Re: Latin a loglang? (was Re: Unambiguous languages (was: EU allumettes))

I also was told this when I was learning Latin at
school. My teacher used to say that, if you're good at
Maths, you're probably good at Latin too.

I remember that we were studying Latin texts just as
if they were algebric formulas. The first thing to do
was to find the verb, then the subject and the
complements. It was just like a puzzle, with
hypotheses (is this an ablative ? a dative ? Ok, let's
try it with the ablative hypothese: oh no, doesn't
work, so let's try the dative, etc.) A little like
crosswords too.

It was very seldom that we could imagine, or "feel",
the general meaning of the sentence at first reading.
We had to decipher, like it was a secret code. This
was very different from learning a modern language.
And more, we were reading aloud Latin just as if it
were French, except for some conventional
pronunciation rules. We never mattered about stress,
long and short syllables, etc. Well, anyway, I forgot
nearly everything.

--- Trebor Jung <treborjung@...> wrote:
> Ray wrote:
>
> "Good grief! I remember my headmaster (who seemed
> positively ancient way
> back in the 1950s) telling us that Latin was a
> logical language; but even as
> a teenager, I could see the falsity of the
> statement. I didn't know that
> urban myth was still alive.
>
> "Of course I'm referring to Stephen Baxter here - I
> did notice John's smiley
> and, in any case, know that John wouldn't make such
> a foolish claim.
>
> "Latin is, of course, in no way a loglang in the
> proper sense of the word;
> it's not a mapping of any formalized logic. But
> Classical Latin, rather like
> the 19th 7 20th cent Greek Katharevousa, is derived
> from a conscious
> engineering of its natlang source. It could be
> considered a quasi-engelang -
> but loglang, no way."
>
> Here is an interesting page rebuttling this myth:
>
http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/LatinBackground/LatinandLogic.html
>
> Trebor.

=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


	
		
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