Live Latin Chat / Latin IRC channel - split aka locus secretus

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Bitmap

Guest

I must say that I have had in the past some issues with Luigi's argumentation on this matter in his Latin talks because it seemed to me he might be a bit hypocritical as a leader of an academy where you are banned since the day two to talk about cookies and washing dishes in other language than Latin

Who? Did Mario's brother finally give up his life as a sidekick and start a career as a Latinist?
 
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Bitmap

Guest

it surely isn't the whole truth now and I think it creates a quite dangerous self-fallacy of 'mastering Latin' on their side, I don't like that approach, there must be some golden middle way. (like in the middle ages or even some time later)

Next time, I'll try to write in hexameters only in your chatroom ...
 
 

Terry S.

Aedilis

  • Aedilis

  • Patronus

Location:
Hibernia
Godmy has a time machine!
It's just a crazy shape-changing ring he has. He saw it falling out of the pocket of a guy with a funny eye and an obsession with healthcare research.
 

Iáson

Cívis Illústris

  • Civis Illustris

I do certainly have problems with certain online active Latin [chat] communities (and I say that as once [or still] a head of one) where often beginners feel as though they are mastering the language by treating it SOLELY as a modern language (exchanging conversational pleasantries, phrases with some friends) - they feel as though Latin is really nothing else but just another 'conversational' language they can acquire just from their friends. But while this was true 2000 years ago (and let's say 20-50% true at the peak of the middle-ages), it surely isn't the whole truth now and I think it creates a quite dangerous self-fallacy of 'mastering Latin' on their side, I don't like that approach, there must be some golden middle way. (like in the middle ages or even some time later)
I occasionally dip into Plautus, or Cicero's letters, and am always quite shocked by the difference between that and the 'everyday Latin' one hears.

To give an example: I may be missing something, but what the hell underlies the popularity of 'quōmodo tē habēs?' I've never seen it in an ancient author (though of course sē habēre is attested in different phrases); but when you say 'quid agis?' to people, they look at you as if you're mad.

The other thing is that everyone from the Academia refers to toilets as 'locum secrētum' rather than 'lātrīna'. I don't see why it's such a offensive word as to merit a neologism; do they simply ban all words that might possibly be construed as rude in that place?

(This is all pedantry, of course.)
 
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Bitmap

Guest

I occasionally dip into Plautus, or Cicero's letters, and am always quite shocked by the difference between that and the 'everyday Latin' one hears.
Do you hear everyday Latin a lot?

To give an example: I may be missing something, but what the hell underlies the popularity of 'quōmodo tē habēs?' I've never seen it in an ancient author (though of course sē habēre is attested in different phrases); but when you say 'quid agis?' to people, they look at you as if you're mad.
That's true ... somehow most people's fascination for Latin is at the same time its biggest threat :p

I have a nice list of phrases, though, which are attested (and which shows where the phrases are taken from) ... I might ask the guy who gave it to me if he has an electronic version of it ...

The other thing is that everyone from the Academia refers to toilets as 'locum secrētum' rather than 'lātrīna'. I don't see why it's such a offensive word as to merit a neologism; do they simply ban all words that might possibly be construed as rude in that place?

That's weird ... not only do they misgender locus, I don't even know any language where a toilet would be called 'secret place' ... apart from that, in choosing such a weird phrasing, you miss out on a golden opportunity to show off your supine skills by saying 'eo cacatum/minctum'.
 
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Etaoin Shrdlu

Guest

I don't even know any language where a toilet would be called 'secret place'
Neither do I, offhand, but given the number of euphemisms that exist in various languages, it wouldn't surprise me if there were one. Now the challenge is to find it.
 
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Bitmap

Guest

Neo-Latin publications would deserve a rant as well ... the more recent they are, the crappier.
 
 

Godmy

Sīmia Illūstris

  • Censor

Location:
Bohemia
But in their defense, they are probably the most careful neo-latin institution when it comes to neologisms. The popular not-finished (because the creator died) Morgan's dictionary of neologisms is made by them (David Morgan taught there), they try to find all the neologisms ever used in similar publications and make some 'academic' judgement about which is both most frequent and most apt on some "neologistic" grounds (that is, as once one teacher & friend from there explained to me: accept the neologisms preferentially the way Romans would do that themselves 1) look if there isn't a native/Roman word which is a similar but outdated concept as to use it for a new thing (in English such word would be "computer" e.g.... first a clerk, now a machine), then look into Greek (as Romans would), then PERHAPS into Romance languages then PERHAPS coin a neologism from Latin roots and only if you exhaust all options you MAY be allowed to coin some barbarism (foreign root, latin ending).

I cannot complain about Vivarium and their vocabulary policy at all. I personally think they do it all rather "correct" and should be a paradigm for everybody else :)

(Yeah, I suppose in some sense I'm a fanboy, but in the same time nobody else probably criticized them more here during the years... : D Yeah, it wouldn't be for me, the academy that is.)
 
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Bitmap

Guest

But in their defense, they are probably the most careful neo-latin institution when it comes to neologisms. The popular not-finished (because the creator died) Morgan's dictionary of neologisms is made by them (David Morgan taught there), they try to find all the neologisms ever used in similar publications and make some 'academic' judgement about which is both most frequent and most apt on some "neologistic" grounds (that is, as once one teacher & friend from there explained to me: accept the neologisms preferentially the way Romans would do that themselves 1) look if there isn't a native/Roman word which is a similar but outdated concept as to use it for a new thing (in English such word would be "computer" e.g.... first a clerk, now a machine), then look into Greek (as Romans would), then PERHAPS into Romance languages then PERHAPS coin a neologism from Latin roots and only if you exhaust all options you MAY be allowed to coin some barbarism (foreign root, latin ending).
And by employing that method you end up with *locus secretus?
 
 

Godmy

Sīmia Illūstris

  • Censor

Location:
Bohemia
Sure, why not. I'm not here to judge its validity (although I see no problem with it, at all), but the frequency of it is awesome... On my Latin faculty/department on the university, when you went to the bathroom (toilet for UKs), there was a old vinyl label (maybe decades old) that would say "locus secretus"...

But I'm surely not going to discuss Locus Secretus in this thread, Bitmap, anymore :) It's enough that this thread is made for a whole another purpose, that I get notification anytime somebody posts in here (because I commonly set it so for my threads), I already spammed here myself a lot about unrelated stuff... so...
 
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Bitmap

Guest

Well, if you end up with stuff like locus secretus and quomodo te habes with this method, it must be a pretty crappy method that has no merit at all ...
 
 

Godmy

Sīmia Illūstris

  • Censor

Location:
Bohemia
"makes no sense" - well I'm sorry, I'm not here to teach you to reason. I think (and most scholars with me) the method I proposed (or they proposed) is the best there is, if you can come up with any better, I'm waiting for it (but I seriously doubt it)... or well, the whole world is waiting for it. But it rather seems than instead of being constructive you've decided to troll here a bit, haven't ya, Bitmap...

I will leave you to your own devices, but I would probably appreciate if the thread stayed clean or ... on-topic if possible.
 
 

Dantius

Homo Sapiens

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
in orbe lacteo
To give an example: I may be missing something, but what the hell underlies the popularity of 'quōmodo tē habēs?' I've never seen it in an ancient author (though of course sē habēre is attested in different phrases); but when you say 'quid agis?' to people, they look at you as if you're mad.
That's interesting. In my school I must have learned "quid agis?" within my first three days of taking Latin.
 
 

Godmy

Sīmia Illūstris

  • Censor

Location:
Bohemia
I have seen "quid agis" probably in every chatroom I've been in, but I just didn't think it was worth it to engage Iáson on that, obviously he's got a different experience so who am I to argue about that with him.

Anyway, I would ask everybody to ... continue this topic in a different thread. It is my fault that I started to write about everything possible, but now I think it was enough.
 
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