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On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

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Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#251

Post by vik0 »

neilkk wrote: post #240
vik0 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>During the Yugoslav period, there was a minority group of Bulgarian migrants in one region of Yugoslavia. Like most linguistic groups they adopted the national language and believed themselves to be Yugoslav. However their group was sometimes referred to as 'Macedonian' because the corner of Yugoslavia near Bulgaria is also near Macedonia in Greece. Wow, this is... biased. Sincerely, a Macedonian. People living in M…

Thanks for proving my point!

You didn't even bother to read the comment, did you?

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#252

Post by rsynnott »

nindalf wrote: post #119
gsky wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indian Empire is older than Roman Empire if i'm not wrong and even America had emires before Europeans colonized. You need to read more history

At no point was all of modern India under one administrative entity until modern India. Even British India wasn’t one state, it was a patchwork of provinces governed by the British and Princely States. Modern India only came into being in 1948, when the Princes were gently persuaded to take a hike. But you’re right in the broader sense, that Indian people feel that India has been around for longer even if it hasn’t.…

I mean, most of the Roman Empire wasn’t controlled by Rome for most of Rome’s history. Particularly towards the end (it went on for about a thousand years after they lost Rome), Rome was more of a _concept_ than anything else.

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#253

Post by rsynnott »

ghaff wrote: post #10

I wonder how much Roman numerals are even taught any longer. Maybe 5 years ago now I was traveling with a friend who went to a solid US suburban high school outside of a major city. Younger than me but certainly not young. And she asked me what a date written in Roman numerals was in the numbering system we normally use. I was somewhat floored. Thinking about it though. It sort of is cultural/historical trivia. How m…

Hrm, _are_ they actually taught rigorously somewhere? I mean, I assume you’d be exposed to them if you studied Latin, and I vaguely remember them being used as an example of a non-positional number system in maths, but other than that my only real exposure to them was the BBC (BBC TV shows used to show the date they were produced in Roman numerals, for reasons I was never particularly clear on.)

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#254

Post by Manuel_D »

neilkk wrote: post #243
Manuel_D wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there are continuities in language. It's changed over time, but it's still descended from those older cultures. French has it's roots in Frankish people that settled there in the migration period, with Latin and other influence. It's not just people arbitrarily claiming lineage. There are also specifics in culture and tradition, e.g. Christmas trees date back to pagan Germanic festivals.

Modern German is no closer to the language of a randomly chosen 'Germanic Tribe' than English, Prussian, Danish, Yiddish, Swedish, Czech, etc. Most people living in what is now France would have spoken other languages than French well past the time of the Frankish people. Literally all over Europe, and a lot of the world, people have trees at Christmas.

Incorrect, English does indeed have German influence but it also has more Celtic influence. One is closer to Old German than the other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_High_German

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#255

Post by hnbad »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #198
hnbad wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shouldn't be surprising given that even orthography and names were often not standardized consistently for most of history. For example, Adolf Hitler's grandfather was called Hiedler , not Hitler and the spelling change was the result of his father's name, Alois Hitler, being changed later in his life after first being recorded as Aloys Schicklgruber (the family name being that of his mother rather than father a…

That was a quick escalation to Hitler - just goes to prove Godwin's law! :) I didn't realize the subtractive style really dates to the middle ages, but that certainly seems consistent with the coins - I checked a bunch more and none seem to use it.

As far as I know the subtractive style was in use in Rome but the purely additive one was more widely used until the Middle Ages. There are also examples where multiplicatives are used but the only thing I can find on Wikipedia is an example from the Middle Ages: "XIII. M. V. C. III. XX. XIII" (13573 = 13x1000 + 5x100 + 3x20 + 13) and a medieval one using superscript: XV ^C XIX (15x100 + 10 + 9)

As for the Hitler one: he just happens to be a widely known person with a family name that changed not so long ago. Plus I actually first learned this from someone joking about whether he'd have been as successful if his father had never changed his name from Schicklgruber. Fun fact: "Hitler" was officially supposed to be pronounced with a long "i" (ee) like Hiedler but apparently Hitler didn't like this pronunciation and suppressed it once in power.

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#256

Post by nindalf »

tsunamifury wrote: post #245
nindalf wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the other response. So much better than yours. You just call me dumb, not much I can respond to there. And the rest of your comment is barely coherent, can’t respond to that either. Awful.

Don’t lash out when you are hurt. It’s embarrassing.

Did you notice that your comment is flagged and mine isn’t? That should tell you something. Up to you if you want to fix your behaviour though.

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#257

Post by tsunamifury »

nindalf wrote: post #256
tsunamifury wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t lash out when you are hurt. It’s embarrassing.

Did you notice that your comment is flagged and mine isn’t? That should tell you something. Up to you if you want to fix your behaviour though.

Haha my interface shows the reverse. So I think we are both being played here. Although you flagged me Likely so it shows you that to make you feel better.

But again you don’t know how these larger meta systems work so I’m guessing … well you get it.

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#258

Post by sorokod »

vik0 wrote: post #235
sorokod wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a Russian name for Istanbul - Царьгра́д (Tsargrad). The relevancy of this traditional name in our time can be glimpsed from the media org tsargrad.tv , a Russian equivalent of fox news.

It's not just a Russian name, it's the Slavic name for Constantinople. It's used in all Slavic-speaking countries when teaching Byzantine history, of course, written with slight distortions depending on the Slavic language in question

The use of Byzantine seems to imply middle ages history. Do check out the Constantinople Agreement from 1915.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople_Agreement

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#259

Post by neilkk »

Manuel_D wrote: post #254
neilkk wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern German is no closer to the language of a randomly chosen 'Germanic Tribe' than English, Prussian, Danish, Yiddish, Swedish, Czech, etc. Most people living in what is now France would have spoken other languages than French well past the time of the Frankish people. Literally all over Europe, and a lot of the world, people have trees at Christmas.

Incorrect, English does indeed have German influence but it also has more Celtic influence. One is closer to Old German than the other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_High_German

Germanic tribes in the ancient world did not speak Old High German. The status of Old High German as the origin language of modern German is part of the construction of German history in exactly the manner I have described.

There is very little Celtic in Old English. It's very close to a synthesis of Anglish and French. There's much more Danish in English than there is Celtic.

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#260

Post by neilkk »

vik0 wrote: post #251
neilkk wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for proving my point!

You didn't even bother to read the comment, did you?

I read the whole thing. It's literally a showcase of all the mental tics and obfuscations involved in the construction of artificial national histories as I described in my earlier comment.

Accusations of bias, the suggestion that 'only nationality X would question this aspect of our proud Y history', turning minor linguistic coincidences into meaningful history, the admission that 'everyone is from all over the place, but nonetheless we are all definitely from Z because [no evidence]'.

Self-definition based on 'we are W because we're not U and definitely not V.' The denial that it's possible to force the construction of a cultural, linguistic or ethnic group, despite numerous examples of exactly this happening. Appeal to biased histories written by true believers. Appeal to linguistic treatises only available in the language in question. Appeal to the time-honored authority of ... the 1880s, a (not very distant) era when every single group of people in Europe was trying to become a nation.

Alexander the Great did not live in Skopje. He did not speak Macedonian, 'a language closer to Bulgarian than to Serbian'. There are at least 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe which have closer cultural, political or ethnic connections with Alexander the Great than Macedonia does.

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