Posts: 45892
Threads: 537
Joined: July 24, 2013
Reputation:
109
RE: Battle of Vukovar
July 23, 2022 at 12:16 pm
(August 25, 2019 at 8:51 am)FlatAssembler Wrote: (August 24, 2019 at 4:47 am)downbeatplumb Wrote: Just use English. You mean like this:
Beet-kah zah Voo-kaw-vahr nee-yay say daw-gaw-dee-lah!
Damn, that's even worse than the current Croatian writing system.
Or do you mean giving up Croatian language in favour of English? Why English?
Is there anybody else here who thinks it would be better if English hadn't replaced Latin as the language of international communication? While Latin isn't completely politically neutral (it has its descendants that are alive today, it's easier for Italians or Romanians to learn Latin than it is for Croatians or Germans), it's quite a bit more neutral than English is, since it's no man's native language. And Latin is, unlike English, frozen in time: if you speak Latin, you don't need any special education to read 2000 years old texts (the same is true, although to a much lesser extent, for Greek). That's also why, in Latin, words are pronounced exactly as they are written (and Latin alphabet was specifically made for Latin, not adapted to it, as it is to English and Croatian). That's not quite true for Croatian, and is completely false for English (in English, if you speak as you spell, you likely won't even be understood). Latin also doesn't have sounds that are difficult to pronounce (with the possible exceptions of the "gn" in "agnus" and "sc" in "scientia", but those complications only exist in traditional pronunciation, not in classical pronunciation), and English does. I don't know about you, but to me "three", "free" and "tree" sound the same, and so do "pan" and "pen". Latin grammar appears to be harder than English grammar at first, because of the declensions and the conjugations. However, once you get deeper into the language, you see that it really isn't. When you write complex sentences in English, you need to put the words in the right order or you risk not being understood. The same is not true for Croatian or Latin, which have declension and conjugation systems. And quite often, in English, it's impossible to make the words fit the order, so you need to insert new words (it, to, do, that, then, than, there...), which don't mean much, just to fill the gaps created by the grammar rules. I think that Latin, when everything is taken into account, is actually easier than English. I have studied Latin for two years in high-school, then I haven't written in it or spoken it for three years. And now I've written an essay about vegetarianism in it (you can read it at the bottom of this web-page), an essay about anarchism (you can read it at the bottom of this web-page), a short essay about atheism (you can read it at the bottom of this web-page), and I had an on-line discussion about Vukovar (I've linked to it in this thread). Tell me you can do that with English without having seriously studied it!
Of course, Esperanto is even better suited for being an international language, it was specifically designed for that. It has only two cases and only one declension for nouns and one for adjectives, and the verbs are similarly all conjugated the same way. That's probably just enough morphology to prevent confusion in long sentences, but not enough to be intimidating to new learners or to be difficult to remember. And words being pronounced exactly as they are written was one of its design goals.
Students of Latin have something in common with necrophiliacs: they both enjoy a dead tongue.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
Posts: 7259
Threads: 506
Joined: December 12, 2015
Reputation:
22
RE: Battle of Vukovar
July 23, 2022 at 12:24 pm
It's widely claimed that Latin is a dead language, because, it is no longer commonly spoken, but, it does persist in some tiny traditional Catholic monastic circles, and so, I don't think that it is completely dead. Plus, it is said/sung in the Tridentine Mass.
Posts: 2020
Threads: 133
Joined: July 26, 2017
Reputation:
5
RE: Battle of Vukovar
July 23, 2022 at 1:15 pm
(This post was last modified: July 23, 2022 at 1:18 pm by FlatAssembler.)
(July 23, 2022 at 12:16 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: (August 25, 2019 at 8:51 am)FlatAssembler Wrote: You mean like this:
Beet-kah zah Voo-kaw-vahr nee-yay say daw-gaw-dee-lah!
Damn, that's even worse than the current Croatian writing system.
Or do you mean giving up Croatian language in favour of English? Why English?
Is there anybody else here who thinks it would be better if English hadn't replaced Latin as the language of international communication? While Latin isn't completely politically neutral (it has its descendants that are alive today, it's easier for Italians or Romanians to learn Latin than it is for Croatians or Germans), it's quite a bit more neutral than English is, since it's no man's native language. And Latin is, unlike English, frozen in time: if you speak Latin, you don't need any special education to read 2000 years old texts (the same is true, although to a much lesser extent, for Greek). That's also why, in Latin, words are pronounced exactly as they are written (and Latin alphabet was specifically made for Latin, not adapted to it, as it is to English and Croatian). That's not quite true for Croatian, and is completely false for English (in English, if you speak as you spell, you likely won't even be understood). Latin also doesn't have sounds that are difficult to pronounce (with the possible exceptions of the "gn" in "agnus" and "sc" in "scientia", but those complications only exist in traditional pronunciation, not in classical pronunciation), and English does. I don't know about you, but to me "three", "free" and "tree" sound the same, and so do "pan" and "pen". Latin grammar appears to be harder than English grammar at first, because of the declensions and the conjugations. However, once you get deeper into the language, you see that it really isn't. When you write complex sentences in English, you need to put the words in the right order or you risk not being understood. The same is not true for Croatian or Latin, which have declension and conjugation systems. And quite often, in English, it's impossible to make the words fit the order, so you need to insert new words (it, to, do, that, then, than, there...), which don't mean much, just to fill the gaps created by the grammar rules. I think that Latin, when everything is taken into account, is actually easier than English. I have studied Latin for two years in high-school, then I haven't written in it or spoken it for three years. And now I've written an essay about vegetarianism in it (you can read it at the bottom of this web-page), an essay about anarchism (you can read it at the bottom of this web-page), a short essay about atheism (you can read it at the bottom of this web-page), and I had an on-line discussion about Vukovar (I've linked to it in this thread). Tell me you can do that with English without having seriously studied it!
Of course, Esperanto is even better suited for being an international language, it was specifically designed for that. It has only two cases and only one declension for nouns and one for adjectives, and the verbs are similarly all conjugated the same way. That's probably just enough morphology to prevent confusion in long sentences, but not enough to be intimidating to new learners or to be difficult to remember. And words being pronounced exactly as they are written was one of its design goals.
Students of Latin have something in common with necrophiliacs: they both enjoy a dead tongue.
Boru
Apparently, not this student of Latin: https://www.reddit.com/r/latin/comments/...s_a_whole/
They says Latin makes them cry tears of blood, not tears of joy.
Posts: 29568
Threads: 116
Joined: February 22, 2011
Reputation:
159
RE: Battle of Vukovar
July 23, 2022 at 1:37 pm
There's certainly some crying involved on this end.
Posts: 45892
Threads: 537
Joined: July 24, 2013
Reputation:
109
RE: Battle of Vukovar
July 23, 2022 at 2:03 pm
(July 23, 2022 at 12:24 pm)Jehanne Wrote: It's widely claimed that Latin is a dead language, because, it is no longer commonly spoken, but, it does persist in some tiny traditional Catholic monastic circles, and so, I don't think that it is completely dead. Plus, it is said/sung in the Tridentine Mass.
A dead language means that us has no native speakers - no one today learns Latin as a first language, so it qualifies as ‘dead’. A language with no speakers at all is called an ‘extinct’ language.
There’s another category for little-spoken languages called ‘dormant’, but I don’t remember what the standards are (and can’t be arsed to look them up).
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
Posts: 2731
Threads: 4
Joined: September 21, 2018
Reputation:
33
RE: Battle of Vukovar
July 23, 2022 at 2:10 pm
(August 25, 2019 at 8:51 am)FlatAssembler Wrote: I think that Latin, when everything is taken into account, is actually easier than English. I have studied Latin for two years in high-school, then I haven't written in it or spoken it for three years. I had English for 9 years and Latin for 7.
English is easier than Latin by a huge margin. The fact that you seem to have problems with learning English does not make Latin easier.
Cetero censeo religionem delendam esse
Posts: 16787
Threads: 461
Joined: March 29, 2015
Reputation:
30
RE: Battle of Vukovar
July 23, 2022 at 2:17 pm
(July 23, 2022 at 12:08 pm)FlatAssembler Wrote: So, I am the exact opposite of a fascist, am I not?
What about Tito? Do you like that guy?
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
Posts: 2020
Threads: 133
Joined: July 26, 2017
Reputation:
5
RE: Battle of Vukovar
July 23, 2022 at 2:22 pm
(July 23, 2022 at 2:17 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: (July 23, 2022 at 12:08 pm)FlatAssembler Wrote: So, I am the exact opposite of a fascist, am I not?
What about Tito? Do you like that guy?
No, I do not like Tito. He is the guy behind the Bleiburg Massacre.
Posts: 7259
Threads: 506
Joined: December 12, 2015
Reputation:
22
RE: Battle of Vukovar
July 23, 2022 at 2:25 pm
(July 23, 2022 at 2:10 pm)Deesse23 Wrote: (August 25, 2019 at 8:51 am)FlatAssembler Wrote: I think that Latin, when everything is taken into account, is actually easier than English. I have studied Latin for two years in high-school, then I haven't written in it or spoken it for three years. I had English for 9 years and Latin for 7.
English is easier than Latin by a huge margin. The fact that you seem to have problems with learning English does not make Latin easier.
I have read that around 25% of the words in English descend from Latin (via other languages), even though English is not a Romance language.
Posts: 2020
Threads: 133
Joined: July 26, 2017
Reputation:
5
RE: Battle of Vukovar
July 23, 2022 at 2:28 pm
(This post was last modified: July 23, 2022 at 2:30 pm by FlatAssembler.)
(July 23, 2022 at 2:10 pm)Deesse23 Wrote: (August 25, 2019 at 8:51 am)FlatAssembler Wrote: I think that Latin, when everything is taken into account, is actually easier than English. I have studied Latin for two years in high-school, then I haven't written in it or spoken it for three years. I had English for 9 years and Latin for 7.
English is easier than Latin by a huge margin. The fact that you seem to have problems with learning English does not make Latin easier. I know that, after just two years of studying Latin, I was able to make an 11-minutes-long video about afterlife in it. After two years of studying English, I could barely understand anything. Maybe you were not taught Latin the right way. How exactly did you study it?
|