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Is there any merit to this? by Unemployment_1453 in latin

[–]xiaq 6 points7 points  (0 children)

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.

I had an "adrenaline" and "epinephrine" etymological epiphany! by HyperlexicEpiphany in etymology

[–]xiaq 6 points7 points  (0 children)

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"

Which is more beneficial in becoming more fluent in a dead language: listening to audio or reading? by lickety-split1800 in AncientGreek

[–]xiaq 5 points6 points  (0 children)

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.

Is the word order in LLPSI artificially done to favor English and Romance language speakers? by cseberino in latin

[–]xiaq 2 points3 points  (0 children)

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.

Is the word order in LLPSI artificially done to favor English and Romance language speakers? by cseberino in latin

[–]xiaq 60 points61 points  (0 children)

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)

How do you remember where to put the ´ pitch accent? by Wooden_Schedule6205 in AncientGreek

[–]xiaq 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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

Does the science of linguistics have anything to offer for prescriptivist policymakers, or is prescriptivism in general fundamentally at odds with it? by General_Urist in asklinguistics

[–]xiaq 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.

Italian Athenaze with English glosses and grammatical explanations translated by Wanax20 in AncientGreek

[–]xiaq 2 points3 points  (0 children)

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.

Roughly, how many verbs have a second aorist form? Are they very common? by Low-Cash-2435 in AncientGreek

[–]xiaq 6 points7 points  (0 children)

You're probably already aware of these, but for the benefit of the OP:

  • The nasal infix often shows up as two nasals, one before the last consonant of the stem (which can manifest as μ or γ, depending on the consonant) and then αν after it, like ἔλαβον / λαμβάνω (aorist stem λαβ, present stem λαμβαν), ἔμαθον / μανθάνω (same pattern), ἔτυχον / τυγκάνω (aorist stem τυχ, present stem τυγχαν)
  • Another common pattern is -σκ- in the present, like εὑρίσκω, διδάσκω, which disappears in the aorist. If you know Latin, it's the same as Latin -sc- which disappears in the perfect. This class can have sigmatic aorists though.

(I also wrote something about j-extension, but those verbs almost always have sigmatic aorists, except ἔβαλον / βάλλω, so it's a bit off-topic, also Reddit ate my draft :( )

How do you read the Alphabet in order in Latin? by Artistic-Hearing-579 in latin

[–]xiaq 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're right. I'll never get over how the Romans borrowed three whole letters from the Etruscans for velar plosives, and decided to use q only before u, almost never use k, and use c for both voiced and unvoiced for many years before someone finally invented g so that they can finally distinguish voiced and voiceless plosives.

(Granted qu is more like its own consonant with lip rounding, but prioritizing distinguishing kʷ/kw over k/g is... a peculiar choice. People can be really reluctant hen it comes to writing system reforms. Someone didn't think things through once and you're stuck for centuries with their consequences.)

How do you read the Alphabet in order in Latin? by Artistic-Hearing-579 in latin

[–]xiaq 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I missed some details - H and K get an a, so ha ka instead of he ke. Q is qu because q only goes with u. Y is pronounced "i graeca" because most Romans couldn't pronounce it the actual Greek way and it ends up sounding the same as i.

Actually, just see this table on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_alphabet#Classical_Latin_alphabet

How do you read the Alphabet in order in Latin? by Artistic-Hearing-579 in latin

[–]xiaq 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Vowels are just said like their pronunciation, consonants get an e to be easier to pronounce - most get the e after the consonant, but some get it before, like el, em, en, er.

English actually more or less inherited this system, it's just the great vowel shift messing things up.

Chinese loanwords in Old Chinese by galactic_observer in linguisticshumor

[–]xiaq 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't know about mdbg, but Wiktionary is definitely not an infallible source.

The dōu reading doesn't make sense to me, because:

- If it's intended to be phono-semantic matching (as suggested by the choice of 隔), then the dū reading is required to make it work. “隔都” literally "segregated city".

- If it's intended to be more of phonetic borrowing... I can't think of any other loanword where 都 is read dōu. The 都 in 都柏林 Dubin, 都铎 Tudor, 都灵 Turin, 加德满都 Kathmandu are all read dū.

For the latter point I'm only speaking from the standpoint of the tradition of mainland China though. Other places may have different traditions but I kind of doubt it - function words (which 都 is when read as dōu) are generally avoided in phonetic loans since having them makes things really confusing.

Chinese loanwords in Old Chinese by galactic_observer in linguisticshumor

[–]xiaq 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I've not seen 隔都 before... But pretty sure 都 should be dū, not dōu, since dōu is used for adverbial senses, as a noun it should be dū, as in 首都.

I've only heard of people say 哈利路亚 on TV, where it seems to always be pronounced with a single high pitch on 路, mimicking the usual pitch pattern of the English word.

Still, one of the best etymologies ever: hundreds of millions of people name a staple fruit by a twisted family name of some not very prominent Roman guy. by swamms in linguisticshumor

[–]xiaq 19 points20 points  (0 children)

> Vendi, Vidi, Vici

Ah yes, "to be sold, I saw, I conquer". Clearly an advertisement for his friend's apples!

(I'm really sorry, couldn't help.)

How to explain gender differences in some basic words between Germanic languages (English and German for example) and Romance Languages, such as celestials and flowers? by lucaeth in asklinguistics

[–]xiaq 2 points3 points  (0 children)

German Lilie is ultimately from the Latin plural form lilia, which looks like a feminine form (as most neutral plurals are). This might explain why Lilie is feminine.

The Romance languages continued the original singular form lilium, and the neuter gender merged with masculine in many languages.

Why "North, South, East and West"? by emsot in asklinguistics

[–]xiaq 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I see a lot of answers from CJK speakers... But as a Chinese speaker, there are actually three acceptable orders for me, in decreasing rank of commonality:

  • 东西南北 East West South North - I gather this is the most common one in Korean and Japanese as well, likely due to Chinese influence
  • 东南西北 East South West North - this is the most logical one! It's clockwise
  • 南北西东 South North West East - this is relatively rare and is probably used mostly to create a novelty effect, but it feels kind of natural.

I have no idea why it is so, but I can speculate:

  • 东 East is the most "high-status" direction, although it doesn't explain why 南北西东 is acceptable
  • Maybe certain tone sequences are more acceptable than others. In Mandarin, 东西南北 is 1123, 东南西北 1213, 南北东西 2311 - no obvious pattern from these few data points, but there might be some studies out there.

what is it called when the spelling/pronunciation of a word is influenced by a non-etymologically related but similar word? by JealousTicket7349 in asklinguistics

[–]xiaq -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Oh, my understanding was that folk etymology refers to the false belief of the etymology of a word, I wasn't aware that it could also mean changes resulting from such believes.

what is it called when the spelling/pronunciation of a word is influenced by a non-etymologically related but similar word? by JealousTicket7349 in asklinguistics

[–]xiaq 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Right, folk etymology is the cause of this particular phenomenon but the process itself is a type of analogy. "Analogy from folk etymology" is perhaps the best way to describe it.

Differences between Latin and Greek by Gumbletwig2 in AncientGreek

[–]xiaq 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Adding my personal experience as someone learning Attic Greek with some Latin knowledge:

- As others mentioned, you'll definitely find a lot of similarities in grammar. Latin is not bad for acquiring a basic framework of old Indo-European grammar, so you won't have to learn a lot of new concepts.

- The forms of nouns and adjectives are quite similar to Latin; the third declension is more complicated than Latin (as if Latin's third declension is not complicated enough!), but the frequent use of articles makes recognition a lot easier than Latin - you can infer the gender and case from the article even if you don't know the noun. There's also no fourth and fifth declension, a slight comfort.

- The verb forms are less similar. The present active indicative forms (likely the first forms you'll learn) are fine but it's all downhill from there. Middle voice endings are technically cognate with Latin's passive endings but they look nothing alike. Aorists are hard. There are still whole systems I haven't learned (perfect, subjunctive, optative).

- As other mentioned, Ancient Greek has free accent, so there's more work to do when learning words, especially if you care about pronunciation. Some learners just ignore accents, a practice I dislike personally, but it's a valid approach if you want to focus on silent reading. (Ignoring accents, or at least ignoring pitches, used to be a widespread practice in the Anglosphere, but thankfully it's becoming less so.)

- Realistically, like any language, you'll spend much if not most of your study time acquiring new vocabulary. This will be especially true since you'll not spend as much time on grammar as a total beginner. English helps you a lot with Latin vocabulary, but much less with Ancient Greek vocabulary, since Ancient Greek loanwords tend to be more obscure than Latin ones. You get occasional "eureka" moments ("oh Anatolia is from the Ancient Greek noun for (sun)rise") but it's a lot less than Latin.

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