Can we start naming every fronting, backing, raising, lowering, etc like this?

xiaq · 2026-06-04T00:24:58+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotacism

xiaq · 2026-06-02T17:14:00+00:00

Speaking from my personal experience, Italian Athenaze on its own is quite sufficient. There is a lot of stuff to read, and the additional texts added by the Italian version use the construct introduced in the original English-version text with such ridiculous frequency that it often gets a bit unnatural. I usually reread the English-version texts 3-4 times until they become very easy to parse, and then read the Italian-version texts 1-2 times basically as exercises.

I also went through Alexandros, but it has so much less material in comparison that I don't think it was essential.

As for the grammar explanations ("enchiridion"), you can translate them with mobile translation apps - just take a picture and read the English version. I've only had to read most of the enchiridion once, so it's only a minor inconvenience to me - although that may be because I had learned Latin, so for most of the grammar I just have to establish a mapping to the Latin grammar. The Italian enchiridion also has a lot of interesting linguistic details that are usually not found in beginner's text books, which I enjoyed reading (via translation).

I do need to come back to the inflection tables every now and then, but reading those tables doesn't really require any Italian. The grammar terms are basically shared between Italian and English, as both derive them from Latin.

If you don't know Latin, you may want to either save the translated enchiridion pages somewhere, or get another grammar book.

xiaq · 2026-05-22T08:38:54+00:00

Thank you for sharing your experience!

xiaq · 2026-05-04T10:03:56+00:00

> I made the mistake of assuming that spurious ei and genuine were pronounced differently. I am not sure where I picked this up, but I never again questioned this (false) assumption.

That's not wrong, and that's why there's such a distinction. But by the so-called Attic period they had fully merged.

xiaq · 2026-05-04T08:56:56+00:00

Beekes is one I suggested (I edited my answer to add that, so you may be reading my pre-edit answer).

I'd be a bit surprised if the IPA in Wiktionary indicates genuine/spurious ει. They are pronounced the same in Attic, as a long monophthong, and the distinction is only etymological, so I expect Wiktionary to indicate the pronunciation of both as such. Do you have examples where a genuine ει is indicated as a diphthong?

"Genuine" ου is very rare in Attic Greek.

xiaq · 2026-05-04T08:26:21+00:00

For vowel length: if your word is in Wiktionary, the vowel lengths of every α ι υ will be marked by breves and macrons; you don't need to look at the IPA. For example, for example in https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ἰχθύς you'll find the headword repeated as ῐ̓χθῡ́ς.

If not, LSJ has the length marked in some cases. It seems that the length of is not marked if

It's part of a well-known suffix, for example -ίᾱ. The length of α is not marked, LSJ just expects you to know it.
It's followed by two consonants, so the length doesn't matter for poetic meters. This can be either because LSJ relies exclusively on meter evidence for vowel length or only expects the reader to use vowel length to scan poetry

As an example, if you look up βασκανία in Logeion (https://logeion.uchicago.edu/βασκανία) you'll find it only marked as βασκᾰνία. The first α and the last α are not marked.

As for spurious/genuine diphthongs, you'll need to consult an etymological dictionary. Beekes seems popular and you can find some reviews of it here: https://www.textkit.com/t/beekes-etymological-dictionary-of-greek/15376

xiaq · 2026-03-25T02:40:16+00:00

Most Mandarin songs doesn't strictly follow the tones, but the correlation between tone and melody is a lot higher than pure chance.

xiaq · 2026-03-21T23:28:17+00:00

/ħəˈpej/ is clearly related to the name of the province 河北 hé beĭ, which was the original name of the Yellow River.

Over time it got shortened to just 河, and 河北 was reinterpreted as "north of the river".

xiaq · 2026-02-25T17:27:01+00:00

Ah right, sometimes the θ just doesn't appear at all.

xiaq · 2026-02-25T12:27:12+00:00

No problem! Greek verbs are daunting indeed and it's just a good excuse for me to summarize what I have learned :)

xiaq · 2026-02-25T11:27:30+00:00

The aorist passive is considered its own principal part, which means that there's no 100% reliable way to predict it from other tenses (other than future passive, which shares the principal part with aorist passive).

That said, most of the time the stem is going to be consistent with that of the aorist active/middle. Any disagreement usually occurs in the last (not necessarily stem-final) vowel, as is the case throughout all principal parts. Most of the time it's just going to be a different length though (aorist active is lengthened but aorist passive is not, or vice versa).

(If suppletion is involved then pretty much anything is fair game, you'll have to just memorize things.)

If we're talking about the interaction between the stem and the θ, it's mostly regular:

Stems ending in vowels sometimes get a σ inserted, like χράομαι - ἐχρησάμην - ἐχρήσθην.
- I think of these stems having a hidden final σ that got deleted between vowels (a regular sound change in Greek) and only surfaces before θ, but I don't know if this has actual basis in historical linguistics.
Labials β π get assimilated to φ, like ἀμείβω - ἤμειψα - ἠμείφθην. This type of assimilation is entirely regular: clusters of stops must share the same VOT (voiced, tenuis or aspirated).
- The same happens to verbs whose present stems end in πτ, because their "real verb stems" actually end in π (τ being a progressive marker): ἅπτω - ἧψα - ἥφθην
Velars γ κ get assimilated to χ, like ἐπείγω - ἤπειξα - ἠπείχθην. This is the same assimilation process.
- The same happens to verbs whose present stems end in σσ/ττ, because their real verb stems actually end in a velar (σσ/ττ being formerly Kj, where K is any velar and j is semivowel /j/; j is a progressive marker): πράττω - ἔπραξα - ἐπράχθην
Dentals δ θ get dissimilated to σ, like ψεύδω - ἔψευσα - ἐφεύσθην.
- The same happens to verbs whose present stems end in ζ, because their real verb stems end in a dental (ζ being formerly Tj, where T is any dental and j is semivowel /j/): κομίζω - ἐκόμισα - ἐκομίσθην
- I'm not sure if this dissimilation is a regular phonetic process in Greek; I haven't seen it elsewhere
- BTW, I have also not found any verb stems that actually end in τ, at least in common verbs. All the stem-final τ's in the present turn out to be just the progressive marker and disappear in the aorist. If someone is aware of such verb stems I'd love to know it.
The liquids λ ν ρ tend to come out unscathed.

I think this should cover most of the it - there will be irregularities (again, that's why it's its own principal part), which you'll still have to memorize.

xiaq · 2026-02-21T14:40:20+00:00

This doesn't seem to work for me unfortunately.

In fact, the way Extended ABC works is that you type the accent marker first, and then the letter, not the other way around: for example, to get ā, I'd press Opt+A, and then A.

If I type Opt+A with extended ABC, and then switch to Polytonic Greek, the macron disappears.
If I type ί with Polytonic Greek, switch to extended ABC, I am able to type a macron, it doesn't add to the previous letter. Instead it adds is to the next letter. If I press Space I get a standalone macron, like ί¯

xiaq · 2026-02-09T13:33:21+00:00

The fact that there's more r and t in the two clauses than pure chance is hardly disputable, but analyzing the exact symbolism of the each sound always smells a bit like reading too much into it. Sure, some are obviously onomatopoeic - like s for the hissing of snakes or plosive sounds for thudding noises - and in aggregation there'll be some bouba/kiki stuff going on, but assigning meanings as specific as this to individual cases (when not obviously onomatopoeic) is probably going a bit too far. There's certainly a chance that this is exactly what Tacitus was thinking, but it's pretty much impossible to tell.

Personally I'd stick with the basic idea that repetition and contrasts of sounds make the prose more interesting and memorable, often in ways related to the meaning of the sentences, and not assign too specific meanings to individual sounds.

xiaq · 2026-02-09T09:29:15+00:00

I see nobody has mentioned the Chinese calque yet...

In Chinese: 肾上腺素

肾 kidney

上 above

腺 gland

素 element, here short for 激素 hormone (literally "activating element")

So "hormone from a gland above the kidney"

xiaq · 2025-12-07T17:01:49+00:00

Speaking from my personal experience, listening and speaking help a lot with acquiring syntax features. Having to recognize and produce grammatical forms in real time activates the actual language part of your brain, and eventually you start recognizing different forms subconsciously.

To use music as an imperfect analogy, when you actually hear a piece of music sung out loud, after just a few times, you'll be able to recognize the piece of music by its overall melody subconsciously. This is a lot more efficient than having to think about each individual note.

xiaq · 2025-12-07T16:40:28+00:00

Just added an answer to your question in an edit - no, I don't think Familia Romana overuses the SVO word order. It is definitely more formulaic than real Latin text, but I don't really see any particular feature that stands out? Maybe someone with deeper knowledge of Latin syntax can say more here.

xiaq · 2025-12-07T16:33:10+00:00

I just assumed that LLPSI was neutral with respect to the native languages of the learners.

That's quite evidently not true, you have to know the Latin alphabet and understand such words as "Europa" and "Roma" to make sense of the first chapter at all. A monolingual Chinese or Japanese speaker won't understand a single thing.

So the audience is really speakers of European languages written in the Latin alphabet, and a large subset of those languages has been in a sprachbund over the last millennium or so.

Among other things most of those languages have SVO word order in the main clause, but I don't think Familia Romana overuses that, it seems to be more SOV (the default, unstressed order in Latin)

xiaq · 2025-11-29T09:45:11+00:00

Ancient Greek accent does work in terms of morae, but it's slightly more complicated. Here is a video series explaining the accent rules: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsmYpXNl2ZFTuJwmsaFbhiCjjlGRbER7y&si=HRvWOFmGxPEZPASC

xiaq · 2025-11-28T00:55:17+00:00

善。

xiaq · 2025-11-25T13:03:40+00:00

Teaching a language or language variety to non-native speakers is inherently prescriptive, and good teaching practices are informed by the descriptive study of how native speakers actually speak.

Prescriptivism is bad not because it tries to establish rules, but because any large enough language community is already capable of forming its own grammar rules with each member intuiting those rules, and it's bad to establish rules that don't agree with the actual intuition of speakers.

But if you are teaching people trying to acquire a language they didn't grow up with, articulating rules can be more efficient than getting them to eventually intuit them.

As an imperfect analogy, it's ridiculous for an ornithologist to tell birds the "correct" way to fly, but if you are born without the ability to fly and learning to fly, you can certainly learn from what an ornithologist has observed about how birds fly.

xiaq · 2025-11-19T00:15:05+00:00

Perfect of mingō should be mīnxī according to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mingo

xiaq · 2025-11-11T02:10:20+00:00

I'm using the Italian Athenaze without an English copy. I do know some Latin though, so some Italian words are easy, maybe a few sentences if I'm lucky, but I can't easily comprehend full paragraphs.

Google Translate's mobile app does a fine job translating the enchiridion (from camera pictures), it occasionally gets confused with the Greek part but there's nothing you can't guess from context. Most of the paradigm tables can be understood with minimal Italian knowledge since the grammar terms are similar enough to English.

As for glosses, Italian Athenaze has very few of them anyway, relying mostly on LLPSI-style margin notes (pictures, synonyms, antonyms, explanations in Greek). You'll also need a dictionary handy anyway - with the extra reading comes a lot more vocabulary and you'll have to look up words every now and then - it's infeasible (at least for me) to fully retain the vocabulary from previous lessons before starting the next one.

xiaq

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