Is Anyone A Latin or Greek Speaker?

Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by Sinbad, Jun 22, 2009.

  1. sophie.

    sophie. New Member

    Joined:
    Jan 4, 2009
    Messages:
    1,054
    Likes Received:
    4
    Location:
    England
    What does 'pruela' and 'travayut' mean? *curious face* Never seen them before.

    I never have to translate again....:D
     
  2. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

    Joined:
    May 19, 2007
    Messages:
    36,161
    Likes Received:
    2,827
    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    Well, we used to joke that our teacher spoke it back in her early days ...
     
  3. Gallowglass

    Gallowglass Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    May 2, 2009
    Messages:
    1,615
    Likes Received:
    92
    Location:
    Loch na Seilg, Alba
    If Sicilian is a language then so is Scoats. Apparently there's not much different between Sicilian and some Italian dialects, an ere's aen heil o a firth between e auld Scoats leid an e Inglish o e rest o our ain Unitit Kinrick ;)
     
  4. Leaka

    Leaka Creative Mettle

    Joined:
    Dec 17, 2007
    Messages:
    5,824
    Likes Received:
    36
    Shadow is right I did already:

     
  5. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2006
    Messages:
    19,150
    Likes Received:
    1,034
    Location:
    Coquille, Oregon
    only with 'some'--such as calabrian, and those 'some' are very few...

    here's why...
    when i took my mother on a tour of europe and we had to ask a question of the italian conductor on a train from the riviera to rome , she refused to do the asking, ashamed of speaking only sicilian, which is looked down on in the rest of italy as 'uneducated'... much as cockney is in england, or brooklynese, in the us...

    so i had to do the asking, with the italian i'd picked up on previous travels, having learned an 'acceptable' dialect and having acquired an 'educated' accent, thanks to several trips in italy and auditing an italian college course...

    my mother never taught us any of the language as we grew up, for the same reason, so when visiting at my grandmother's, as a child, i never knew what the heck all the yammering, yelling, and screaming was about [get any two italian relatives together and you get an argument, more than that and a verbal brawl ensues]...
     
  6. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

    Joined:
    May 19, 2007
    Messages:
    36,161
    Likes Received:
    2,827
    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    That brings up one of the reasons for divergent dialects. It isn't entirely a random linguistic drift. Like much of gangstah talk, words and speech patterns are often created to exclude "outsiders" from picking up all that is being said, and to identify outsiders by their misuse of words and gestures.
     
  7. madhoca

    madhoca Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2008
    Messages:
    2,604
    Likes Received:
    151
    Location:
    the shadow of the velvet fortress
    Don't they actually speak Latin in the Vatican? They did in The Shoes of the Fisherman (Not ordinary inhabitants, obviously, but visiting Cardinals etc from all over the world during meetings.)

    When I was a child knowing Latin was perfectly normal if you went to a Public (i.e. British private) or Grammar school. And it's still taught in a lot of schools--it's as good a way as any to exercise logic skills, understand some things about language and read interesting historical texts in the original.

    Oh, well, concordia discors I guess.
     
  8. sophie.

    sophie. New Member

    Joined:
    Jan 4, 2009
    Messages:
    1,054
    Likes Received:
    4
    Location:
    England
    I go to a grammar school (one of the few left!), they do Greek from year 8 onwards, and if you want you can do Ancient Greek too...but the other grammar round the corner only does latin after school if you pay for it. Not many schools in England do it any more, which I think's a shame.
     
  9. Shadow Dragon

    Shadow Dragon Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    Jun 15, 2008
    Messages:
    3,483
    Likes Received:
    26
    Location:
    In the land of the gods
    That's the reason why foriegn language credits are neccesary to graduate from highschool here in Maryland. My highschool had Latin, Ancient Greek, Spanish, French and Spanish classes. I took Latin level I, II and III.
     
  10. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

    Joined:
    May 1, 2008
    Messages:
    23,826
    Likes Received:
    20,815
    Location:
    El Tembloroso Caribe
    Therein lies the function and definition of slang. How slang functions has changed greatly with the advent of mass telecommunication. In the past, slang use within given groups would have had the time to effect permanent change to the speech of that group, especially, as you mentioned when these changes are not just random vocabulary changes, but actual, broad-spectrum changes in phonemes.

    An example would be the slang related to the R&B music scene from Chicago which gave us scurd for scared and 'ur'body for everybody. This phonemic shift was across the board for given phonemes and is an exaggeration of a very real speech mannerism from the area.

    But mass communication has taken the teeth out of slang. Within days of any given group adopting a word or a way of pronouncing a word to indicate "membership" to X group, there will be some television program, some radio show, some song which will steal the usage and broadcast it to the masses taking away the ability of the word or usage to identify with the group. X group takes on a new word or usage and the cycle starts again. Ergo, slang terms last for all of ten minutes and have no ability to effect change.
     
  11. Gallowglass

    Gallowglass Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    May 2, 2009
    Messages:
    1,615
    Likes Received:
    92
    Location:
    Loch na Seilg, Alba
    Schools in England don't teach Latin. The Scottish education system doesn't do it much any more, either, although some do. It's mainly philosophy, French, and Gaelic in the latter, and IT, Mandarin, and religious education in the former.

    I don't know about Wales - does it even have its own education system?
     
  12. sophie.

    sophie. New Member

    Joined:
    Jan 4, 2009
    Messages:
    1,054
    Likes Received:
    4
    Location:
    England
    They used to, & mine still does
     
  13. mammamaia

    mammamaia nit-picker-in-chief Contributor

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2006
    Messages:
    19,150
    Likes Received:
    1,034
    Location:
    Coquille, Oregon
    mad...
    before the modernization of the catholic church, the mass and other rites were said in latin, but i doubt any in the vatican spoke latin conversationally, even back then...

    and i've seen that movie more than once--the last time just a couple of weeks ago--and no one spoke latin in it for anything but the formal rituals... however, that was made in 1968, which is before the change over from latin...

    today, even public masses and other public rituals taking place in the vatican are said in italian, as it's the local language, though latin may be used for some that are not open to the public...

    latin was the official language of the 'holy see' which is a separate entity within the vatican, but is probably not still used even there...
     
  14. ChaseRoberts

    ChaseRoberts New Member

    Joined:
    Jun 10, 2009
    Messages:
    126
    Likes Received:
    2
    Location:
    Dundee
    I did standard grade Latin, and, despite being a complete madam in the class, and refusing to contribute anything serious, like homework, I somehow made it out with the top grade. Now that's done with (it was TEN YEARS AGO :eek:) I can but only remember one thing, and it's the opening of the first ever textbook I got on the subject. We used Ecce Romani, which followed the lives of Cornelia, Flavia, Sextus and Marcus.

    Ecce, in pictura est puella, nominine Cornelia. Cornelia est laeta.

    It must be worth saying though, despite Latin being a dead and fairly useless language for anyone not going into Law, Healthcare or Languages, it did have one major bonus for the children in my school who were forced to take it by their overbearing parents hoping to turn their daughters and sons into High Class Doctors and Lawyers.

    The School Trip.

    A two city adventure, Rome and Sorrento, where we visited the sights, had young Roman teens throw red roses up onto our balcony at night, got to taste red wine without the accompanyment of my parents, nearly died due to a suicidal bus driver belting down the Amalfi Coast, surrounded by the mystery of a civilisation older than I could feasibly picture, the ghosts of Pompeii... Despite my apathy in class, I really did enjoy the classical civilisation aspect, and was quite a fan for a good while.

    Then I made the mistake of studying classical civilisation as a course at uni, and that ruined everything.
     
  15. sophie.

    sophie. New Member

    Joined:
    Jan 4, 2009
    Messages:
    1,054
    Likes Received:
    4
    Location:
    England
    Ohh god same. A week in Italy that was brilliant....absolutely made up for the 4 long years of nominative accusative dative subjunctive. Though it was a close one. ah..
     
  16. Gallowglass

    Gallowglass Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    May 2, 2009
    Messages:
    1,615
    Likes Received:
    92
    Location:
    Loch na Seilg, Alba
    Hehe...I felt much the same when learning English. But we would have had to pay for the trip. Although we wanted to confuse people with Gaelic accents we didn't want to pay for the privilege, so it completely failed :D
     
  17. sophie.

    sophie. New Member

    Joined:
    Jan 4, 2009
    Messages:
    1,054
    Likes Received:
    4
    Location:
    England
    Hahaha you should have done! (The accent confusing bit)
     
  18. ChaseRoberts

    ChaseRoberts New Member

    Joined:
    Jun 10, 2009
    Messages:
    126
    Likes Received:
    2
    Location:
    Dundee
    I've tried to learn Gaelic, but it's just too confusing.

    For some reason, the only word that's ever stuck is dubh, which I beleive means black, or dark.

    My friend was from Lewis, and she spoke it fluently, and used to break into bouts of it when she was angry and/or drunk.

    Apparently, it's also the fastest way into a job on telly, since there's so few speakers out there willing to do it.
     
  19. Gallowglass

    Gallowglass Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    May 2, 2009
    Messages:
    1,615
    Likes Received:
    92
    Location:
    Loch na Seilg, Alba
    Few native speakers - there's definately a few million non-native in America, England, and Canada. And Radio nan Gaidheal is definately hiring them, or the word 'travellachadh' wouldn't even exist :D
     
  20. ChaseRoberts

    ChaseRoberts New Member

    Joined:
    Jun 10, 2009
    Messages:
    126
    Likes Received:
    2
    Location:
    Dundee
    I've always been intrigued by it- my mother owned a shop in a part of Glasgow that was widely recognised as having the largest percentage of speakers outside of the highlands in one place (so much so the train station even has double language signs, which is weird). Kids the ages of four and five would come into the shops with their grandparents, jabbering away. I would wonder if they were foreign, but one of the shop girls would then launch into a full scale conversation with them, her usual Glasgwegian accent gone in a flash.

    My mother did try to learn it, but she and I have this one thing in common- we can learn to read and listen to what is being said with the snap of one's fingers, but writing or, God Forbid, speaking, another language, and we both fail miserably.

    Although, ironically enough, I'm quite good at speaking Latin, but only because I was doing French at the same time, and would pronounce all the French words the Latin way instead (est;est= eh; est). In fact, French was the black mark on my exam grades, because I got 2's for speaking and writing. Luckily for me, they didn't count writing as in your final grade, so overall, I still got the top grade, but it still burns...
     
  21. Gallowglass

    Gallowglass Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    May 2, 2009
    Messages:
    1,615
    Likes Received:
    92
    Location:
    Loch na Seilg, Alba
    Surprisingly, Gaelic has more Latin influences than people think (although we weren't actually conquered by the Romans - I don't even think they attempted an invasion of Ireland, and by the time they reached it Galicia was ancient history for us, if we were ever there). It's just disguised by the pronounciation, as are many Norse loanwords that many people don't realise are there.

    It's the same with Gaelic loanwords in Scots and English ('galore,' 'more,' 'trousers,' 'dun,' 'bard,' 'whisky,' etc.). The pronounciation has changed, so people don't realise where the word actually comes from.

    But, actually, here's a point - the Scottish government won't teach Gaelic in the Lowlands because it's not been spoken there for centuries (although it has). I don't know when French was ever spoken natively in Scotland :D
     
  22. adl

    adl New Member

    Joined:
    Oct 7, 2008
    Messages:
    7
    Likes Received:
    0
    Location:
    Further east
    Gaelic has always fascinated me, the sound of the language, the accents and the music, but I've never made the effort to learn even the basics. It wasn't offered in schools in my day; 15 or so years ago. Mind you, if I remember correctly our assistant head teacher was some sort of high heidyin in the Gaelic language establishment. He had no influence on the school curriculum though. A shame really.
     

Share This Page

  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
    Dismiss Notice