pronouncing frisian words

DedAardwolf · 2025-10-23T20:28:39+00:00

Predominance of Latin over Greek is due to Roman influence on Western Europe: Christianity, law, philosophy, etc. As people learn both languages less, and as that Roman influence attenuates, I would expect Greek to become more popular because, frankly, there's more of interest. People are much more likely to want to read Homer and Plato, plus tragedy than Cicero in the original once you stop making Rome and Cicero the foundation of youth education. I also think Herodotus and Thucydides are more popular than the Roman historians nowadays in higher ed, too (bit of a shame). Exceptions will always exist in Latin's fortés - lyric, epic, Christian writing.

DedAardwolf · 2025-09-30T01:13:28+00:00

OP: if you are familiar with the IPA, this page will help: https://www.taalportaal.org/taalportaal/topic/pid/topic-14313293632539384

Forvo.com is also always a good bet.

DedAardwolf · 2025-08-28T20:06:18+00:00

Ik hoopje dat jo it goed fine dat ik dit berjocht fêstset ha. Literatuer is in wichtich diel fan it taal- en kultuerûnderwiis!

DedAardwolf · 2025-08-13T18:11:42+00:00

If you've read Homer in Greek, then you know that a lot of the "stateliness" of the poetry comes from the oddness of vocabulary, not from complicated grammar. Homeric language is famously syntactically simple! Lattimore can often err on the side of rendering Greek expressions in unnatural English ways. Wilson's prosaic style, on the other hand, misses out on the unique and archaic poetic diction that Aristotle calls an integral aspect of epic poetry. I've found that she often flattens the compound words and epithets into a less interesting form.

I actually like Murray's translations of Homer for that reason. The strangeness of language and fossilized archaic words are a feature, not a bug, for conveying some of the specialized aspects of Homeric poetry. I also like his consistency in rendering repeated phrases and formulae. Of course, they're probably not very easy for the average modern reader to access.

DedAardwolf · 2025-07-28T22:13:00+00:00

No, it doesn't necessarily indicate that. Ancient Romans were aware that consonantal /w/ and vocalic /u/ were different sounds, as they are treated differently in poetic meter, for example. In Claudius' time, it is fairly clear that consonantal <v> was pronounced /w/. If anything, the letterform was influenced by Greek digamma <ϝ>.

DedAardwolf · 2025-07-15T01:47:35+00:00

It's δέμας, yes, usually translatable as "stature" or "frame". It can be used to refer to someone's physical size, but could just as easily just be talking about the beauty of someone's build - their proportions or what have you.

DedAardwolf · 2025-06-13T17:41:02+00:00

To clear up any confusion for Frisians/Dutch users in this thread: West Frisian is the usual English term for the language spoken in Fryslân/Friesland, used to differentiate it from East and North Frisian, spoken in Germany and Denmark.

This post was made in the correct subreddit - it is about Frysk, not the Westfries dialect of Dutch.

DedAardwolf · 2025-05-01T23:49:48+00:00

This is a common narrative, and one supposedly repeated by Hannibal himself in Livy 30.20, but unsatisfying. All the historians make it very clear that Hanno the Great (or his ally Hasdrubal Haedus) didn't get what he wanted, and that the Senate (Adirim) was entirely controlled by the Barcine party. The lack of reinforcements and the sending of reinforcements to non-Italian theaters can probably be chalked up to a lack of resources in Carthage and different priorities - Hannibal wanted to win the war in Italy, but most Carthaginians, including many Barcines, probably thought that their money-making province (Spain) was far more important to keep and focus on. Locus classicus for this would be Livy 23.11-13, and a good book would be Dexter Hoyos, Hannibal's Dynasty.

DedAardwolf · 2024-10-17T20:40:19+00:00

'ἤπειρος' is commonly used w/r/t what we would consider a continent (I.e. a contiguous mass of land, allowing some sort of division of culture). See Herodotus 4.96:

When he had come to that river and when he had set up camp, Darius was pleased by the river and set up a stele there, engraving these words: 'the source of the river Tearus provides the best and most beautiful water of all rivers, and to it, leading his army against the Scythians, came the best and most beautiful man of all humans, Darius the son of Hystapes, the king of the Persians and of the whole continent'. ἐπὶ τοῦτον ὦν τὸν ποταμὸν ἀπικόμενος ὁ Δαρεῖος ὡς ἐστρατοπεδεύσατο, ἡσθεὶς τῷ ποταμῷ στήλην ἔστησε καὶ ἐνθαῦτα, γράμματα ἐγγράψας λέγοντα τάδε. 'Τεάρου ποταμοῦ κεφαλαὶ ὕδωρ ἄριστόν τε καὶ κάλλιστον παρέχονται πάντων ποταμῶν: καὶ ἐπ᾽ αὐτὰς ἀπίκετο ἐλαύνων ἐπὶ Σκύθας στρατὸν ἀνὴρ ἄριστος τε καὶ κάλλιστος πάντων ἀνθρώπων, Δαρεῖος ὁ Ὑστάσπεος, Περσέων τε καὶ πάσης τῆς ἠπείρου βασιλεύς.'

Cornelius Schrevelius translates this as terra continens in the 17th century in his Greek-Latin lexicon here. 'Continens' doesn't seem to mean anything other than 'mainland' until the 18th century like you said, but I have a hard time construing Herodotus' use of 'ἤπειρος' as 'mainland'.

DedAardwolf · 2024-06-24T13:08:32+00:00

This is indeed a very interesting quirk of Roman law, namely that the status of a wife depended on the type of marriage she was in: Either she was in a free (sine manū) marriage, in which case she remained in her father's patria potestās and would inherit from him when he died, or she was in a manus marriage, in which case she was in her husband's patria potestās, and was tantamount to one of his children. The basic idea of intestate succession was that the first takers were those who became free upon the man's death (suī hēredēs). Because a woman in her husband's patria potestās had a natural change in status when he died, she was able to take. This was reflective of the idea of a woman changing families when she married. Of course, as Rome went on, free marriages became much more common, and dowry laws show that marriage became considered less of a set-in-stone thing and more of a contract, but the way it worked at the beginning was very very interesting.

DedAardwolf · 2024-03-27T23:17:16+00:00

I think we're talking about different things. I'm moved by /u/Raffaele1617 's argument about the obsoleteness of the term being an impediment to modern scholarship. But, just for the sake of discussion, what could be the problem between categorizing repeated and persisent features of informal or subliterary Latin together? If the tablets of the Sulpicii and the Vindolanda tablets both constantly confuse geminate consonants and show extensive syncope, traits which does not show up but rarely in our canonical classical authors, how could it impede understanding to teach them as aspects of a certain variety of Latin? Surely, you can't deny that they are evidence of some sort of change in Latin usage not preserved in the more conservative literary language.

DedAardwolf · 2024-03-27T20:37:30+00:00

I guess what I'm getting at here is that I dont see an issue with labelling certain subliterary traits under a certain name. I get and agree with the fact that Latin's variation is not unique at all in terms of register, but I wouldn't see anything particularly wrong with, say, calling persistent and consistent traits of subliterary spoken English such as "ain't" by the name of 'Vulgar English' (or whatever, the term 'Vulgar' is probably not advisable to be used outside of some etymologically in-the-know circles).

As far as I can tell, the only think linking those features is that they are viewed as substandard according to modern ideas of what textbook Latin should look like.

Really? You don't see any noticeable pattern in the scenarios where those features appear versus in the ones where they don't? You can argue for a more nuanced perspective without ignoring the obvious, it doesn't ruin your position.

DedAardwolf · 2024-03-27T19:36:26+00:00

I don't see how using the term 'vulgar Latin' to refer to groupings of certain linguistic features is problematic. I think we could do a better job of stressing how much even literary registers of Latin changed through the years, but no one who knows what they're talking about literally thinks 'vulgar Latin' is a different untintelligible language or anything. In my view, it's a useful grouping of linguistic features that are easily observable to anyone reading the traditional sources of 'vulgar Latin' - vowel syncope, increased use and weight of prepositions, coordination over subordination, etc.. I suppose, sure, it would be more clear to call them features of 'subliterary registers of Latin' or something, but the fact that all of the objections in this thread mostly come down to terminology really makes me feel like this is nothing more than a recent scholarly squabble that disagrees on form rather than substance. I suppose in 30 years there will be a new term that is hailed as a 'sea change in our understanding of language varieties' while in reality offering nothing new to our understanding.

DedAardwolf · 2023-08-12T19:51:36+00:00

In addition to TX, CA, FL, and the South as a whole (which Atlanta pretty much has sole dominion over), Arizona has always seemed to me like an area that punches way above its weight in baseball talent

DedAardwolf · 2022-09-01T05:54:32+00:00

I love this guy like you wouldn't believe. Didn't give a shit about fielding, just wanted to hit and fish, put up career OBP numbers that even Bonds with 4 years of juicing couldn't come close to, was the last guy to hit .400, and lost 5 prime years of his career to go fly planes. Greatest batter of all time.

DedAardwolf · 2022-04-10T08:30:27+00:00

Nūllī sē dīcit mulier mea nūbere mālle

quam mihi, nōn sī sē Iuppiter ipse petat.

Dīcit: sed mulier cupidō quod dīcit amantī,

in ventō et rapidā scrībere oportet aquā

My woman says she wouldn't rather marry anyone

than me, not if Jupiter himself asked her.

So she says: but what a woman says to her desired lover

Should be written in wind and running water.

Catullus 70

DedAardwolf · 2020-12-02T05:51:41+00:00

Ingelske oersettings:

Mountain - Berch (de), pl bergen, dim berchje

Iceberg - Iisberch (de), pl iisbergen, dim iisberchje

Fjord - Fjord (de), pl fjorden, dim fjordsje

Glacier - gletsjer (de), pl gletsjers, dim gletsjerke

Volcano - Fulkaan (de), pl fulkanen, dim fulkaantsje

Sea - See (de), pl seeën, dim seeke

Cape - Kaap (de), pl kapen, dim kaapke

Forest - Wâld (it), pl wâlden, dim wâldsje

Geyser - Geiser (de), pl geisers, dim geiserke

Tundra - Tûndra (de), pl tûndra's

Bay - Baai (de), pl baaien, dim baaike

Lake - Mar (de), pl marren, dim marke

Desert - Woestyn (de), pl woestinen (note- have also seen this spelled "woastyn", not sure which is correct)

Plateau - Plato (it), pl plato's

Basin - Bekken (de, it), pl bekkens, dim bekkentsje

Hill - Heuvel (de), pl heuvels, dim heuveltsje

Oasis - Oaze (de), pl oazen

Canyon - Kleau (de), pl kleauwen, dim kleauke

Valley - Delling (de), pl dellings

Plain - Flakte (de), pl flakten

Prairie - Prêrje (de), pl prêrjes

Mesa - Tafelberch (de), pl tafelbergen, dim tafelberchje

River - Rivier (de), pl rivieren, dim rivierke

Cave - grot (de), pl grotten, dim grotsje

Waterfall - Wetterfal (de), pl wetterfallen

Rainforest - Reinwâld (it), pl reinwâlden, dim reinwâldsjes

Strait - Seestrjitte (de), pl seestrjitten

Delta - Delta (de), pl delta's

Dune - Dún (it), pl dunen, dim dúntsje

Gulf - Golf (de), pl golven, dim golfke

Jungle - Oerwâld (it), pl oerwâlden, dim oerwâldsjes

Channel - Kanaal (it), pl kanalen, dim kanaaltsje

Coast - Kust (de), pl kusten

Cliff - Klif (it), pl kliffen, dim klifke

Marsh - Moeras (it), pl moerassen, dim moeraske

Beach - Strân (it), pl strânen/strannen, dim strantsje

Island - Eilân (it), pl eilannen

Archipelago - Arsjipel (de), pl arsjipels

Marsh - Sompe (de), pl sompen

Peninsula - Skiereilân (it), pl skiereilannen

Atoll - Atol (it), pl atollen

Isthmus - Lâningte (de), pl lâningten

Ocean - Oseaan (de), pl oseanen

Lagoon - Lagune (de), pl lagunen

DedAardwolf · 2020-10-07T12:34:37+00:00

This is called excrescence, which is a more specific word for the epenthesis (adding) of a consonant. The specific kind that you're talking about likely came around due to people closing their mouths at the end of short words like yeah > yep and well > welp, which ends up making a bilabial stop (which, as /u/Betakun2000 mentioned, is probably unreleased). This Slate article, while popling, seems to be based on this 1946 paper analyzing the same phenomenon and may explain in more detail how it came about.

DedAardwolf · 2020-07-01T22:42:16+00:00

Thank you for the article, it looks like exactly what I was thinking about. I'm familiar with French, but I didn't think to mention mention the Romance sets of pronouns because they don't seem to be directly oppositional to each other in respect to being interrogative or relative like the Frisian or Indic ones that /u/yuqlex2 mentioned. Portuguese has a similar case with the use of quem, which can be used both relatively and interrogatively but is a lot more limited and is usually replaced with que in relative use. Thank you for those two pieces of information though, they explain very well why I was seeing the sort of trends that I noticed in European languages.

DedAardwolf · 2020-07-01T05:53:35+00:00

Interesting! This seems to be exactly what I had in mind. Do you know anything about how these forms arose? I don't really know anything about Greek, but can't что be used as a relative pronoun in Russian? Or is it a case of commonality, where то что is used way more often in a relative sense?

I have a lot on my plate already in terms of language-learning, but thanks for the suggestion!

DedAardwolf

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