My Real Friends on FB are Those who Allow me to Repost

1) HGL's F.B. writings : Latin and Conlangs, Featuring Alcuin, 2) More on Post-Alcuinic Latin, 3) My Real Friends on FB are Those who Allow me to Repost, 4) Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : And he Said "rozumiesz?"

Obviously, I am not reposting all they say, like "I was tired today" or "this is how you eat [brand name omitted] sliders", that is their business, I consider it a personal confidence and a privilege to be informed. Especially since I didn't know what sliders were. But, if there is a debate involving topics like abortion, numerous families, mysteries of history or of cosmos, well, the topics are as such general, and if persons are private (in some cases, not like John Médaille who is my friend or Christopher Ferrara who isn't, both being mediatically well known persons, I hope, both deserving to be due to importance of what they have to say, even if I object to Ferrara's discretionism), that is why I am anonymising most persons. Usually by initials. I could extend the usage I made of "Gríma Wormtongue" for one of them (due to his attitude to me reminding of the character's attitude to Theoden) to using names like those commonly known from Walt Disney's work, but then the corporation would probably sue me for copyright infringement. Especially if I got intellectually the better of one "Mickey Mouse" or came off as lazier than one "Donald Duck". By some freaky chance of course.

Behind what happened below, I sense the hysteria and discretion, though I have no solid proof, of my countryman, fellow Swede, TK.

As to his previously unanswered questions on Latin, I'll answer them first, before giving the farewell speeches.

Negotiate in Latin is tractare. This word has one basic meaning of "pull repeatedly" and two more interesting meanings both involving the repeated pulling back and forth of ideas. In Swedish they are "förhandla" and "afhandla". In German they are "verhandeln" and "abhandeln". So "negotiate business" is in Latin "tractare negotium".

It is in French that negotiari/négotier, properly in Latin simply "doing business" or "being in business" as opposed to otiari, "resting" "taking a day off", "being retired", "being in vacation" has taken on the meaning of haggling. Which tells us sth about business conditions during Middle Ages.

The verb tractare gives us "tractate" and "treaty". The treaty of Westphalia is the result of diplomats from France, Sweden, Bavaria, Saxony, Austria and other states involved in the German war (and possibly other diplomats from elsewhere) having pulled ideas back and forth, what Latin calls that they "tractaverunt" and what English calls they negotiated.

Witty, who really wasn't, has written another kind of tractatus, where he himself pulled ideas about for instance logic back and forth.

Ablative and Dative are not distinct in plural, as to ending. Even worse, second declinsion they are even coinciding in singular, plus that part of third declinsion which is I-stems, insofar as these have ablative singulars in -i rather than -e.

Well, in Chinese the Ablative and Dative are not distinct at all by ending! The Chinamen still keep them apart, somehow. And in Greek, the Dual (which is rare but exists) has not only identic form for Nominative, Accusative and Vocative, but also, the other form, is identic for Genitive and Dative. Which two cases include all of Latin both Ablative and Dative, plus the part where Latin has Genitive.

And how do Poles manage all the cases that have -ich/-ych ending in plural of adjectives? Only by nouns which have distinct endings? I think there are cases when the semantic and syntactic "noun" is morphologically an adjective and so has the -ich/-ych ending.

Seriously, TK seems to have taken a dislike to Latin from the Swedish film "Hets" which is directed by a rather neurotic genius who hated his Latin teacher (at least that is commonly supposed in Sweden : perhaps Ingmar Bergman really loved his Latin teacher and both had a good laugh at the character "Caligula", but it is commonly supposed this is not the case). He very probably takes the cue from the line of some brave rebellious pupil. But whether we come to that brave rebellious pupil (I have not seen the film!) or to TK, it's someone who has never really thought either language use or language learning through properly.

All languages have numerous syntactic functions of nouns and of noun like parts of speech. All of them mostly have the same ones. The more you compare languages, the more different ones you discover. If one concentrates on most IE langs, one may get the impression that "subject and object" are two set categories, when in reality they are three, and Basque (plus at times Hindi) divides them differently. There is:

	Latin	Basque	Examples in Eng, Basque, Lat
Subject of Transitive Verb	Nominative	Ergative	The school teaches math.	Eskola da matematika irakasten.	Ludus docet mathematicam.
Subject of Intransitive Verb	Nominative	Absolute	The school was noisy.	Eskola da zaratatsua izan zen.	Ludus erat stridens.
Object of Transitive Verb	Accusative	Absolute	I hated school.	Eskola gorroto dut.	Detestatus sum ludum.
Goal of Direction	Accusative w. prep.	Local case, like in Finnish	I went to school unwillingly.	Eskolara joan nintzen gogoz bestera.	Ego invitus ibam ad ludum.

And apparently - though I am in no position to state google translate for Basque is correct - Basque has the same at least spelling for Absolute and Ergative of school. Still, absolute and ergative help to distinguish in other words the first three categories. By the way, here are the failed google translates to Latin:

Google translate		Supplement (or not)
Schola docet math.		[ematicam]
In schola sonantis erat.		[Quééééééé?]
Rursus detestatus sum disciplinam.		[Non disciplinam, sed stridentem convivialitatem.]
Ego ad ludum invitus.		[ibam]

So, basically, TK should have complained, not of Latin not giving a formal morphological distinction between Ablative and Dative in the Plural, but of Swedish and English not doing so ever. But thanks to a school where Latin was nearly abolished (nearly, not quite, we still have universities) and thanks to a pop culture in which the Latin teacher is portrayed as "Caligula" and as Archetypal Evil Nazi, we get this kind of wrongness about Latin being rather common in Sweden. Alas, so is wrongness about more important things.

CdCC

Hans-Georg, I'd like to remain anonymous please and that might be considered as trolling. I'd advise you for your blog to stick to your own thoughts and not quote us.

[Hippie values, sure !]

HGL

You are still anonymous:

« Aucun article correspondant à la requête : [real name of] CdCC. Afficher tous les articles »

http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.fr/search... [search not shown, obviously]

This blog is more than half for quoting debates.

I have other ones for my own thoughts without dialogue:

deretour
http://hglundahlsblog.blogspot.fr/

Triviū, Quadriviū, 7 cætera
http://triv7quadriv.blogspot.fr/

New blog on the kid
http://nov9blogg9.blogspot.fr/

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica
http://filolohika.blogspot.fr/

Recipes from Home and Abroad
http://recipesfromhomeandabroad.blogspot.fr/

CdCC

and CdCC, RW... what are we, subjects of an experiment?

I'd ask you for take out any content that may hint my nationality, ethnicity or languages I speak.

[I thought the dictatorship was over in that South American country! Request, unlike anonymity of name NOT honoured. Besides, if it is really so sensitive to him, how come he is posting in an open group, where RW [administrator of anonymised group] can suggest to me I could simply give a link to thread in group?]

JM

CdCC! Cave Canem!

RW

HGL, can we keep what we say on the group just on the group and not copied to another place on the internet? You can say what you want on your blog, but if you want people to read this thread, just direct them to the group

JM

Yes, do as Rolf says, this keeps stalkers, trolls and unwanted creeps away from our posts.

HGL [post removed]

CdCC, RW, no you are NOT subjects to an experiment, unless you consider the mere fact of getting your words onto my blog so.

CdCC is NOT the same person as RW. And as CdCC has specifically asked to remain anonymous, while RW has NOT explicitly allowed to use his name, I have kept it at initials.

"You can say what you want on your blog, but if you want people to read this thread, just direct them to the group"

Not even a totally good idea, purely technically, since FB has another system than the kind of boards I have also done.

It is a bit linked to the feature See More and therefore could be called the Seymour Syndrom. People not used to a FB group will read only top and not know what the next guy is answering.

On the other kind of boards, all consecutive posts are fully visible.

Meanwhile

Outside thread, on mail:

RW

I will have to ask you to remove the quotes of our chat from your blog, or I will be forced to ask you to leave the group.

HGL

Ask me to leave the group then.

I have more loyalty to my blogs than to your group. OBVIOUSLY.

RW

ok then

good bye

[About at same time

that my answer was removed while I posted it].

I'll give RW a Parthian Arrow.

1) HE asks ME to learn more about historic linguistics
2) He frankly tells when Latin comes up that he is more interested in living languages than in dead ones.

Which is it (if he dares answer, I will publish it!)? Is he better at historic linguistics than I? Or is he less interested in "dead" languages than I? He can hardly be both. What he can be is a person uninterested in dead languages and therefore in the real stuff of historic linguistics, but at same time having been obliged to learn a little about it and thinking what he learned about it is so certain that anyone who contradicts him must be bad at the stuff. RW, enjoy your anonimity!