This is similar to a story told by Herodotus 6.138 about the Pelasgians on the island of Lemnos:
The Pelasgians are a non-Greek people who inhabited Greece before the Greeks. Eventually, the Pelasgians from Athens were driven away by the Greek Athenians and settled Lemnos.
The Pelasgians who inhabited Lemnos at that time and wanted to take revenge on the Athenians, knew the Athenian festivals very well and laid an ambush with fifty-oar galleys to attack the Athenian women on their way to celebrate the festival of Artemis in Brauron. They captured them and brought them to Lemnos and made them their side-wives.
When these women became mothers of many children, they taught them the Attic language and an Athenian lifestyle. These children did not want to mingle with the children from Pelasgian women; and when one of them got beaten by one of these, they (the Greek children) all rushed to help and avenge each other. So, the children thought it was right to rule over the Pelasgian children.
When the Pelasgian men figured that out, they held council and decided on something horrible: If these children already have in mind to help each other against the children from their rightful wives and already try to rule over them now, what are they going to do once theyâre grown up? So they decided to kill the children of the Attic women. This they did, and they killed the mothers too.
Note that many countries in Europe / Western Asia / Northern Africa already have names in Latin. The Netherlands is called Batavia for example, Russia is Ruthenia, France is Gallia, Switzerland is Helvetia, etc.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached a thousand posts.
I made a disproportionate 436, almost half. Sanonius made 186, Vsotvep 148, stone_defender 42, S_Alexander 32, Haze 25, and Ayaros 21. A further 110 posts were provided by other contributors.
I opened the thread with this message:
I thought it would be a good idea for us to create a thread where we could discuss what languages weâre trying to learn right now, and give each other updates and encouragement on our progress.
Whilst it canât be said that this goal was quite achieved, we managed to keep on finding new topics of discussion about language, linguistics, and etymology. Now that weâve reached this symbolic milestone, I expect to post less, and that the threadâll die down to a background rate of a few posts per month.
According to the OPâs wikitable, Ayaros, stone_defender, Samraku, sulcino, yebellz, and Vsotvep were learning Japanese; Aumpa was learning French, RubyMineshaft Esperanto, and myself, of course, Latin. Sanonius just wrote âbugcatâ⊠>__< I hope that weâve all made some progress. I certainly think I have.
Thank you @bugcat for curating this thread so carefully and providing us with very interesting topics to talk about. I have been having lots of fun here so far.
As cool as Esperanto is, I really donât understand why it defines so many words as âfemale version of _____â, like patrino and virino, and many adjectives as âopposite of _____â. But thereâs a study I read, and of course I canât provide a link, that children who speak Esperanto natively come up with new basic words that are not just female and opposite versions, but words in their own right.
Oh yes, thatâs right. With exceptions, though - when people migrated to other Germanic regions, they often named their new villages, so in those cases, names can be misleading.
And some (many?) native speakers are not able to use the accusative correctly, because they are otherwise not used to having grammatical cases at allâŠ
I was recently looking at some fourth-declension neuter nouns in Latin, like cornĂș (horn), pecĂș (herd), and genĂș (knee).
These are interesting because their form doesnât decline in the singular, with the exception of the genitive: nom. cornĂș --> gen. cornĂșs.
To make things more interesting, the genitive singular of pecĂș has apparently never been attested in ancient sources. Wiktionary also claims that in âlater timesâ, cornĂș didnât even decline in the genitive.
Sri Lanka was apparently known as Taprobana and the Danube as the Istros.
Iâve been reading about Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrobius), a fifth-century Latin scholar, and his âdialogue workâ Saturnalia.
I became interested today in the role of the preposition up in altering the meaning of English verbs.
There are four kinds of verbs in this regard:
Verbs which cannot take up, eg. colour, juggle, or wear.
Verbs which can only take up in a directional sense, eg. walk, sail, or march; or more subtly pick up or boil up, or in a semi-directional sense as in speak up.
Verbs which use up to mean âuse the whole stock ofâ, eg. eat up or drink up.
Verbs whose meaning is modified by up.
Phrase
Meaning
box up
package in a box
curl up
usual, or to curl oneself up
dress up
to dress in an ostentatious or fanciful way
fire up
turn on
gather up
gather together
hole up
to hide in a stronghold or secret place
listen up
emphatic of listen
pick up
take from the floor, or attain a skill
play up
talk up, or misbehave
rake up
usual, or to uncover unpleasant past affairs
rip up
rip apart
rise up
usual, or to revolt
shoot up
to shoot the inhabitants of a building
talk up
to exaggerate the merits of something
throw up
vomit
tie up
to restrain by tying
This is surely an incomplete list.
Verbs are often also modifed in meaning by other prepositions such as out and around.
In most of these, I sense a directional up, even if metaphorically. To dress up is to +1 the way you dress otherwise, to talk up is to talk in the direction of your superior, to throw up is to throw your food upwards.
Interesting is rise up. In what other direction would you want to rise?
I could do a list of Greek compound verbs. Here, kata- is what you use for âuse the whole stock ofâ, but it also means 'downward.
I am always fascinated by the attitude of english speaking people to state rules that⊠well⊠are full of exceptions.
Itâs the first time I see an almost complete list of phrasal verbs with one specific preposition and I find it very useful.
Point 1 surprised me though, as I never thought about it before. Until now I was just learning phrasal verbs on the run, thinking about them as an almost infinite set of variations where verbs and prepositions meet together in fancy ways.
Never thought before about verbs that donât want a specific preposition.
So I googled them and found out that âwear upâ applies to hair, while to colour up means to blush.
I wasnât actually able to find âjuggle upâ which is funny, since obviously the act of juggling throws things âupâ in the air.
You also forgot to mention the very first case that I learnt when I was about 6 yo: to get up (from bed). My mother tried to teach me english using a nice course for kids, books + records, called âLâinglese giocandoâ (something like learning english while playing).
I still remember the very first lesson about Jack, who had to wake up, get up, wash himself and dress (up???) for school.
âSun is up, birds are up and up you get, Jack!â
