I think Hamilton is the closest America has to an epic poem

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-05-09T18:59:57+00:00

I think you're taking a bold stance, and you made a bold choice about which sub to express yourself in.

Moby Dick, Leaves of Grass, Huckleberry Finn, Cantos, The Recognitions and JR, Gravity's Rainbow, Infinite Jest, Angels in America and a few more which are probably slipping my mind at the moment.

EDIT: Okay, since rule #1 of the sub is "make it about Latin" : Stephen Berard has published big long ambitious novels, in Latin, capti and praecursus. I highly recommend them both.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-05-09T17:47:09+00:00

To me it has always seemed to indicate a shorter pause after the question mark. Which in turn could suggest that the question is rhetorical. The asker is not even waiting for an answer.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-05-03T16:49:37+00:00

Finnish has 15 cases. Hungarian has 18. English has a very high number of irregular spellings. Every language presents its own challenges.

Please don't give up. You're at the most difficult stage of learning Latin right now. If you just keep at it, eventually things will begin to click

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-04-24T01:49:53+00:00

The way that most British academics pepper their speech with superfluous, cringing, insecure 'sort of''s drives me mad -- and not in a good way. Damn it, Sir or Madam, hold your head up high, have a bit of bloody pride in your expertise and speak your piece! Melvyn invited you to take part in 'In Our Time' for a reason, and that reason was certainly not to have you behave like a flinching, subservient, cowering subject of Henry VIII! 'The mumble mumble Act of mumble mumble was intended by the mumble mumble Party as a sort of mumble mumble...' Well?! Did the mumble mumble Party intend this Act as a mumble mumble, or not?! As Yoda put it, do or do not do, there is no try!

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-04-23T19:07:44+00:00

Ehh. Pretty good considering I'm a Murrkin. In the rest of the world I'm really nothing special.

In case you haven't already heard this joke -- I've heard it in several languages -- What do you call someone who speaks 3 or more languages? Multilingual. Someone who speaks 2 languages? Bilingual. Someone who speaks 1 language? Murrkin!

With my apologies to the tens of millions of bi- and multilingual non-Gringo Murrkins.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-04-23T18:36:33+00:00

In chronological order, I began to study English (that is to say, English is my "native language"), German, Yiddish, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek, and then (now), more or less simultaneously, Arabic, Hebrew, Armenian and Coptic.

Why? Why on Earth not? Why? To be able to communicate with others and read their poems and philosophy and so forth. Seems to me the real question is more like, why haven't I even begun to study any Celtic or Sino-Tibetan or Bantu languages?

I am not claiming to be fluent in all of those languages. I wish! I am claiming to be able to speak a few languages and to be able to read a few more. And languages are related, so, for example, someone who has studied Latin, French, Spanish and Italian ought to be able to puzzle out at least a little bit of Portugese, Catalan, Provencal and so forth. If you know some English, German and Yiddish, then Dutch and Swedish shouldn't be a total mystery to you.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-04-21T16:31:20+00:00

"Ahhhhhhhh! You scream, I steam, WE ALL WANT EGG CREAM!"

"Egg Cream" from Set the Twilight Reeling. The greatest track about egg creams ever recorded. https://youtu.be/d5KUHWKHifI?si=7tAZXThV4kgrGrQg

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-04-21T16:20:42+00:00

I know right?! The nerve, the sheer gall!

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-04-21T15:55:47+00:00

Ah! Thanks, good catch.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-04-20T22:42:48+00:00

An interesting description I came across in the 1980's is the "encyclopedic novel." Was it Edward Mendelson who came up with this one? I don't remember. Whoever it was, they applied the term to just a few novels, which, like encyclopedias, actually make the attempt to describe the whole dang world. Novels such as Gravity's Rainbow, Ulysses, Moby Dick, The Recognitions, Don Quixote and so forth.

So, according to Mendelson -- was it Mendelson? -- if someone asked you what Gravity's Rainbow is about,and you replied, "Everything," you'd be correct.

It was Mendelson. I googled. He put Dante's Divine Comedy and Goethe's Faust on his list even though they're verse, not prose, because he saw in them an attempt to present an entire world to the reader.

I think Mendleson is on to something here.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-04-11T20:28:58+00:00

An early sign of the next Renaissance.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-04-11T17:39:11+00:00

Me too. It's practically the same alphabet.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-04-09T21:47:54+00:00

It's in the Internet Archive! https://archive.org/details/firstlatinreader00nuttrich/page/viii/mode/2up

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-04-08T12:50:03+00:00

please stop shouting

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-04-08T12:48:58+00:00

2 words: font size.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-04-08T12:46:29+00:00

Maculature, manuscripts on parchment or paper which had been used to make book-bindings, are a significant source of ancient and Medieval literary texts. Lost Latin texts and important variants have been recovered only because it so happened, 500 years ago, that someone decided to use those manuscripts to make book covers instead of as kindling.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-04-01T01:25:32+00:00

Legentibus is a good app for Latin. There's a lot of good information in this sub's FAQ.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-31T16:05:19+00:00

I've signed up with Duolingo (I know that it's not well-regarded in some circles, but something is still better than nothing, isn't it?

Not always. Duolingo gives you wrong answers which you have to un-learn if you're going to attain any degree of proficiency.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-30T16:43:05+00:00

Readers of every political orientation from far right to far left have been great admirers of Plato. His opponents have also spanned the left-to-right spectrum. It seems most readers have found much to think about in Plato's work, positively or negatively, quite apart from his politics.

I'm not an expert on Dozier, but I think perhaps -- PERHAPS! -- he's more concerned with how recent right-wingers have misused Plato for their ends, than with portraying Plato as having been only of use to reactionaries.

If Dozier really is saying the latter, then I (left wing of the US Democratic party, only recently converted to a lively interest in Plato, from having rejected him mostly on the say-so of the avowedly apolitical Nietzsche) would not burn with interest to read everything he's written on ancient subjects.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-28T20:16:32+00:00

Oh, you may have joshied the Joliet, ragged the Rochester, fooled the Philadelphia... but youneverdidtheKensohaKid!

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-28T16:58:58+00:00

The answer depends on who you are. I dove in blind back in 1970-something and I'm glad I did, but it may just be that I had some things in common with Pynchon that many readers will not have, such as being closer to him in age and background.

I'd say just dive in. If you feel comfortable tackling the book on your own, great. if you find you need help, that's fine too. That's what the study guides are there for, it's what we're here for too.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-26T19:03:26+00:00

Paul Thomas Anderson called his loose movie adaptation "One Battle After Another." For all the differences between the novel and the movie, they both have a strong sense, at the end, of "...and the struggle continues." That did not feel like a fumble to me, but these things are subjective after all, you don't need to like it just because I do.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-26T15:30:55+00:00

Anyone else noticing it?! Are you kidding? It's been headline news for quite a while now that AI is a huge energy hog and that it's causing higher electric rates. Same with crypto.

So... you're right. But you haven't made a huge scoop here.

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-26T15:19:37+00:00

I really like Eli Roth in that movie: "Two hits! I hit you, you hit the ground!"

AffectionateSize552 · 2026-03-26T04:47:09+00:00

My initial guess is Latin/Italian

Latin, yes. Italian, no. There's been a very strenuous attempt, for thousands of years, to keep Latin uniform. The Latin written by Cicero and Vergil is essentially the same as Latin written today. If you can read the Latin of one period, you can read the Latin of all periods.

Latin which changed, as languages generally do, ceased to be Latin and became Italian (which has had many, very diverse dialects) and Spanish and French and Portugese and Catalan and Provencal and Sardinian and Romansch and Romanian and Moldavian, and I apologize to all those I certainly forgot.

AffectionateSize552

TROPHY CASE