Translingual section in wiki breaks down any character
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/歃#Translingual
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Fynn’s edit has made me look at this post again.
In the first Latin sentence, the word under discussion is tapēs, which is certainly related to English tapestry, although it’s suggested that tapestry might ultimately derive from Byzantine Greek ταπήτιον without passing through Latin. In either case, the root of all these words is Greek τᾰ́πης, itself of obscure origin, possibly Iranian or pre-Greek (non-Indo-European).
tapēs is defined by Wiktionary as a “rug, carpet, tapestry, or hanging”; LatDict adds the further sense of “covering” and states that a a tapēs is woollen.
tapēs is a third-declension masculine noun and declines as follows, describing twelve case-plural combinations by means of eight forms:
| Case | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| Nom. | tapēs (mat) | tapētēs (mats) |
| Voc. | " " (O mat) | " " (O mats) |
| Acc. | tapētem (mat) | " " (mats) |
| Gen. | tapētis (mat’s) | tapētum (mats’) |
| Dat. | tapēti (for the mat) | tapētibus (for mats) |
| Abl. | tapēte (on the mat) | " " (on mats) |
To describe something being in or on another thing, the latter word takes the ablative. In the original post you can see that I first applied the correct case, the ablative tapētē, but then changed it to the incorrect tapēti, the dative.
BTW, in the course of writing this I also discovered that American English uses the spelling woolen whilst British English uses woollen.
This is a very late reply, but it bears pointing out that in persona Martis translates very naturally to the idiomatic English phrase in the person of Mars.
| Latin | English |
|---|---|
| in | in |
| persona | (the) persona, character |
| Martis | of Mars |
Compare also, from Shakespeare’s Henry V:
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels,
Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire
Crouch for employment.
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Let’s revisit this text, Naturalis Historiae II and compare the two translations I have on hand.
- The Latin I originally posted. This isn’t exactly the same as the Loeb Latin, so I either miscopied it or perhaps took it from another source that I’ve now forgotten about.
Mundum et hoc quodcumque nomine alio caelum appellare libuit, cuius circumflexu degunt cuncta, numen esse credi par est, aeternum, inmensum, neque genitum neque interiturum umquam. huius extera indagare nec interest hominum nec capit humanae coniectura mentis.
sacer est, aeternus, immensus, totus in toto, immo vero ipse totum, infinitus ac finito similis, omnium rerum certus et similis incerto, extra intra cuncta conplexus in se, idemque rerum naturae opus et rerum ipsa natura.
furor est mensuram eius animo quosdam agitasse atque prodere ausos, alios rursus occasione hinc consumpta aut his data innumerabiles tradidisse mundos, ut totidem rerum naturas credi oporteret aut, si una omnes incubaret, totidem tamen soles totidemque lunas et cetera etiam in uno et inmensa et innumerabilia sidera, quasi non eaedem quaestiones semper in termino cogitationi sint occursurae desiderio finis alicuius aut, si haec infinitas naturae omnium artifici possit adsignari, non idem illud in uno facilius sit intellegi, tanto praesertim opere.
- Loeb translation by Harris Rackham, 1938 (revised 1944, '49)
The world and this—whatever other name men have chosen to designate the sky whose vaulted roof encircles the universe, is fitly believed to be a deity, eternal, immeasurable, a being that never began to exist and never will perish. What is outside it does not concern men to explore and is not within the grasp of the human mind to guess. It is sacred, eternal, immeasurable, wholly within the whole, nay rather in itself the whole, finite and resembling the infinite, certain of all things and resembling the uncertain, holding in its embrace alll things that are without and within, at once the work of nature and nature herself.
That certain persons have studied, and have dared to publish, its dimensions is mere madness; and again that others, taking or receiving occasion from the former, have taught the existence of a countless number of worlds, involving the belief in as many systems of nature, or, if a single nature encompasses all the worlds, nevertheless the same number of suns, moons, and other immeasurable and innumerable heavenly bodies, as already in a single world; just as if owing to our craving for some End the same problem would not always encounter us at the termination of this process of thought, or as if, assuming it possible to attribute this infinity of nature to the artificer of the universe, that same property would not be easier to understand in a single world, especially one that is so vast a structure.
- Translation by John F. Healy, 1991 (revised 2004)
The world and this expanse – or whatever other name men are please to call the sky that covers the universe with its vault – are properly held to be a deity, everlasting, boundless, an entity without a beginning and one that will never end. Men are not concerned to explore what is extraterrestrial, nor can the human mind make a guess about such things.
The world is sacred, eternal, boundless, self-contained, or, one should say, complete in itself, finite yet resembling the infinite, of all things certain yet resembling the uncertain, embracing in its grasp all things without and within. The world is the work of Nature and, at the same time, the embodiment of Nature herself.
It is madness that certain men have occupied their minds with measuring the world and have dared to publish their results. Again it is madness that others, seizing the opportunity, or following the lead of those just mentioned, have propounded the existence of countless other worlds so that one must believe in a matching number of systems, or if one system controls all worlds, the same number of suns, moons, and other innumerable heavenly bodies as there are already in a single world.
I had a strange idea last night / this morning for something I call “tonal number notation”.
Now and again I get bored and create numerical systems like this, and shorthand methods as well.
First, the numbers are arranged in base-four or “quaternary”, ie. with the digits 0–4.
Then they are placed into their “tones” by the arrangement of those digits. There are an unlimited number of tones, but these are the 21 with three or less shifts.
| “Numerical tone” | Earliest occurrence |
|---|---|
| – (flat) | 1 |
| – / (flat-rising) | 112 |
| – / – (flat-rising-flat) | 1122 |
| – / \ (flat-rising-falling) | 1120 |
| – \ (flat-falling) | 220 |
| – \ – (flat-falling-flat) | 1100 |
| – \ / (flat-falling-rising) | 1101 |
| / (rising) | 12 |
| / – (rising-flat) | 122 |
| / – / (rising-flat-rising) | 1223 |
| / – \ (rising-flat-falling) | 1220 |
| / \ (rising-falling) | 120 |
| / \ – (rising-falling-flat) | 1200 |
| / \ / (rising-falling-rising) | 1201 |
| \ (falling) | 10 |
| \ – (falling-flat) | 100 |
| \ – / (falling-flat-rising) | 1001 |
| \ – \ (falling-flat-falling) | 2110 |
| \ / (falling-rising) | 101 |
| \ / – (falling-rising-flat) | 1011 |
| \ / \ (falling-rising-falling) | 1010 |
Now, we bundle the numbers into groups based on which consecutive numbers have the same tone.
Each group of same-toned numbers is given an incremental identifier. For instance, “four” has the falling tone in quaternary (10) so it is “Group 1 (of the falling tones)”. But “eight” (20) and “nine” (21) are a different group of falling-tone numbers, so they are “Group 2”, and so on.
Within the groups, we have to index the numbers themselves. So “eight” is #1-1 of Group 2 of the falling tones, but “nine” is #1-2 of Group 2.
I didn’t want to use decimal as my index, though, I so I reused the base-four motif and assigned a new set of numbers based on Greek:
: = 0, O = 1, ϴ = 2, Ω = 3.
The numbers are presented as
[tone] [group] [index]
I produced a conversion chart for the first 100 integers:
Anyway, I thought they might be useful in a TTRPG or something, in a context in which the GM doesn’t want the players to easily understand the numeral system (eg. when numbering treasure chests or prison cells) but does want the numbering to be expressive and meaningful.
Interpuncts also work quite nicely as padding and can also obscure the system to those unfamiliar:
lol
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The major rift between Upper and Lower German languages is that the lower ones keep voiceless stops, while Upper German shifts them to affricates or fricatives under certain conditions.
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I obviously never learned Russian language as a second language but I feel it’s half true. Grammar does help you figure out how the language works, how words are connected to each other. I think it helps quite a bit roughly in the beginning to go through the grammatical forms of the words, so you’re aware of what’s going on in terms of grammar. Even, for example, so you can form the neutral form to look up in the dictionary.
The problem is that academic learning goes too far in this and tries to cram into you very specific information you can’t realistically use yet. This form refers to the event happening in the past which already ended, this form refers to the event which was happening in the past and still might be happening. I’m barely able to read anything, and you wanna me to remember and distinguish these? Much more general descriptions would be more helpful. But you still need to roughly know what’s going on there. So basics are always a must.
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I found these interesting comparative charts explaining orthographic systems for Chinese.
They’re from Pinyin - Wikipedia
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This channel just popped up in my recommendations.
It seems to have some interesting videos about conlangs and Nahuatl (the Aztec language).
Also bumbled into a little conversation video about Cypriot Greek:
Suomi 
content!
Since I always liked mafia games, I went through manga 人狼ゲーム. It’s a bit more like a drama and they don’t play perfectly but it’s still a werewolf game. Of course, I looked up words and didn’t understand things but it was alright.
- It’s short, only 3 volumes, which is nice.
- No furigana.
- Almost all words and phrases are normal, nothing too weird, thus easy to understand.
- Abstract reasoning of the characters makes you pay more attention to grammar and what’s exactly said.
- There were couple characters with “accents” which made it a little hard to understand what they were saying.
- The way it is drawn makes it sometimes confusing who is talking.
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The first two mins detail an interesting idea.
The other 22 mins are a “coding journal”, which you can watch if that’s your thing.
Wait, there are people who use Caps Lock for uppercase letters? Isn’t this what Shift is for?
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Kanji typewriter!
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I think I’m going to regret it when I have to review.
I’m continuing my suffering with Anki.
But on the other hand, I went through all cards N2 and lower in the deck. Now when I’ll dig myself out of reviews, I can start with N1 words.
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Peter Gabriel makes fun of an Italian journalist’s dummy question about inspiration.
I still wonder if the journalist actually didn’t get the joke or decided to act like that, but the voice-off speaker indeed says “inspiration comes from the soul” while Peter takes his shoe off.
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Synonyms are annoying when you study with Anki. Today I’m annoyed by words about food and I extensively researched stuff on google to try to see the difference. It doesn’t make much sense because when you can’t really speak language yet hunting for nuance is a fool’s errand. But I’m annoyed. Also some of the words are really really close in meaning so the difference is a little “made-up” rather than an actual difference in usage.
- 食べ物 - basic word food that animals eat, to not die
- 食物 - food to stay healthy and live long and stuff, including drinks. Nutrient food, I guess
- 食料 - food ingredients before they’re cooked or in a sense of supplies, emphasizes production or supply side
- 食材 - this one appears to be more specifically denote ingredients for cooking
- 食糧 - main food (rice and flour), staple food, emphasizes being stored
- 食品 - food for human consumption, emphasizes being ready to eat
- 食料品 - food items on store shelfs
@Vsotvep what do you think?
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Game about learning ancient language (that don’t exist in our world)
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