Q Valerius Scerio

[quote name='Julia C

Idle speculation but Illyro-Thracian languages (in which I also think Etruscan belonged) also had definite articles coming at the end of the word. Of course, it's been a while since I touched either Etruscan or Illyro-Thracian languages (and of course, that it is a family is still disputed).

deligo v. amo and of course the Greek counterparts: stergo, agapao, phileo, and eros avunculus - maternal uncle patruus - paternal uncle famulus - the "family" of slaves a person owned

Ah, good call and the latter. As for the former, it just hadn't crossed my mind to use the pronoun over the adjective... And seriously Capitoline, we're not children here, though it may be necessary to go through the basics for the novice. best, Chris Weimer qui Latinae quinque annos studuit (er, studeo can take a dative, no? I see it can take several different ones...)

I bow to your superior translation skills. However, isn't nostrorum the genitive plural of noster? However, thinking about it, I would prefer nostrum. Also, I don't like how proavus sounds, so I used progenitor. However, I failed to check to see how often it was used. Actually I still have failed to do so. And finally, true that in nomine is a bit redundant, but then again I've been doing Vulgate translations recently. In nomine patris, fli, et spritus sancti. For the next translation, ofcourse, verba was a typo. Verbis has to be. Though I do have a question for you. For obsequor, do you need a dative to follow it? Obey...obey what? Just obey. No, I'm pretty sure you have to have a dative following it also. Please excuse me - at 6:45 in the morning I've been awake for quite a while. And now at 10:30, I'm braindead.

In nomine progenitorum nostrorum semper vincetis. A sanguine audimus, sed a verba obsequimur.

Ah, I thought so. The earlier you get to the source, the closer you'll get to the language. Thinking about it, what sort of language would we have with only modern Romance languages and the few that died early enough and still left a viable trace? I'm curious - I must admit I've nothing about medieval Spanish or Italian - did they use the de + noun as the genitive? What about dative? por? And locative? Only in, right? These are some of the aspects that probably could not easily be recovered. I admit again that I've not collected a large variety of Romance languages. Usually my research revolves around ancient languages. Actually, any Romantic study comes straight from dealing with Latin. I'd love to read what you've got to further my knowledge.

I'm sorry Cato, but if you cannot accurately represent what I say, even after clarifying twice, I feel as though this conversation is a dead-end. Good day to you, sir.

Sorry, I should have been more careful with my word choice. What evidence do you give that all languages evolved from a single language? That's all I'm looking for. And as for PIE, well we still aren't sure that it was ever a single language. Plenty of new hypotheses emerge that look at PIE differently, most notably that PIE was actually different languages that never fully emerged, but interacted with each other enough to produce several original PIEs. I won't comment yet on it's validity but it still remains an option. But we don't know exactly when it evolved, how it evolved, or when it was first utilized to form a language. Why be mutations? Merely having the capacity for language does not equate to actually having a language itself.

I've heard the contrary. My own studies, actually, would show the contrary. A language close to Vulgar Latin can be deduced, but not Vulgar Latin itself (as recorded) nor ever Classical Latin. Even by comparison of Vulgar texts such as the Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatus, there's still not a comparison. Then again, what are they using? If you take the languages only a couple hundred years off, then you can probably get a really good construction. But considering that we've lost thousands of languages, if not hundreds of thousands, which were never recorded over the history of mankind, then it would only seem appropriate that the proper method would be using the modern versions of the languages along with several ancient ones in reconstructing. However, if you have any sources, I'd love to see where you get this information from.

Thank you for your suggestions.

I still disagree with the premise. The only thing we know about PW is that it may have existed. You'll have to prove to me first that it definitely did. You're still avoiding my scenarios that I've given earlier.

Sorry, that comment was uncalled for. But I'd like to point out the flaws in your thinking. First, languages are not conservative. They are indeed combinatorial, but not conservative. Actually, they're quite fluent. Language changes every day with each person. Languages are constantly being bombarded with so many different elements daily that it's impossible to keep track of it all the time. What you imagine is on the scale of impossibility. Actually, I've been trying to keep track of "loads" of data for one of my projects - the reconstruction of Latin from Romance languages. Perhaps you don't understand the scope of this project...let me just say it's quite massive, even for such a simple task. Perhaps when we're through, we'll have a better understanding of just how far from the original reconstructed languages are. Anyone who speaks "PIE" and thinks that he is actually speaking something even remotely intelligible to is too far in the clouds. All we can do is get to approximations, nothing exact. And we'll never be exact. Actually, there's too much information to be exact. Now imagine trying to reconstruct Latin with only Spanish and French. Yeah, that's how possible it is. You're forgetting all the thousands if not ten thousands of languages which are entirely extinct and have left without a trace. You're ignoring the possibility of two groups forming languages separately at different parts of the world. It is quite possible, if not probable, that what you're going to get may be an approximation to something, but to the original language, you're far from it.

No, I never claimed that PW existed either. If you read my post, you'll see a perfectly reasonable alternative to PW. I still call *****. And as for my pessimism, I thought I made it very clear that it is impossible with our current evidence. Instead, you give some fanciful fantasy that one day we'll be able to look at a language that is impossible to figure out with earthly evidence. Save using a time machine, it ain't happening. But in case of a time machine, who knows the possibilities?

Very true about not being an ideal text. Did you get to choose? Also, I'm interested in the advanced books you use. For example, my Junior year after finishing Ecce Romani III (the purple book), we did the some of the Aeneid and Metamorphoses. My AP Latin year we did Horace and Catullus. Who do you do? Which books, exactly? Also, perhaps the biggest question I have - where can I find some decent "student" books for Classical authors, preferably with a well-done apparatus criticus? I'd very much appreciate any information you can offer.

Actually, all "random" selecters/generators are driven by algorithms, unless some new technology based on quantum mechanics just came out recently. Also, sarcasm aside, it's not merely that figuring out the first language is hard, but it's impossible, given our current evidence. We have absolutely no idea when or where our language evolved, when we began to speak even. How do we know the first wave of human emigration to southeastern Asian learned to speak while those in Africa remained grunting. How do we know that the grunting was arbitrary? Morphemes? We have no idea when they could have evolved. Furthermore, if they evolved earlier, we have no idea where we might have learned them from. Surely it's absurd to posit humans as the only "speaking" creatures. We had very close relatives a while back. Going beyond 10,000 years is daring, beyond 25,000 years is insane, to the dawn of human awareness plain stupid.

The Stones - seriously one of the greatest bands of all times. Sympathy for the Devil, Under My Thumb, Beast of Burden, Start Me Up, Brown Sugar, Gimme Shelter, Satisfaction, Paint It Black, Wild Horses. God, if the last one doesn't do you in, you have some distorted view of music.

Eheu! Mihi ignosce, mi amice! Drats, I wish I kept my list of errors that I made while using the book. If you do not mind, who do you normally teach? Pre-high school? High school? College? American? European? If American, any affiliation with the ACL?

Herte's a quick etymology I came up with: Phillips, genitive of Phillip, variant of Philip, from the Greek Φιλιππος - lover of the horse, from the words φιλος - friend and ιππος - horse. Ducit Amor Patria - The Love of the Fatherland Leads.

I would actually favor Villa Corneliana (knowing full well that it doesn't mean "house" but estate). Even better, you could do as the Romans did and just do "Corneliani" (the Cornelians) or "Cornelii" (of Cornelius). IIRC, neither domus nor villa were actually used to represent the family of a gens. By the way - you're using Ecce Romani? How far have you progressed? That was the book I used when I first started off. I still have the series.

Are "Proto-Elephant" and "Proto-Human" dialects of each other then, since ultimately all animals began as one? I think we've gone way too far in stretching things.

Constantinus - but he's saying that it's ok to use "House Cornelius" and you're saying that it's not still. If you want Cornelius as a Latin word still, then use proper English: House of Cornelius.

Go and ask your linguistic professors about evidence for the "Proto-World language." They will tell you - zilch. Nadda. None. There's no evidence at all for it. It doesn't exist. It's imagined by people who'd like to think that humans all developed language once and kept it then. Furthermore, you merely asserted that its a dialect, but haven't shown it to be such. Perhaps you'd like to clarify exactly what you meant then?

You are technically wrong. If you look at the English example you gave, "House of Johnson", not "House Johnson". The -i instead of -us denotes the genitive. In Latin, it would be literally Domus Cornelii (House of Cornelius).

This is absurd: you're fighting a straw man. The claim is that the only thing distinguishing a 'dialect' from a 'language' is the power of the speakers. Obviously, having an army isn't part of the definition of a given language. The point is that there is no real linguistic basis for distinguishing between dialects and languages. There is a linguistic basis for distinguishing between dialects and languages. Are Latin and Chinese dialects of each other? If so, how? If you can make your case that Latin and Chinese are dialects, and not separate languages, then I take back everything I said. Que? No one here is arguing that Cantonese is a dialect of Mandarin. But to reinforce the notion of the dominant dialect as means through force through that generalization is absurd. Mandarin and Cantonese are totally different languages altogether - as different as French and Spanish. They were dialects of an earlier Chinese language, just as Spanish and French were dialects of an earlier Latin language. I see what you're saying now, but you were very unclear. It is clearly wrong to classify a language by use of its force of speakers, and I guess I recede on your professors - it was most likely your understanding that butchered their view.