Roman/ancient history: Checkmate, Atenists

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Roman/ancient history: Checkmate, Atenists

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Grand Fromage posted:

Yep, everybody forgets about them because it's eastern Europe but it's the closest language to classical Latin.

That would be Sardinian, which is considerably more conservative than any other living Romance language. Romanian and Italian are probably the next closest to Latin.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2012 00:43

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 10:45

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

TildeATH posted:

Which reminds me, what's the deal with Sicily, Sardenia and Corsica? I would have thought they'd all end up being more important, but they seem like hillbilly parts of the Empire.

Sicily was a very important territory during the Greek golden age, when Syracusa was possibly the largest city in the Greek world. It also played a big part in the Peloponnesian Wars, and was important enough for Carthage to obsess over. After the Punic Wars and with the decline of Greek power, Sicily's importance waned, as the power in Italy shifted towards the north, and it still hasn't recovered.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2012 02:56

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Girafro posted:

Okay, that makes sense. So how exactly did Rome move from becoming a kingdom to becoming a republic? Were the Romans autonomous and they got rid of their own kings or was this shift simultaneous with their conquering of the Etruscans? And how long did it remain a republic before Caesar came along and shook things up?

According to legend, the last king was overthrown in a coup by a group of noblemen, led by Lucius Junius Brutus (note the name and its connection republican ideals), after the king's son raped a noblewoman called Lucretia. They drove the king into exile in 509 BC and instituted a republic. How much of the story is fact and how much legend is debatable, but what seems certain is that around that time the Roman nobility got fed up with their kings and got rid of monarchy altogether.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2012 04:08

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Per posted:

Why is Marcus Antonius' name changed to Mark Antony in English texts? I can't immediately think of that happening to any other names. Is it Shakespeare's fault?

Hadrian(us), Trajan's (Traianus) and Vespasian(us)' names have clipped endings too. Probably just a case of some famous names with awkward pronunciations acquiring simpler English forms.

Ras Het fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Jun 12, 2012

# ¿ Jun 12, 2012 21:47

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Girafro posted:

So what's the deal with the Holy Roman Empire? Considering it was made up of mostly Germanic kingdoms and Rome had become the seat of Catholicism, how did power shift from Italy to the Germans like that? How does Bohemia, Austria, and Burgundy manage to become such huge players in the empire? (I know this is much, much farther on, but I'm curious how the Roman empire effectively moved from being Italian to being predominantly German.)

Northern France and most of Germany were backwater forests until the fall of the western empire, but the Germanic tribes were in ascent while Italy was in decline (the reasons for the latter are numerous, but constant warfare, declining economic importance and the disintegration of secular authority all played part), and eventually the kingdom of the Franks became the top player in European politics. The Pope had gently caress all power at this point, but when Charlemagne saved him once from being killed by some Roman nobles, he got the brilliant idea of crowning him emperor, thus establishing a precedent of Pope having the authority to crowning emperors, and the west having its own imperial legacy too, as a big gently caress you to Constantinople. Charlemagne's sons and successors began to fight over his lands, and the imperial title passed back and forth between West Francia (France) and East Francia (Germany), until from the 900s onwards it became established as a German and/or Italian title, and France became a kingdom of its own with little involvement in affairs of the HRE. As there were no continentally important lords in Italy for most of the time, the throne tended to remain in Germany, but that wasn't a steadfast rule: Frederick II, one of the most important emperors, for example, ruled in Sicily.

In retrospect, the HRE's claim to Roman legacy was extremely tenuous, and was based essentially on a mystification of Charlemagne's imperial might, rather than any real spiritual descent from the Roman emperors; but it was a myth that served many powerful lords well. Oddly, the HRE was finally abolished by another cocky romanophile French emperor, Napoleon.

Girafro posted:

Also I didn't know France was a part of the HRE? I know parts of it were like Burgundy and Bar but I didn't know France west of those two was a member state.

The French kings didn't care about the imperial title much, and it only mattered inasmuch as people were willing to pay respect to it. At times, the imperial title was a complete joke: once the king of Castile and a brother of the king of England were hailed as kings of Germany by people simultaneously, but they were never crowned emperor because their claims were ridiculous. There were long periods when no holy roman emperor ruled.

Ras Het fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Jun 13, 2012

# ¿ Jun 13, 2012 04:18

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Alan Smithee posted:

Pardon my ignorance, and I have heard the "wasn't X, Y, or Z" quote, but wouldn't it still consititute an empire in its own right? Or was the way the kingdoms were ruled not empirical?

The emperors sometimes held no practical power and couldn't act independent of their nominal vassals at all, I think that's what the "not an empire" part refers to. And of course, "empire" is an arbitrary construct and its meaning depends on context.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2012 04:25

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

euphronius posted:

If there was an unbroken chain of emperors between Romulus Augustus and Charlemagne

There was. In Constantinople. Charlemagne's coronation was basically an act of usurping the imperial throne, it had been solidly Greek since 480.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2012 14:45

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Veeta posted:

I don't know much about the subject, but efforts are made to get in contact with the Mongols, and the idea of converting them is mooted by some. To keep my post vaguely on topic, William of Rubruck mentions bumping into Byzantine emissaries somewhere in central Asia, I think.

There was a great number of Christians among the Mongols, mostly Nestorians. I think Chinggis Khaan's mother was Christian. Their state's attitude towards religion was one of complete apathy, though, so they could never be converted in large numbers as that would've required collaboration with the chiefs.

Girafro posted:

Did ancient Rome ever have any dealings with the eastern Oriat Hoards? I understand that there were a bunch of Khanates ruling in the East for a big chunk of history but I'm not sure how far back some of them go so I was curious.

Do you mean the Oirat Horde? And why exactly are you referring to them, as they first pop up in 13th century Mongolian history? :confused:

Anyway, the Romans relations with the steppe's nomad peoples were quite extensive, since they kept pushing further west, but the Mongols weren't among those groups. Roman contacts with China were very sparse, and they certainly had no dealings with the nomadic peoples of the far east. You could argue, rather labourously, that since the Huns were assumably from Northwest China, they provided a link between Rome and China, but that doesn't mean there was any cultural or political exchange through that route.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2012 23:50

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Iseeyouseemeseeyou posted:

I thought Islam originated in North Africa, which would have been in Rome?

What

# ¿ Jun 20, 2012 05:07

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Mister Gopher posted:

Depends. There are Italian (of course) soccer clubs that have some loving crazy and destructive fan groups. And they are usually on the extreme ends of the political spectrum. Car bombs, riots, etc back in the 'Strategy of Tension' days

Thousands of people died in the Nika riots, much of Constantinople was burned down, and they attempted to overthrow the emperor. I don't think Serie A fans quite match that.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2012 02:48

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Grand Fromage posted:

North Africa's Latin roots got wiped out by the Arab conquests.

The Berber and Coptic languages survived though, which suggests that Roman cultural penetration was somewhat shallow.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2012 17:14

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Ultras Lazio posted:

A true Roman blushing here.

(vaffanculo)

Grand Fromage posted:

Both special cases. The Berber tribes were never integrated into Roman society to any extent, and Egypt always kept its native culture. If there had been no Arab conquests I have no doubt that North Africa would be speaking Romance languages.

Ah, fair enough.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2012 18:01

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Boiled Water posted:

If anything you'd think that a civilization at the height of it's power would've been much more able to resist mongol invaders.

The Caliphate at that point was a minor party in Middle Eastern politics, basically a vassal of whoever happened to be really in charge. The Mongols didn't destroy a great empire or a civilisation, but they did destroy a hell of a lot of history and culture, as Baghdad still remained then the intellectual capital of the world.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2012 03:00

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Fizzil posted:

(which raises a question, did the romans have soft/hard G and did it matter?)

There's probably classicists present, but for a quick answer:

- in reconstructions of Classical Latin, g is thought to represent exclusively the "hard" g, though gn and/or ng probably represented a velar nasal (English "sing").

- ecclesiastical pronunciation today follows Italian conventions in many ways, including for the letter g: it's a [dʒ] (English j, like in "Joe") before e, i or y, and hard otherwise.

- in Vulgar Latin the sound developed into all sorts of directions, but generally lost the "hardness" before e and i: it went through [dʒ] to [ʒ] and today's [x] in Spanish, for example. I think it was the classical hard g in Vulgar Latin too originally, but palatalized over time.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2012 22:02

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Octy posted:

As an aside, we were generally taught to use a hard G when speaking Latin. It didn't apply so much to the hard C because 'Kikero' just sounds stupid, I guess.

The whole "hard" and "soft" c & g (and j) shebang is just an endless orthographical nuisance; the conventions in all major Romance languages and English have only a passing resemblance to the Classical Latin rules. For example, Finnish pronunciation rules are much closer to CL than those of Italian.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2012 00:48

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

TildeATH posted:

What's that mean, the proper pronunciation would have had a "J" sound in there? Or is it more like the whole Sovjet "more-y-than-j" sound?

The International Phonetic Alphabet's [j] is the y consonant in English "yes", so it's worth clarifying what you're referring to.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2012 17:40

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

How exactly do we know what Classical Latin pronunciation sounded like? Are there surviving Roman treatises on that sort of thing or is it guesswork?

Poetry, Latin grammar books correcting "mistakes", comparisons of phonological developments in Romance languages.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2012 18:41

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Skellyscribe posted:

Big cheese, do you (or anyone else) have anything to say about Cicero's Philippics Against Antony? I first heard of them in HBO's Rome season 2, but I guess he wrote several of them?

Well-written slander by an opportunistic dipshit. Think Tony Blair.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2012 03:07

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Nenonen posted:

Can you explain what a metal palace would be like? Like, just the roof, the entire exterior or supporting elements as well? Metals have a lot of qualities as a building material that need a lot of specialized knowledge that would have made it very difficult to come up with a successful result.

Let's suppose that you built it the normal way and covered with sheet metal plates, to me that would seem like the easiest solution. You'd still have to deal with:

* corrosion: after a few years your house is going to be a real rustbucket
* thermal expansion: my prediction would be that under the hot Italian sun and cold winter nights the elements would soon be bent out of shape
* electric conductivity: thunder storms would be something special

It's the Roman equivalent of the copper lauteet of urban mythology...

# ¿ Jul 8, 2012 02:37

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

euphronius posted:

Caligula hated the Senate and it was a giant gently caress You to the Senate to make his horse Consul.

It was what we know as a joke. As in, it didn't happen. He just said he could do it. And this is according to Suetonius.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2012 03:55

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Moist von Lipwig posted:

Then why didn't they? Was later medieval Rome more of a conservative, isolationist state than the raging empire of earlier Rome?

Persians, Arabs, Bulgars, Slavs, internal rebellion. Even at the height of its power the Byzantine Empire was not in a position where trying to exert power over Western Europe would have been a good idea. Or was a good idea, considering the results of the wars of the 500s.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2012 00:49

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Vigilance posted:

Why didn't the Arabs grab it before the Romans did?

You have your dates completely off. Constantinople was founded in 330, the Arabs enter the picture in the 600s. And it was a prosperous trading town called Byzantion for nearly a thousand years before it was made the Roman capital.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2012 02:37

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Kaal posted:

To put it another way, New York was just an island until America's economy grew enough to begin seriously exporting goods to Britain. Then it suddenly became a key port and grew like wildfire. Rome needed to fully digest Greece and build up its eastern economy before it could expand its trade into the Black Sea.

Grain imports from the Crimea through the Bosphorus were important for Athens already in the 500s-400s BC, though. Alliances with the cities by the Hellespont were very important for them during the Peloponnesian War for that reason.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2012 02:54

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

achillesforever6 posted:

This is more a Mythology question, but I'm curious on why is it hard to adapt something like the Trojan War into film, I mean Troy just raped Homer worse than anything Zeus did to a woman. Do any of you guys think that an adaptation of Classical Mythology could work?

I think the closest we got was that Odyssey adaptation from the 90s and even that was missing a bunch of the stuff (Lotus Eaters, the Bulls of the Sun God). I really want an adaptation of the Aeneid and the Trojan Cycle done. Get me Peter Jackson's number!!

Hey now, there's a shitload of crazy sword-and-sandal films about classical mythology.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2012 03:40

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Grand Fromage posted:

I didn't know about Pythagoreanism, interesting. Same justification for it as Buddhism too, with the belief in soul reincarnation.

So looks like it did exist but only among a tiny bunch of Greeks. Weirdo unmanly Greeks again.

Seneca was a vegetarian, as were many prominent (Neo-)Platonists. It wasn't all religiously motivated either, Plutarch* and Porphyry defended it on ethical grounds. By all accounts, vegetarianism had much more robust philosphical defences in ancient Greece and Rome than it had in the Christian era up to the renaissance or even later.

*and his "On the Eating of Flesh" or something like that remains possibly the most eloquent criticism of the barbarism of eating meat.

e:

You ask of me then for what reason it was that Pythagoras abstained from eating of flesh. I for my part do much admire in what humor, with what soul or reason, the first man with his mouth touched slaughter, and reached to his lips the flesh of a dead animal, and having set before people courses of ghastly corpses and ghosts, could give those parts the names of meat and victuals, that but a little before lowed, cried, moved, and saw; how his sight could endure the blood of the slaughtered, flayed, and mangled bodies; how his smell could bear their scent; and how the very nastiness happened not to offend the taste, while it chewed the sores of others, and participated of the sap and juices of deadly wounds.

Crept the raw hides, and with a bellowing sound
Roared the dead limbs; the burning entrails groaned.

This indeed is but a fiction and fancy; but the fare itself is truly monstrous and prodigious�that a man should have a stomach to creatures while they yet bellow, and that he should be giving directions which of things yet alive and speaking is fittest to make food of, and ordering the several manners of the seasoning and dressing them and serving them up to tables. You ought rather, in my opinion, to have enquired who first began this practice, than who of late times left it off.

Sorry, I'm militant.

Ras Het fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Oct 15, 2012

# ¿ Oct 15, 2012 03:55

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Nenonen posted:

Now why did Dalmatian language disappear next door to Italy while Romanian made it to this day?

The disappearance of Dalmatian is easily explained by these very connections to Italy: it was only spoken in coastal urban communities, which under Venetian rule adopted varieties of Italian as their main language. Exactly why Romance languages became restricted to the coast is a harder question. Some claim that the interior of Illyria was never fully Latinised; and even if it was, it seems that the countryside adopted Slavic easily, and the divide was sharpened by the contrasting ecoomic and social alignments of the areas. The rural population was in close connection with the Slavic population, while the coast maintained their independence and links to Romance speakers in Italy.

The history of Romanians between the abandonment of Dacia and the establishment of independent Romance states in the area (so between the 270s and the 1300s) is a bit of a mystery. Essentially, some sort of rural communities of Romance speakers remained in the Balkan mountains and/or Transylvania, survived all of the various nomadic invasions in the area, and united in the Middle Ages to form the basis for modern day Romania, but exactly where and how is not known. The Wiki article is very detailed and interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_Romanians

# ¿ Dec 26, 2012 01:43

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

sullat posted:

The Celts are different from the Indo-Europeans. Based on archaeologic evidence, they appear to have been a cultural-religious group of peoples that stretched from Iberia to Hibernia and to the Danube region. We don't really know if they had kingdoms or empires or tribes, just that they appear to have shared cultural and religious traditions and traded extensively amongst themselves, and used the same tools with similar decorations. Their biggest extent seems to be between 2000 and 1000 BC. Then they began drifting culturally apart. Gradually, the Romans gently "pushed" the Celts back to the fringes of Europe.

The Indo-Europeans were a linguistic group from somewhere around the Causcus. About 2000-1500 BC they ended up being "displaced" and they took their horsies and invaded Greece and India (and places in between, no doubt, but they didn't write stuff down, so they don't count). The Hittites may have been related to them, or maybe not (they invaded Egypt about that time, as well.)

There's not a ton of evidence, so there's a lot of conjecture which starts veering off rapidly into "master-race" territory, but the Germanic tribes do share some linguistic similarities with Greek and Latinate languages, so there may have been some connection between the Germans and the original Indo-European tribe, but there's not a lot of "evidence" to tell us what that connection was. The Indo-European tribes may have invaded the Celtic regions, or they may have been invaded at the same time due whatever kicked off the Aryan and Dorian invasions.

Man, what have you been reading? This is like something from the 18th century. The Celts are totally Indo-European, and some linguists group them in the same category as the Italic (= Latin et al) speakers. The Celts went west into France, Iberia and the British Isles, and the Italics to the south.

The Indo-European language family split earlier than you claim, circa 3000BC or so, and Hittite was Indo-European. Anatolian languages aren't easily classifiable within the Indo-Euroopean family, leading some to suggest that they split earlier than what is regarded as the general Indo-European split, leading to an Indo-European-Anatolian proto-language, but the relationship isn't under question.

The evidence for the Germanic relationship to other Indo-European languages is called the comparative method, and there is absolutely no question about whether they are related.

The Indo-European tribes may have invaded the Celtic regions, or they may have been invaded at the same time due whatever kicked off the Aryan and Dorian invasions.

This makes no sense. The Aryans were Indo-European (Aryan = Indo-Iranian in linguistics), as were the Celts, and the Dorian invasion most likely didn't actually happen. There is a lot of doubt about the original division between the Indo-European subfamilies, but here's a very rough example: Anatolian, "Northern" (Baltic, Slavic), "Western" (Italic, Celtic), "Southern" (Greek, Balkan), "Eastern" (Indo-Iranian). There's still outliers, like Tocharian, which showed some Western features despite being spoken in Central Asia, but the general picture is pretty solid. Germanic falls somewhere in between, I think Baltic is its closest relative, but I can't remember exactly.

As for the question about Scythians &c., you should note that for the Greeks and Romans "Scythian" was a term used for all of the nomadic groups coming from the Steppe in today's Southern Russia. So if you have a Roman author saying "yeah there's a bunch of Scythians in Belgium", that doesn't mean a whole lot. Now, the connection between them and the groups who created Vedic religions is clear enough: they were both Indo-Iranian language speakers. That only means that they had common linguistic ancestry, but little else.

The Sarmatians (whose relation to the Scythians is fairly vague, but they both spoke Iranian languages) survive to this day: Ossetic descents from it. There's also a group of Sarmatian-descendant speakers in like Kyrgyzstan or something, and an ethnic minority in Hungary who spoke a Sarmatian language until fairly recently. But the Aryan nomadic groups in the Steppe were scattered and destroyed by the Mongols and Turks.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 00:22

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Koramei posted:

Huh, I always thought the connection was more firm than that. I don't suppose you (or anybody that knows about them) feel like doing a write up on the Scythians do you? That whole region is fairly neglected in general history.

No, you're right, I didn't mean to write it like that. I should clarify: the Scythians and Sarmatians were closely related, what I mean is that our knowledge of the area is a bit shoddy, so the relationship between these two and the other peoples that might've fallen under the Scythian banner isn't clear. Essentially, first you had the Scythians, then the Sarmatians (a sub-tribe of sorts) took over, but the difference between the two isn't always obvious.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 00:56

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

There's a bunch of different Hindu traditions, but of the big four only one isn't monotheist. They all have different ones as the main god, that's one of the main differences. Vishnu, Shiva and Shakti, namely. Smartism is a bit more tangled, and that's the one where common Western notions of Hinduism come from. I think you could argue that it's monotheistic too, and everything leads to Brahman or w/e.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 04:20

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Deteriorata posted:

The Babylonian captivity is what finally shook the Hebrews free from their polytheism. They never really figured it out beforehand, but were quite changed when they came back. Some exposure to Zoroastrianism probably helped.

Or, to put it in less inane terms, a monotheist faction within Israeli court took control of its religious policies during the Babylonian captivity.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2013 05:25

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Yeah, it's an impossible question to answer. Look at how many different languages/dialects Vulgar Latin itself developed into: dozens easily, and there's got to be a bunch of ones there's no record about. Since the situation was way more diverse during the Roman conquest period, you could say that there were hundreds of languages spoken within the empire. Most of them died, of course, as Rome ruined everything.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2013 04:52

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Golden_Zucchini posted:

Writing was only invented out of whole cloth two or three times in the entire history of humanity. Cuneiform in the Fertile Crescent was the father of every written language in Europe and Western Asia, whether it was directly copied/adjusted or another culture heard about this writing concept and decided to make their own. It happened again in Central America and spread among the various cultures there. Finally, there's debate over whether the Chinese invented writing in isolation or if they heard about people to the west using marks to represent speech beforehand. The timing could go either way.

There's also the Easter Island writing system. It might've been totally indigenous, but more likely inspired by Spanish writing.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2013 20:22

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Koramei posted:

Is it phonetic? Surely China -> Polynesia -> Easter Island makes more sense? Or is it only after European contact that it was developed.

18th century. It's undeciphered.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2013 21:37

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Koramei posted:

If it wasn't thought of independently, it was probably just the notion of written word that was passed to the Chinese. I probably know less than Wikipedia on the subject, but I remember clearly from when I studied Mandarin that a lot of the characters (and radicals especially) are obviously derived from pictographs (pretty sure there was a chapter in one of the textbooks about the root of person, tree, moon and so on showing the obvious transition) rather than something mutated from the Western Eurasian stuff. Where are all the linguists at? I must sound stupid here.

It's the same for our alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet was adapted from Egyptian hieroglyphs, and retained a tenuous connection to the pictorial forms (like the letter called "wheel" looking like a wheel, "eye" being a circle, needle head being a line with a circle at the end &c.). The Greek and Latin alphabets descend from it.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2013 05:04

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

DarkCrawler posted:

I mean outside Rome and other big cities...farmers and such would probably just care about the seasons?

You don't think they'd care about, like, how old their girlfriends are, or "when was that horrible flood?", or "my grandpa went to the Secular Games in..." &c.?

# ¿ Mar 14, 2013 00:45

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

You should also consider the possibility that the Jews taken to Babylon could've been counted in dozens or at best hundreds, rather than thousands. Holding the aristocracy of an unruly country captive can be a sensible policy.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2013 04:11

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

To Chi Ka posted:

I have a question related to the language discussion, not sure if it can really be answered though. Is there a comparison of the number of words in Ancient Latin/Greek compared to the number of words in the main languages that were spoken after the empire fell? Did languages get more complex after the fall of the western empire, or was it more of a case of the decline in literacy and reduced volume of trade meant that language development took steps backward?

Uhhh, this is a pretty dodgy question. Language development doesn't "take steps backwards". It doesn't. The end. And I think it's disingenuous to speak of the size of a language's vocabulary, when a large number of that vocabulary only has relevance in certain sciences. To elaborate, note these two things: 1) English has a large vocabulary because it's the international language of science 2) "core" English has a larger vocabulary than many other languages because English has several historical layers of vocabulary - the original Germanic and a vast number of Latin & French loans. The same applies to any other language: the size of a vocabulary reflects historical coincidences and the language's standing in culture. It says absolutely nothing about the "complexity" of a language, which isn't really a thing. It doesn't mean anything. Or if it does, Latin is a very simple language too.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2013 17:13

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Kaal posted:

While some people might not see vulgar latin or Pass� simple as being less advanced forms, I think that's just political correctness - there's a more nuance in the more complex alternatives.

This is so stupid. There's more "nuance" in them according to certain literary conventions, because these conventions favour obsolete vocabulary and grammar over contemporary ones.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2013 17:26

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Kaal posted:

Like I said, some folks will absolutely hate this idea because they think all languages all equal. In my opinion, there's more to a language than simply being capable of communicating basic ideas.

The people who think all languages are equal tend to be linguists. But do elaborate why language at X point in time was superior to X-200a and X+200a, as it always is with prestige dialects.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2013 17:38

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 10:45

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Barto posted:

Some things are superior in a group of dialects because everyone thinks they are.
Just the same way everyone agrees some sounds put together mean a certain word.
Language is just group consensus.

Just like how in a racist society some ethnicities are inferior and others superior?

# ¿ Mar 18, 2013 18:48

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Roman/ancient history: Checkmate, Atenists

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