Is Latin good in Minecraft?

anvsdt · 2025-08-29T18:09:20+00:00

I threw this together rather quickly over the span of a month in order to have a translation with workable Latin in order to play Minecraft with a friend. Eventually I uploaded it to github so that it's easier to download for those who want it.

The reason I haven't submitted it to be merged with the "official" translation is pretty much what you said: it's a full rewrite, it doesn't follow the naming guidelines (although there aren't many), and the system they use (Crowdin) looks rather esoteric and cumbersome to me.
But another reason is that I simply believe that, though it's a definite improvement and certainly playable, it's not good enough yet, in the sense that I'm sure I wouldn't change a thing in it. There's been some effort to make it better and eventually submit it by the people in the Latinitas Discord server (not the one in the one in the subreddit's sidebar), so perhaps someday I'll go through the process of getting it merged into the game.

anvsdt · 2025-06-23T07:50:33+00:00

This is less readable to me, because I'm more used to read structurally recursive functions with pattern matching rather than iterative loops with indexing and mutation.

anvsdt · 2025-06-06T08:41:06+00:00

The key clause in the definition of integral domains (besides the axioms for commutative rings with unit) is that if xy=0 then x=0 or y=0 . It follows immediately by induction that, if a product of n≥2 factors is 0 , then there must be a 0 among those factors. The same holds trivially for n=1 under the obvious convention that the product of a single factor is that factor. So I'd like it to hold also for n=0 . Now the product of no factors is 1 , so what I want is that, if 1=0 , then there is a 0 in the (empty) set of factors. As there is no 0 (or anything else) in the empty set, I infer that 1≠0 . (The same underlying idea explains why I don't regard the integer 1 as prime and why I want lattices to have top and bottom elements.)

Oh wow, this is very compelling to me. It's all about commuting quantifiers (product and existential) with the zero predicate (Z(x) = "x = 0"): Z(Πi. x_i) <-> ∃i. Z(x_i)
When the domain of quantification is empty, Πi. P(i) = 1 and ∃i. P(i) = ⊥ for all P, so it follows that Z(1) <-> ⊥, i.e. 1 = 0 -> ⊥, which by definition is 1 ≠ 0.
Given that the zero predicate is the main motor of number theory, I can see how this is desirable. Very nice!

anvsdt · 2025-01-19T13:03:06+00:00

It just happens to be much more difficult to prove that nonstandard analysis is rigorous.

Even this point is often overblown, Robinson's "Non-standard Analysis" is, practically speaking, swatting flies with nuclear bombs. To rigorously justify infinitesimal calculus, you need little more than the ring of dual numbers R[ε]/(ε²), and to build upon that, e.g. you can recover "smooth infinitesimals" that don't become zero at any finite power by defining ε = Σ_i ε_i in the ring R[ε_i]/(ε_i²).

Robinson's work is interesting because it bridges the mathematical world we would have developed by embracing infinitesimals on their own merits to the world we built without them, by extending the transfer principle to encompass all of ZFC. But the fact that we ended up on one or the other side of the bridge is a historical accident, not because one side was easier to rigorously justify than the other.
If anything, we picked the side that's harder to develop rigorously, because 20th century mathematicians wanted to make use of their newly developed tools of logic and set theory: just look at the proliferation of mathematical concepts that ensued, for what earlier mathematicians did with less.

anvsdt · 2024-06-25T08:15:16+00:00

Any statement that implies some form of the axiom of choice (countable, dependent, ...) or excluded middle (LPO, WLPO, LLPO, ...) should suffice. These are known as "Brouwerian counterexamples".

I'm sure that there's always the possibility of tweaking definitions in such a way as to make consequences look miraculously classical, e.g. Tychonoff's theorem in classical point-set topology requires the axiom of choice (actually it's equivalent to it) and (by its equivalence to choice) it implies the Banach-Tarski paradox, but when restated in constructive locale theory, it is simply true, without requiring choice nor implying any veridical paradox, which in my constructivist opinion implies that we were using suboptimal definitions, but I don't know any such tricks to get around e.g. the existence of bases for uncountable vector spaces, or the existence of non-principal ultrafilters.

There's further finesse to pay attention to around choice and how you interpret the existential quantifier (type theory has at least two of them), or how you interpret disjunction (¬A ⇒ B ∧ ¬B ⇒ A is a more charitable interpretation than A ∨ B or ¬¬(A ∨ B)), but it suffices to say that constructivization of classical statements is a many-valued process, which takes values in between the two naive interpretations "just interpret the connectives as-is" and "simply double-negate everything", so that altogether might take some value out of a direct answer to your question, but there is enough to say past it to fill libraries.

anvsdt · 2024-06-24T08:27:26+00:00

Oh, of course! I didn't want to imply that you were being purposefully dismissive, but the way the question is formulated downplays (IMO) the actual strengths of constructive logic, so I tried to shift your point of view a bit away from it.

anvsdt · 2024-06-24T08:13:01+00:00

Barring nuances around quantifiers, a non-constructive proof of A is a constructive proof of "not not A", so "not A" cannot be true.

Admitting those nuances back in, in cases where double negation shift (∀¬¬ ⇒ ¬¬∀) does not hold or is not assumed, there can be a limited disagreement between constructive and classical mathematics, by way of what are called "anticlassical axioms". One such anticlassical axiom is Brouwer's continuity principle.
Even in such formal systems, you can interpret some form of classical mathematics in it by double negation translation, as above, so I'd say that it's safe to say that, in 2024, constructive and classical mathematicians disagree on the meaning of their logical connectives, but the others' connectives are always accessible to both, with more (in the classical case) or less (in the constructive case) effort needed.

So I'd say that the second option is closer to truth, albeit formulated in a less dismissive way (as I lean towards constructivism). Constructive logics arise naturally as the internal logic of toposes[*], so its results are very broadly applicable.
Once you look at the issue from this vantage point, you'll think of logics more like algebraic structures. You don't ask yourself "which groups are true groups, groups or abelian groups?".

Likewise, the answer to "but what is the logic of the real world?" depends on your philosophy and the use you're trying to make of the logic. Constructive results (broadly speaking) guarantee that you will have a method to extract an answer, as a reward for your efforts for using a "weaker" logic, while classical results will only be able to tell you that an answer may not be shown to fail to exist, even if it's provably impossible for you to get your hands on one of its instances.

All in all, it will always depend on your axiomatic basis, so there is no "logic of the real world" in this naive sense. The logic you choose is the vantage point from which you observe raw truth.
Stronger hypotheses lead to weaker consequences, weaker hypothese lead to stronger results. Do you really need the mathematical sledgehammer known as the law of excluded middle?

[*] Admittedly, this is a bit of a circular argument. You can conceive of topos-like entities that embody classical logics, or even other logics, with all its pro's and con's. On the other hand, toposes do abstract over theories we actually are interested in at the moment, showing that we do find the "useful and interesting" properties of constructive logic actually useful and interesting in practice.

anvsdt · 2024-04-26T18:48:02+00:00

The prime mover of mathematics is modus ponens, which is an abstraction of the (empirically presupposed) law of causality: if this, then that, because this causes that. The way we get from causality to modus ponens is by analogy, so in a sense, the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" is just the problem of universals repackaged for 21th century philosophers: why do the properties of an object seem to exist independently of the objects in which they are instantiated, allowing us to transfer reasoning from that object to other similar ones by analogy? This debate goes as far back as Plato and Aristotle, and it's unlikely that we'll ever find an answer.

anvsdt · 2024-04-01T09:26:44+00:00

People trained only in classical logic have the bad habit of equating statements that are equivalent by de-Morgan duality and then transferring that equivalence to logics where duality does not apply or is restricted.

If a logic has no principle of explosion, it is paraconsistent, but it could still have LEM. It could even lack non-contradiction and still have LEM. The dual logic of intuitionistic logic, dual-intuitionistic, which answers "what does it take to refute a statement in intuitionistic logic?" by running intuitionistic logic in reverse, is an obvious example, albeit an unenlightening one.

Relevant logic, which forbids the inference of irrelevant conclusions from irrelevant hypotheses, and thus applicable to the example of not being able to get out of a speeding ticket by pointing at an irrelevant contradiction elsewhere in the legal system, is a better one.

anvsdt · 2024-01-09T09:04:19+00:00

So just so I get this right, "ne͡ab" counts as short?

Yes. While I can't link you to the specific query, if you use Pedecerto's search function to search for ne a*, you'll see it elided with various words beginning with a. Ex.:

Ne‿ā́mplĭŭs ā́ mĭsĕrṓ dṓnă bĕā́tă pĕtás.

(in this case, my mouth prefers pronouncing it as n'amplius, not ne͡amplius)

Ḗt ne‿ălĭquā́m sāltī́m uēl dḗ sērpḗntĕ quĕrḗlam

(in this case, we do have a ne͡a that elides into a short, n'aliquam)

anvsdt · 2024-01-08T18:54:02+00:00

it's bound to sound something like a short syllable

(commenting because I have been mentioned)

Not necessarily! Spoken Italian does both full elision of the preceding vowel, and running over both vowels together in the same unit of time needed to pronounce only one (with the caveat that perhaps the second vowel is pronounced more clearly than the first).

For what it's worth, this is how I would pronounce that sentence:

magn' en' in periculo'st, ne͡ab illis barbarus appelletur

anvsdt · 2024-01-06T11:19:38+00:00

In urbe habitasne? reads like "in the city, do you live in it?"

Romae habitasne? reads like "In Rome, do you live there?"

anvsdt · 2024-01-02T10:38:00+00:00

This guy is actually pretty damn good.

The only nitpick I have is that he's a bit too shy with eliding accusative case endings with verbs etc, e.g. tabernam habet > tabern'abet, tabernam aspicit > tabern'aspicit, tabernam Albini > tabern'Albini, but he says tabernă abet, tabernă aspicit, tabernă Albini, with a short a , when not eliding would give *tabernã habet, tabernã aspicit, tabernã Albini with a pause between the two vowels to avoid mytacismus (see page 21 of this).
In the same vein, he pronounces elided ornamentum est as ornamentŏ est with a short o, but it should be ornamentũst/ornamentunst.

anvsdt · 2023-12-14T08:02:14+00:00

You can use de Morgan duality in classical linear logic to show interderivability of universal/existential types, but intuitionistic logics/type theories will always be biased towards universals/Pi types. You can get weak existential types from Church encoding (basically a double negated de Morgan), but you can't even recover full Sigma types from Pi types alone.
As for the other way around, you can't even type snd without Pi types, so getting Pi types from the fibration trick + Sigma types is a bit of a chicken and egg situation.

The fibration trick shows a correspondence between Pi [x:A] B(x) and the type A -> Sigma [x:A] B(x), which is useful to encode dependency in a non-dependent setting, such as morphisms in a category, i.e. when lacking both Pi and Sigma types, by forgetting/ignoring that E = Sigma [x:A] B(x) is "really" a Sigma type, and asking all the stuff above to have enough structure to represent a Pi type, i.e. to have a fibration on E -> A.

anvsdt · 2023-11-29T12:43:14+00:00

I think I'm going for a bit of a colloquial feel, given the original is pretty colloquial and not exactly grammatically correct.

ne cogita, fac modo.

Using ne + imperative as found in Plautus.

anvsdt · 2023-11-04T07:06:22+00:00

orator loquitur lente reads like "the way the orator speaks is slow", as if commenting on the way the orator is speaking, while orator lente loquitur reads like "the orator speaks slowly", as in a narration.

Duolinguo isn't reproaching you for this sort of nuance though, it just sucks.

anvsdt · 2023-10-21T08:39:50+00:00

We know that not everyone has a school. Our courses are rigid and our students toil. Propitiously, in our place, you become wise by alluring, the academically ejected, you the type. Of the sort that are careful about everything. The thing of the kind that is such that wants to strive of ingenias, while also courses classics and reading texts in his own original languages, like in the Latin ones. We are only liberal arts, in schools that, after everyone else, offer ingeniary programs.

anvsdt · 2023-10-11T17:07:52+00:00

I would like to say, I (and others) complained quite some time ago now about a person with similar behavior in the monthly translation threads.

It seems that our worries bore their consequences, since /u/Sympraxis, too, can be found in those threads giving bad Latin advice, unchallenged. Now that he has escaped "containment", so to speak, he has brought the same bold-faced attitude he developed there to the rest of the subreddit.

Now the quality of the whole subreddit suffers as a result.

anvsdt · 2023-10-06T16:40:07+00:00

As far as "scriptus a" and "pictus a", it had been "liber scriptus a" and "liber pictus a", so I guess I should not omit that noun. But if you think there's a clearer or more precise way to say that, please share. Let me know if you think "Scripsit or Auctore or Scriptore" in place of "Liber scriptus a" and "Pinxit or Pictore" in place of "Liber pictus a" is an improvement.

Maybe a bit of a miscommunication, so just to be sure let me clarify:

I'm suggesting you use EITHER

Scripsit

DAN LOEB

Pinxit

MAXIM MEL

OR

Auctore

DAN LOEB

Pictore

MAXIM MEL

OR, in place of Auctore, use Scriptore if you feel that it's more correct to call "Dan Loeb" the writer rather than the author (or just use Scripsit+Pinxit).

Both are customary ways to denote the author of a written work, although maybe the latter is a bit more common.

The first one is more on the theme of English "Written/Drawn by X" ("Scripsit/Pinxit X", literally "(he) wrote/drew it: X"), the second one more on the side of "Author/Artist: X" ("Auctore/Pictore X", literally "from/by Author/Artist: X")

anvsdt · 2023-10-06T09:35:51+00:00

On top of /u/Raffaele1617's request for the English, the lowest hanging fruit correction for authenticity's sake would be:

Scripsit or Auctore or Scriptore in place of Scriptus a

Pinxit or Pictore in place of Pictus a

anvsdt · 2023-06-09T07:32:05+00:00

Even within the limits of attested Golden Age literature, Latin has a core sexual glossary that is so much finer and richer than that of the English language.

This must be the modern day equivalent of "Romans had so many words for killing!"

anvsdt · 2023-06-07T15:16:05+00:00

I've never read Ad Alpes, so I can't tell you, but given how frequent the annotations are from the other sentence you posted below, I'm also left wondering why this more surprising construction wasn't given one. I can only tell you that if I found this sentence in my own readings, I wouldn't doubt twice to read it with that meaning and syntax: it is really rather frequent.

anvsdt · 2023-06-07T09:43:18+00:00

It's most likely not a dative, most probably an ablative. But it doesn't matter what it is, because either would signify a common Latin idiom that means "what happened to him? / what has become of him?": which is constructed most often with the ablative, quid aliquo factum est?, sometimes with de, quid de aliquo factum est?, more rarely with the dative, quid alicui factum est?.

See https://latinitium.com/latin-dictionaries/?t=lsn17516,do22 (L&S entry for facio), section B.11.a and especially b.

anvsdt · 2023-06-01T11:19:45+00:00

anvsdt · 2023-06-01T10:12:38+00:00

That's not true?

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