Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Defense of Latin

lithub.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 199 posts

Re: In Defense of Latin

#181

Post by rimliu »

School-Cotton wrote: post #175
rimliu wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To provide just a glimpse of how expressive Lithuanian can be, just a some derivations from the verb valgyti (to eat): valgąs — present active participle valgęs — past active participle valgydavęs — frequentative past active participle valgysiąs — future active participle valgomas — present passive participle valgytas — past passive participle valgysimas — future passive participle valgant — adverbial present active…

But you gave English translations for all of those examples. So they don’t actually show that Lithuanian is more expressive than English.

One word instead of four is quite expressive, I'd say.

Re: In Defense of Latin

#182

Post by asveikau »

School-Cotton wrote: post #113
asveikau wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we are talking about differing times in evolving languages. All the letters of Latin are most certainly not pronounced in Spanish. That is why a bunch of words end in -o instead of -us or why no verb conjugation ends in -m or -t anymore. At some point people in Spain stopped writing Latin and started writing Spanish, at which point spelling matched pronunciation. But that was not today's Spanish. There were b…

A few more examples: 1) z and s, or ce and se, are pronounced the same everywhere except some parts of Spain. I guess not an example of silent letters but still, an example of a distinction that existed historically/etymologically but that no longer does in the spoken language for the vast majority of speakers. 2) The h is silent in every dialect despite having usually represented a real sound in Latin

> z and s, or ce and se, are pronounced the same everywhere except some parts of Spain.

I didn't cite that because I'm already blabbing too much about this topic, and I didn't want to overwhelm people, but yes. Also, as cited by the sibling comment, the merger of /b/ and /v/. Also, in many accents, but not all, Y and LL are the same. Also, consonants like /b/ or /g/ are sometimes swallowed when followed by /w/.

Re: In Defense of Latin

#183

Post by rimliu »

Koshkin wrote: post #173
guiraldelli wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ačiū! Aš pradėjau mokytis lietuvių kalbą todėl šeimos priežasčių. Dabar, aš mokausi todėl, kad tai man yra viena iš gražaisių kalbų pasaulyje: kaip tai gražiai garsa, koks ekspressiva lietuvių kalba yra ir kiek įdomios knygos parašytos lietuviškai! :) Oh, feel free to correct my mistakes! :D

Sometimes it feels like Lithuanian (as well as a number of other languages like Vietnamese) could benefit from having its own alphabet.

Well, we do have it. Of course, it is Latin based, but still.

Re: In Defense of Latin

#184

Post by hackyhacky »

Ntrails wrote: post #180
hackyhacky wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason is that the grammar is so developed that the word order is essentially arbitrary Lots of languages are like this. Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, etc. And those are just the ones that I know. Janu miluje Petr. -- PETR loves Jana. Petr miluje Janu. -- Petr loves JANA. Petr Janu miluje. -- Petr LOVES Jana. etc etc The only people who say that Latin is uniquely flexible are those people with no experience i…

Janu miluje Petr. -- PETR loves Jana. Petr miluje Janu. -- Petr loves JANA. Does context define subject/object since otherwise these seem equally to mean Jana loves Petr?

These sentences do not mean "Jana loves Petr." Subject/object relationship is determined by case marking suffixes on nouns.

Another comment proposed an apropos analogy:

English is like position-based parameter-passing.

  sentence.love("Petr", "Jana")
Czech is like keyword-based parameter passing.

  sentence.love(object="Jana", subject="Petr")

Re: In Defense of Latin

#185

Post by rimliu »

guiraldelli wrote: post #159
rimliu wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the one I am currently learning (Lithuanian). Smagu matyti, kai nelietuviai mokosi lietuvių kalbos. Sėkmės!

Ačiū! Aš pradėjau mokytis lietuvių kalbą todėl šeimos priežasčių. Dabar, aš mokausi todėl, kad tai man yra viena iš gražaisių kalbų pasaulyje: kaip tai gražiai garsa, koks ekspressiva lietuvių kalba yra ir kiek įdomios knygos parašytos lietuviškai! :) Oh, feel free to correct my mistakes! :D

Puiku!

   > Oh, feel free to correct my mistakes! :
If you wish so ;)

I will have my comments in Lithuanian, I think you will be able to understand them just fine.

1. „mokytis lietuvių kalbą“ -> „mokytis lietuvių kalbos“ [0].

2. „todėl šeimos priežasčių“ keisčiau į „dėl šeimyininių aplinkybių“. „Todėl“ čia netinka: jis prasmiškai artimesnis angliškam „thus“, o anglišką „for/because of“ atitinka „dėl“. Pavyzdžiui: „automobilis sugedo, todėl pavėlavau į darbą“ ir „Į darbą pavėlavau dėl automobilio gedimo“.

3. „viena iš gražaisių kalbų pasaulyje“ — beveik idealu, tik „gražaisių“ turi būti „gražiausių“.

4. „kaip tai gražiai garsa“ — turbūt norėta pasakyti „kaip tai gražiai skamba“. "a sound" (noun) -> „garsas“. "to sound" (verb) -> „skambėti“. Stilistiškai vietoj tai „tai“ geriau tiktų „ji“.

5.„koks ekspressiva lietuvių kalba yra“ -> „kokia išraiškinga lietuvių kalba yra“ arba šiek tiek geriau stilistiškai: „kokia išraiškinga yra lietuvių kalba“. „Kalba“ — moteriškos giminės, todėl „kokia“, ne „koks“.

6. „įdomios knygos parašytos lietuviškai“ — nors atskirai paėmus ši frazė gramatiškai teisinga, bet šiame kontekste (su „kiek“) taisyklingiau būtų „kiek įdomių knygų parašyta lietuviškai“.

Nepaisant kelių klaidų, dar kartą noriu pasidžiaugti, kad yra žmonių, kuriems ši kalba patinka ir kurie jos mokosi. Kuo didžiausios sėkmės!

[0] http://www.vlkk.lt/konsultacijos/3919-mokytis-ka

Re: In Defense of Latin

#186

Post by Koshkin »

rimliu wrote: post #183
Koshkin wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it feels like Lithuanian (as well as a number of other languages like Vietnamese) could benefit from having its own alphabet.

Well, we do have it. Of course, it is Latin based, but still.

The reason, in this case, is mostly historical (religious affiliation). At the same time, Latin alphabet is phonetic and as such it is not really a good single base for many languages that have more sounds than Latin (even there some letters represent two different sounds). Excessive use of diacritics is not a good solution. Some languages address this by mixing several base alphabets, but ideally, each should have its own alphabet; besides the obvious advantage, this allows to avoid issues arising from the sharing of an alphabet between completely different languages (like "literal" carrying over personal names etc. without taking their pronunciation into account; this issue even exists in regard to Chinese, where names spelled in pinyin are carried over into English leaving them unpronounceable for a native English reader; but forget pinyin: here is a last name - Chrzaszcz - you'll have a hard time even remembering how to pronounce it a while after you have been told how).

Re: In Defense of Latin

#187

Post by simonblack »

The biggest value of Latin in today's world is the existence of what are called Latin roots in English.

Latin (and Greek also) roots are building blocks which are 'clicked' together to form many, many English words. We don't have to learn the meaning of several hundred separate words, when we can learn a handful or so roots and discern what an unknown word, new to us, means by disassembling it into its component roots.

Examples: (Latin) vid/vis=see, audi=hear, equi=equal, voc=voice

          (Greek)  scope=see, micro=small, tele=far
Using these roots we can make up words like 'microscope', 'equivocal', 'auditorium', etc, etc.

So if we come across some new word like 'television' and break that down to the Greek 'far' and the Latin 'see', we can work out that a television is something that lets you see something that is far away. The word 'telescope' does the same thing using Greek-only roots and also lets you see something far away in a different manner.

In the past, it was considered bad-form to mix both Greek and Latin roots in the one word, but since the arrival of 'television', it seems we aren't as fussed about that any more.

Re: In Defense of Latin

#188

Post by SamBam »

tsimionescu wrote: post #131
triska wrote: post #2

Latin is the most powerful natural language I know. The reason is that the grammar is so developed that the word order is essentially arbitrary, and that, together with other grammatical features, gives rise to a method I have not seen so fully realized in any other language: It allows you to express the content in such a way that the way you express it matches the content. For example, consider the verses: Daedalus…

It would be interesting to know how much this was a feature of everyday Latin versus how much it may have been essentially a constructed language used only by highly-educated people. Would a Roman farmer in the field even understand that sentence? Would it sound natural to them? Would they ever speak it? The disconnect between literary language and everyday language is sometimes relatively high even in today's world…

I think there certainly would have been a distinction, since even vulgar English, with its much more limited grammar, has education/class distinctions in how grammar is applied.

In many English communities, using the subjunctive case would mark the speaker as being "posh," as would using I/me/my "correctly" ("me and me gran had supper").

I think the average uneducated citizen would similarly note someone as "posh" if they heard them using the pluperfect subjunctive, and, unlike a modern English speaker who has been immersed in "correct" English through the ever-present media of today, they might not actually understand the sense correctly.

Re: In Defense of Latin

#189

Post by edjrage »

simonblack wrote: post #187

The biggest value of Latin in today's world is the existence of what are called Latin roots in English. Latin (and Greek also) roots are building blocks which are 'clicked' together to form many, many English words. We don't have to learn the meaning of several hundred separate words, when we can learn a handful or so roots and discern what an unknown word, new to us, means by disassembling it into its component root…

Actually, your examples just showed how useless roots are to make up words. I wouldn't be able to guess the meaning of any of the words you mentioned just by knowing their roots. So maybe they're easier to memorize than random syllables, but that's about it.

Re: In Defense of Latin

#190

Post by afiori »

btilly wrote: post #61
ARandomerDude wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being inflected marks marks Latin as a primitive language, not a sophisticated one > it is easy for a language to lose grammatical rules, but very hard to gain them You're assuming loss of grammar over time is a mark of sophistication, but it's hard to see how. I think you have it backwards. Literary, classical Greek and Latin absolutely destroy English in their sophistication.

Primitive means, relating to, denoting, or preserving the character of an early stage in the evolutionary or historical development of something. Being inflected is a mark of a language that hasn't yet become positional. It is therefore an objective mark of primitiveness in the language. Sophistication, on the other hand, is in the eye of the beholder. Which is more sophisticated, flowery descriptive speech or very s…

Primitive is like prototype, they clearly communicate that it is meant to be improved.

> Being inflected is a mark of a language that hasn't yet become positional. It is therefore an objective mark of primitiveness in the language.

This assumes that positional languages work better or are more efficient, but that is not clear to me.

"flowery descriptive speech" a la Jane Austen communicates complex ideas. It is just that different subject have different concept of what constitute useful complexity.

Both Terry Tao and Jane Austen could have written their works in almost any language with little impediments.

In particular here one of the scientific advantages of English is not its simple morphology but its permissive lexicon, where creating new word for new concept is a common occurrence.

If by historical accident we happened to speak Latin to this day it is likely that the major loss (compared to English) would be puns.

Post reply on HN