Latin inscriptions anyone?
Interestingly, in the Lex Malacitana from ~80AD, the words are separated with dots. But this doesn’t seem to have been common practice at the time.
Struggling to maintain my Latin interest. I think the time has come to try to read simple books online, if I can find them.
Oh, my Latin copy of the Hobbit arrived yesterday. Let me if you’d like a quote @Sanonius
Varro is quite a good choice. Maybe a bit boring, but good latin. Depending on the edition, the orthography is somewhat dated (eis for îs, uos for uus). But if can start with Varro, you can also start with Caesar and head into the Gaulic wars. The first sections are about the Helvetii and something every good Swiss schoolboy reads in Latin classes. It also exists as a Latin comic book.
Word separation dots are actually quite common on inscriptions. It gets interesting when you find the dots not between lexical but prosodic units.
OK, I’ll order De Re Rustica and the Gallic Wars.
Naturalis Historia is from a similar time, but I’ve heard it said that the Latin is quite specialised.
I might get De Agricultura for later, even though I probably couldn’t read it well, being penned so early.
HOBBITVS ILLE
CAPVT PRIMUM: CONVIVIUM INOPINATVM
in foramine terrae habitabat hobbitus: nec foedum, sordidum, madidumque foramen, nec extremis lumbricorum atque odore caenoso impletum, nec etiam foramen aridum, inane, harenosum, in quo nihil erat ad considendum aut edendum aptum; immo foramen-hobbitum ergo commodum.
quod ianuam omnino rotundam, fenestrae nauis similem, uridem pictam cum bulla aeraria flauenteque in media accurate defixa habit. aperta est ianua in atrium tubulatum, cuniculo simile: cuniculus autem commodissimus, non fumidus, cum parietibus lacunatis et solis pauimentatis et tapetis tectis, qui sellis expolitis et plurimis uncis ad petasos amculaque suspendende ornatus est – nam hospites hobbito placebant.
Hey that’s not too far away from what we had!
Nothing interesting comes up in my studies. How about this tweet from Redmond? One point for understanding the description and one point for solving this.
Today’s kanji are about food. Thanks to Jisho / Wiktionary.
(Or, entertainment for Vsotvep’s girlfriend. Apparently the Japanese love being surprised by hyogaiji.)
salt
These also mean salt.
salted meat. Notice how the second one has 塩 within it.
tsukemono (salt pickles). I like this kanji, it’s simple and mundane.
ginger
hot soup
blowfish. Notice they all have the fish kanji.
rice, as every Japanese beginner knows
rice gruel. This kanji’s kind of quick, can’t see much use for it these days though.
mochi
oyster. Interestingly, most of these use the radical 虫 (insect). A glimpse into the ancient Chinese mind?
So easy to get deep into Korean language humour / games, lol
“Being yelled at by your girlfriend in different languages”
You can watch this to train your listening skills.
Today’s kanji are about household objects.
It’d be cool to see 桮 and 坩 again; those are nice and simple. Also 壺 because it actually looks like a jar.
I won’t mourn most of these hyogaiji though.
Anyone got challenge ideas? We’re running a bit dry here.
There’s this journal, it’s related to go.
Reading a little about Gothic. It seems like a “Germanic version of Latin” in that it’s so heavily inflected.
One thing that I wonder about is:
While this is true for Indo-European within the timeframe we know it, it is not universal. A language’s complexity lies not only within its morphology. As I explained earlier, grammaticalisation, i.e. the metamorphosis of independent words into bound morphemes is a thing. There is an example of a language in the Philippines (can’t remember which) that has gained morphological complexity over the course of the last centuries. So between the extremes of that spectrum, being analytic with next to no morphology like chinese or english, and a highly inflecting like Inuktitut, a language is swinging like a pendulum.
Hmm.
It would be interesting, if PIE is just one example, to look for other long-term case studies. The problem is that most languages don’t have a phonetic / semi-phonetic literary history going back beyond about 500 years, at the start of which period they have usually been distorted by colonialism anyway.
To test simplification vs. complication, studies could be made of the last 1,000 years of:
To maintain a balance between complication and simplification, you would expect at least one of these to have become more complex.
I haven’t visited this Library in a while, time to make that up…
I like what @S_Alexander is doing. I’m going to add some terms that I stumble upon while trying to read my copy of “Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go”
First thing that’s funny is the title in Japanese:
| Japanese | reading | meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 素人 | しろうと | amateur |
| 玄人 | くろうと | professional / expert |
| 徹底 | てってい | thouroughness |
| 分析 | ぶんせき | analysis |
| 違う | ちがう | to do different |
| 両者 | りょうしゃ | both people |
| 視点 | してん | point of view |
So the words 素人 and 玄人 are weird in multiple ways here:
“Thorough analysis: only that is the difference between the point of view of these two kinds of people”
Fascinating!
