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docoflove1974

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Posts posted by docoflove1974

  1. Language barrier between Romans and those they conquered.

    in Lingua Latina

    Posted

    I also wouldn't forget the role of traders, who used probably Greek or perhaps Phoenician at first as a lingua franca (depending on the area), and who many times became either linguistic experts for a given area or who had local contacts who were translators. These contacts would be useful for the Romans in general--both military and civilian--in communicating in Latin and the native language. I seem to recall that this in particular was the chain of events in Gaul and Hispania, but I'll have to check that later with my sources--so don't completely quote me on this.

  2. Grain in Rome?

    in Academia

    Posted

    I just did a quickie search on here, as the topic of 'corn' has come up several times. We used to have a regular contributor, Andrew Dalby, who was an expert in this field. At any rate, it seems that most of the time the consensus here is that 'corn' refers to either a grain, or either wheat or barley.

  5. Etruscan minutiae

    in Historia in Universum

    Posted · Edited by docoflove1974

    I'm still working on the Tuscany pictures, but I finished the pictures I have of Chiusi and the Etruscan museum, including pictures of the cineraries and sphynx that I was mentioning. They're on Photobucket.com: click here

     

    (edit to add: When my parents give me their pictures, I'll post them, as I'm almost positive my dad took some of the fibulae.)

  10. Computer automatically deciphers ancient language

    in Historia in Universum

    Posted

    Heh this is what I know I've been telling my students for 11 years now...and many more before me have as well...as of now, most computer translations don't work.

     

    There are only a couple of dictionaries I use with my Spanish classes: one larger one (SpanishDict.com, which uses definitions from various sources) and a smaller one (WordReference.com), which is used in SpanishDict.com. And even still, for a single word they're great, but for a translation they're not good. Nothing is.

     

    However...the issue of corpora is an interesting one. More and more there are larger and larger online corpora for many languages, particularly ancient languages. Perhaps with a dead language it's possible to do some further analysis into translation, simply because you don't have a live morphology or syntax that is changing. I'd be curious to see what really comes of all this.

  11. Etruscan minutiae

    in Historia in Universum

    Posted

    Thank you so much, all (I tried to do this yesterday, but the satellite connection sometimes doesn't wish to behave). After posting, Dad and I had a sneaky suspicion that the Etruscans traded with the Phoenicians, which lead to the other influences. This lead to another question, and probably one for another thread (if it's not already on here): why did the Egyptians (and others) let the Phoenicians have the sea trade? Why didn't they develop their own? But like I said, that's for another thread, probably another area of the site altogether.

     

    RE the fibulae...this helped us a lot. So were they only used for men? Were they only for the clasping of capes? How was the hair clasped back, if ever (by men or women)?

     

    Ci vediamo e grazie mille...tomorrow I'm on my journey home, so I'll check back in a couple of days. ;)

  12. Etruscan minutiae

    in Historia in Universum

    Posted

    My family and I went to the Etruscan Museum in Chiusi, which is in Central Tuscany; it was a wonderful experience, as my dad and I (the history buffs of the family) know very little about the Etruscan people. The range of artifacts, both of artistic and quotidianal in nature, were enlightening and amazing to behold.

     

    But we had a couple of questions and queries...maybe someone on here can help us?

     

    1) Definitely there are known Greek influences (and of course Italic/Roman influences later), but many of the ossuaries, statues, and other personal carvings had almost an Egyptian element to them; certainly the various sphynxes, but even many of the faces (especially some of women) had the characteristic Egyptian eye and face shape. These statues were of the 7th through 5th centuries BCE. Was there a known link between the Etruscans and the Egyptians?

     

    2)Also, there were some statues that were in positions and of likenesses that reminded us tremendously of Indian style (and specifically, more like the Buddha). These carvings were also of the 5th century BCE. Does this make sense to anyone? Or are we dreaming this?

     

    3) There were on display pieces called 'fibulae' that totally puzzled us. All those on display were metal--mostly bronze, I think--and either semi-circular with a large clasp or flat. They seem to be decorative in nature; my dad thinks that they were used to hold hair back, but the name makes me think of the leg, so maybe it was an anklet? And if so, that explains the circular ones, or the ones with clasps...but not the flat ones.

     

    Any and all answers are very appreciated! I did take pictures, and I'll post them when I get back to the States; the signal here is fairly weak.

  13. ...who decided, lets call it Latin

    in Lingua Latina

    Posted

    Etruscan was not an Italic language, nor even Indo-European...in fact, it's a linguistic isolet, meaning we don't know of a language family that connects to it.

     

    The languages of the Sabines, Aequi, Marsi and Volsci have very little to data to discuss, so that I know of there isn't much to say. There are questions as to whether Ligurian, Rhaetian, Siculian and Elymian are Indo-European. It's possible, however there are very few data--mostly toponyms--but the feeling is that they are IE, just probably not Italic (Beekes 1995: 26).

     

    The closest to Latin is Faliscan, which we don't have much evidence on. We have some inscriptions in the territory of the Falerii, and a 4th century BCE cup found in Rome. (Baldi 1983: 25)

     

    Oscan and Umbrian (or the Sabellian languages) are the other Italic languages, and they are fairly close to Latin. Oscan was spoken by the Osci in Campania--in other words, it's the language of the Samnites. We have about 200 inscriptions from Campania, Samnium, northern Apulia, Lucania, Bruttium and Messana. Chiefly we have the Tabula Bantina, a list of municipal regulations, and the Cippus Abellanus, another municipal document. (Baldi 1983: 29-30) Oscan did have its own alphabet, but also there are inscriptions using the Greek alphabet as well as the Latin alphabet (Beekes 1995:26).

     

    Umbrian, spoken in the region to the east of Tuscany, also is recorded in various inscriptions and, principally, the Iguvine Tables. These were from 400-90 BCE, and contained directions for and descriptions of various religious ceremonies performed by a group of priests called the Atiedian Brothers." (Baldi 1983: 30) These tables were written in their own script, which is the youngest in the Latin alphabet (Beekes 1995: 26)

     

    There are a fair number of similarities to Latin, although with such limited data it's always hard to definitively make this call. Definitively, we have a much larger bank of data for Latin, especially of Old Latin, to make the comparisons, but it seems clear from the data available that these are the languages that are related.

     

    References...and definitely a couple of handbooks on all things Indo-European:

    Baldi, Philip. 1983. An Introduction to the Indo-European Languages. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

     

    Beekes, Robert S.P. 1995. Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

  14. V the series

    in Hora Postilla Thermae

    Posted

    I saw the first half of episodes, and was intrigued. But I admit the very long layoff killed the interest in me; I just didn't care enough to make sure to watch the second half. I vaguely remember the original series in the 80s, and this plotline seemed a bit familiar.

  15. ...who decided, lets call it Latin

    in Lingua Latina

    Posted

    ...and of course what happend to the Latini then? when did they decide to call themselves Romans and no longer Latini?

     

    Latini became romans and some other provincials became Latins. Confusing...

     

    It seems to have more to do with the founding of Rome as a stable city. Once that group of Latini identified themselves as Romans first (of the Latini general tribe secondarily), that's when the switch was made. The language was used by the entire tribe, hence the term being from there. But the city of Rome was the center of the eventual Republic, and because of this those specific people (and their civilization, and the actions henceforth) are considered 'Roman'. But the region in general was always considered Latium, the land of the Latini people. Rome just happened to be the major hub, the central and most important city.

  18. Second thoughts on Wikipedia...

    in Hora Postilla Thermae

    Posted

    I will admit something...I recently had students use Wikipedia for phonetic information on a project. *gasp* *shock* To be honest, while I found a couple of inconsistencies, the point of an intro to linguistics class is to have a general knowledge of linguistics. And most sites which details of a given language's phonetic inventory is too complex and detailed for an intro class. But not true of the Wikipedia site...I was amazed. Now, for anything else they do for me in class, they cannot use Wikipedia as a source, but I've taught them how to use Wikipedia as a starting point for a list of links and/or references, and to go from there. (Let's see if they follow instructions!)

  20. Eastern and Western Italics

    in Romana Humanitas

    Posted

    By language at least, yes, the Latins and the Samnites were related. The Italic branch of the Indo-European language family is broken up into two major groups:

     

    --Latino-Faliscan: which has two major daughter languages, Latin and Faliscan, which was spoken by a tribe to the north of Rome; and

    --Sabellian: which is the branch of Umbrian (spoken in Central-Eastern Italy, they originally lived in what is now Tuscany, but were pushed east by the Etruscans), and Oscan (the language of the Samnites)

     

    We have quite a few inscriptions of both Oscan and Umbrian, mostly from 400-150 BCE, some even in the Latin alphabet. But it seems as the Romans took a stronghold over the region, the other Italic tribes and the Etruscans assimilated or perished.

     

    (For more, see Carl Darling Buck's A Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian, with various editions still in print. Info above taken from Robert S. P. Beekes (1995) Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing.)

  21. Romanization in Asturia (language and identity)

    in Imperium Romanorum

    Posted

    I've read that Spanish sounds more similar to the ancient Roman accent than the Italian one; from readings of Roman poetry that I've heard, this sounds correct. If it's the truth, it might point out that Asturia was heavily romanized. Remember that they had kings with Latin names as late as the eighth century if not beyond.

     

    Kings with Latin names is a fact that would point only to aristocracy trying to be, if not in fact, romanized. It is not evidence in and of itself the entire population of Asturias was as thoroughly integrated. However, there seems to be linguistic evidence of heavy use of Latin during the Empire.

  22. Romanization in Asturia (language and identity)

    in Imperium Romanorum

    Posted

    Can you cite a source for this opinion regarding sound similarity

    between spoken Spanish and the sounds of "ancient" Roman poetry?

    Speaking as a former teacher of both Spanish and Latin and a student of Italian I do not see how such a general statement can be made. In the long history of spoken Latin there was at least one major pronunciation shift that involved

    the quality the vowel accent and possibly more changes regarding consonant pronunciation and syllabication. In looking at the pronuciation of the Spanish of Spain I hear two varieties of the letter C, one in the Madrid area and the other from Sevilla, neither of which have produce the sound of the letter C in Republican times.

    Queen Victoria's name is a Latin word. Does that prove her native language was Latin?

     

    Agreed; I would say that Spanish is not the 'closest to Latin' in the phonology department. The palatalization of various consonant groups alone, as well as the reduction of the vowel system, takes it out of the running. Most Romance linguists (including myself) tend to point to Sardinian as 'being the closest', but in all honesty none of the modern languages quite sounds like classical Latin.

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