Re: Latin (was Language universal?)

At 7:47 am -0500 7/2/01, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Raymond Brown wrote:
[....]
>> No - it was because grammar jargon was first developed by the Greeks, where
>> vocative singulars are much more marked.   The Romans tended to take over
>> and (mis)translate Greek terms fairly unquestioningly; the Greeks have a
>> vocative - so must Latin.
>
>Oh!  Sort of like how English (as far as I can tell) inherited bunches of
>Latin-y terminology
Yep.

>(and eventually prescriptions like not splitting
>infinitives) from the Romans?
But I think it's unfair to blame this piece of pedantry on the Romans; like
"It is I", it derives from _misunderstanding_ Latin grammar.

[....]
>
>Our prof calls it nominative/vocative.  :-p
Seems reasonable.

>There's a locative?  Gee, I'll look forward to finding out about it.
>
>(British order?  Oh dear.  I remember how screwed up I was in German
>because I self-studied from a book that had Nominative, accusative,
>genitive, dative; and the textbook in the classes I ended up taking
>switched dative and genitive.)
Yep - it's those differences again.  The Germans one used: Nom., Gen., Dat,
Acc.  But they now tend to put them as we Brits have been doing for some
time: Nom., Acc., Gen., Dat.

[...]
>>
>> Don't worry - take it from someone who's being doing Latin for some 50
>> years, you're doing just fine!
>
>Wow--that's a lot of Latin!  =^)  I have a long way to go
And I hope that one day you will get there  :)

>(I someday want
>to read Vegetius' _De Re Militari_ and Caesar's Gallic Wars in something
>resembling the originals).
Why not, indeed?  Not sure about Vegetius, but Caesar writes quite
accessible Latin.

But stick with it.  Reading Catullus & Vergil in the original makes it all
worth it.

>Si vales, valeo,
>YHL
>(I have no idea how to mark macrons with ASCII)
I use the : symbol which is the IPA symbol for showing vowel length.
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At 10:06 am -0500 7/2/01, John Cowan wrote:
[...]
>> (I have no idea how to mark macrons with ASCII)
>
>Do as the Romans did: leave them out.
Not entirely true - a sign like the acute accent was used by some; and
there was a craze for showing long I as just that - a long I!   But there
was, 'tis true, no consistent method & they generally got omitted.

Indeed, unless wanting to indicate the actual pronunciation, they are best
omitted.

Valete

Ray.




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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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