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#Post#: 14996--------------------------------------------------
Talking about Linguistics
By: Omni_Builder Date: December 6, 2014, 2:49 am
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One of my favorite parts of Latin is learning about where all
our English conventions came from. So this thread is for people
to discuss anything neat they learn--or work out on their
own--regarding linguistics and etymology. Whether it's a cool
thing you noticed or a simple thought experiment, post it here!
Examples:
Ever wonder why "second" (as in, a second of time) and "second"
(as in, between 'first' and 'third') are both homonyms and
homophones? The Latin word "secundum" actually has three
meanings:
1: "Second/secondary." Fairly obvious.
2: "Subsequent." Remember: Time is composed of a linear series
of seconds...
3: "Favorable." Which makes the phase "second to none" take on
an entirely new meaning...
We all know how the articles "a/an" work: "a" precedes words
beginning with consonants, while "an" precedes words beginning
with vowels. But then why do people say things like "an hour"
and "an horrible?"
This convention comes from the Latin concept of "elision." When
reading Latin poetry, it's conventional to combine certain pairs
of words--usually a word ending with a vowel and a word
beginning with a vowel. For example, "modu operando" is
pronounced "modoperando." However, there are three exceptions:
1: The first word ends in a vowel followed by "m" (e.g. vitam)
2: The second word begins with "h" followed by a vowel (e.g.
hiemens)
3: Both (1) and (2) apply.
So that's why we treat words like "hour" and "horrible" as
beginning with vowels--it all comes from an exception used to
make poetry sound nicer.
There is no meaningful "rhyming" in Latin, so Latin poetry
probably just sounds like artsy literature, right?
Nope.
Instead of rhyming, Latin has variable word order. Words can be
put in almost any order the writer wants, which allows for a ton
of creative possibilities.
Firstly, Latin poetry often follows extremely strict meter
guidelines. There are tons of rules for which syllables are long
and which are short, so poets have to craft their sentences to
perfectly match the required cadence--this makes Latin poetry
extremely impressive to listen to.
Secondly, Latin has a huge selection of rhetorical devices, many
of which are impossible in English. Good Latin poetry tends to
have 2-3 rhetorical devices per line. Not per poem, not per
paragraph, per line. And each line contains about 8-12 words.
These poems aren't short, either--the Aeneid is whole BOOKS of
this, using hundreds of devices in total. Oh, and the most
powerful and unique moments in the Aeneid? They're about 3-5
words long, and excel in style and word choice.
Takeaway message: Latin poetry is ridiculously complex and
mind-bending, but the results are spectacular.
#Post#: 14997--------------------------------------------------
Re: Talking about Linguistics
By: bfitzpatrick Date: December 6, 2014, 7:57 am
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I have to admit, that is pretty cool. Where did you learn Latin?
#Post#: 14998--------------------------------------------------
Re: Talking about Linguistics
By: nitrox116 Date: December 6, 2014, 8:22 am
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To tell the truth, I always say "a horrible." In my experience,
it's based on not the presence of the "h," but whether it's
sounded out (I pronounce the first sound of "hour" like the
first sound of "our" and "horrible" with the beginning sound of
"hard"). It might have something to do with accents and the way
people say things.
#Post#: 15020--------------------------------------------------
Re: Talking about Linguistics
By: Omni_Builder Date: December 6, 2014, 5:22 pm
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[member=76]Nitrox1222[/member]
Yeah, I guess "an horrible" was more of a past convention--but
you can see it used a lot in older texts. I do agree that
accents have something to do with it too; a lot of people who
pronounce it " 'orrible" probably use "an".
[member=57]bfitzpatrick[/member]
I originally learned Latin from a tutor before taking it in
school--it's a great language to learn if you're more interested
in linguistics than conversational language. In fact, I heard a
little while ago that only a few people in the world can speak
Latin fluently, and some actually host shows where people come
and listen to them speak the language.
By the way, here are a couple of xkcd comics about etymology
(both safe, except for the alt-text of the second one):
HTML http://xkcd.com/1010/
HTML http://xkcd.com/1012/
#Post#: 15047--------------------------------------------------
Re: Talking about Linguistics
By: srpent Date: December 7, 2014, 1:55 pm
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As far as I understood in school a homophone can't be a homonym.
An homophone means same sound, so it ONLY has to have the same
sound but different spelling.
Homonym means same name, but by being a homonyms almost always
sounds the same too (as an homophone), so someone decided that a
homonym word can't be a homophone. Why? No clue, but that's the
way it is, perhaps because it was confusing, that's also when
synonyms entered to the alphabet, because of the confusions that
these two generated, in other languages like french and spanish
is way more evident this things.
For example in spanish as far as I remember you use accents
('tilde' in spanish) which is this: ´
(NEVER confuse them with parenthesis ' )
NOTE: There are lots of accents, even more in french: ^, ` and ´
that's why I'm using spanish, it's sort of easier.
There are words like tu and tú (in spanish), as in english there
are no 'tildes'. That's why some words are homonyms, because
these little things don't exist, as in spanish homonyms don't
exist neither. Or in catalan, there is ós and òs, they sound
different, but mean different, one means bear and the other
bone. (My french teacher is from there)
These accents are called 'diacríticos', but I'm not writing the
whole history, grammar, spelling class, if you are very curious
about this tell me, and I'll share more.
Homo= Same
Nym= Name
Phone = Sound
(I can infer them after knowing english, spanish and french... a
bit at least... I can at least make simple sentences to talk
-good- I'm like level 1.5/5 from french level (I don't remember
which name was it), an that's something).
:'D
#Post#: 15049--------------------------------------------------
Re: Talking about Linguistics
By: nitrox116 Date: December 7, 2014, 2:33 pm
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While accents and tildes do help with homonyms in Spanish, they
certainly do exist. For example, the preterite conjugations of
"ir" (to go) are exactly the same as the preterite conjugations
of "ser" (to be).
Él fue un supermercado – It was a supermarket *NOTE: In
most cases, this sentence would be used in the imperfect and not
the preterite, but it still shows my point.*
Él fue al supermercado - He went to the supermarket
Also, I think that you're mistaken about homophones and
homonyms. A homonym is a type of homophone that also happens to
have the same spelling. A homograph is a word with the same
spelling, so a homonym is a homograph and a homophone (as
accepted by most dictionaries). Therefore, certain homophones
are homonyms as well, if they have the same spelling.
#Post#: 15052--------------------------------------------------
Re: Talking about Linguistics
By: M217 Date: December 7, 2014, 3:25 pm
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This makes me love the Arabic language. Each letter has ~7-15
accent possibilities based on its placement in the word and
sentence. Meaning you can have 5 words spelled exactly the same
with regards to the letters, but you can still easily tell them
apart because of variations in the accents. Unfortunately, it
also means it's a massive undertaking to try to learn to
read/write fluently in Arabic.
#Post#: 15088--------------------------------------------------
Re: Talking about Linguistics
By: srpent Date: December 7, 2014, 9:33 pm
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Umm... yes, but you'll weirdly find them, and as far as I
remember they are only homophones (so homonyms are actually
homophones). And 'homo-both' change according to the region, I
use, in english, a weird combination from all.
:'D
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