking today: is English the easiest language in the world, and does this partially account for its success as a global lingua franca? So, I decided that various points of difficulty could be listed, each of which would incur a difficulty point.
- Grammatical gendering
- Politeness levels
- Avoidance speech
- Tones
- Non-alphabetic writing
On this scale, English scores 0 / 5.
Most European languages score 1 / 5.
Japanese scores 2 / 5.
There is a theory that Middle English basically evolved as a simplified trade language between Old English and Norse, so its simplicity makes a lot of sense historically.
Foreigners: what is hard about English? Our weird spelling?