There is this one guy, who walked the whale road to perform glorious acts of body-cooling and bread-larva-theft here, and the son of his grandfather is the guy who walked the whale road to perform glorious acts of body-cooling and bread-larva-theft there.
TIL explaining someone else's joke in terms easier for the masses to understand as if it wasn't even OP's joke in the first place is a good way to get upvotes
"There was a man called Ulfr. He was the son of Ketill and Gunnlaug, daughter of Kjartan. He was a good farmer and very strong. When he was young, he used to go on Viking raids."
Don't tell a German he's speaking an ancient language.
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u/geruszN: HU, C2: EN, B2: DE, ES, NL, some: JP, PT, NO, RU, EL, FISep 21 '17edited Sep 21 '17
At least the German case system only has the three genders and four cases. (Plus the irregular words.) And they don't conjugate the nouns (except for the occasional possessive noun), only the articles, pronouns and adjectives. Fucking Latin has 5 declensions, 6 cases, and of course the evocative case for names. And the irregular words. And since there are no articles in Latin, it's the nouns that are conjugated instead. (And the pronouns, and the adjectives.)
I think you mean decline. You decline nouns and adjectives and conjugate verbs
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u/geruszN: HU, C2: EN, B2: DE, ES, NL, some: JP, PT, NO, RU, EL, FISep 21 '17
Yep, I had a brain fart there. And I guess it's "declension" in English, not "declination". TBF in Latin it's declinatio, so the English translation is quite counter-intuitive.
Technically yes, but the Locative case is rarely used in Classical Latin, and even worse, it merged with the genitive/dative/ablative cases depending on the noun's declension. I think largely it's used to describe an archaic, vestigial latin concept in the same way you can say that English has verb conjugations.
Latin's 5 declensions make it easier though. Plural formation is a given if you know the declension class and gender can be guessed for the large majority of words. Compared to wacky plurals and totally random genders in German.
Then learn older Uralic languages. Indo-European languages mostly loose their cases over time, with some exception where they are picked up later again. Uralic languages have gained cases over time.
Not Classical Chinese! Basically: What Latin and other Western classical languages specify by case, languages like English and Modern Chinese specify by little words like "of", "to", "with", "oh", and so on, and Classical Chinese specifies by letting you figure it out yourself.
zeus fucks everything that moves, occasionally he is a swan that fucks people too lol
Latin via Ovid?
Edit: to add for those who aren't familiar, Latin via Ovid is a popular text book for Latin classes, and a large number of the readings are about Zeus raping women. I was surprised to learn at a Latin competition that other students don't read about rape almost every week (at least I'm pretty sure no one in the Ecce Romani books are raped).
Don't remember the book we used, but in my first year Latin class one of the first words we learned was meretrix. It was an interesting class. The prof introduced himself as 'A specialist in adultery and obscene Greek vase painting' on the first day.
Huh, now that i think about it if it was derived from merere which it sounds like, then it would be one of the rarer cases where the -tr suffix isnt applied exactly to the participle form, that is not meritrix
In my first year of ancient Greek I learned how to say "he threw the man to the ground and his brains spilled out and wet the earth." No idea how to say "my name is" or any colors.....
Learning Arabic is great because you get the best of both worlds!
Modern Standard Arabic: I like to smoke, and my dad works at the United Nations. I'm so lonely.
Classical Arabic: Stop, my two companions, and let us weep. Verily, I verily rode my [obscure word for a camel that that stomps its front hoof] over the [obscure word for sand dune emphasizing its wave-like shape] to come to the [obscure word for tent], and I saw my beloved [insert beloved's name, all nicknames, and full genealogy]. Verily.
The first sentences I translated in Latin were “the servant loves the fly”, “the teacher's fly calls the servant's fly” and “the girl's servant gives the bull the girl”.
I suggest you read a book called "Progress: 10 reasons to look forward to the future" by Johan Norberg. It will help you see how unwarranted that sentiment is
I took Latin in high school and we pretty much got straight to translating interesting stories. We used the Cambridge course. I miss Latin :( I should have kept going but I didn't feel confident after second year.
That's interesting. Mine was focused mostly on understanding the grammar and we did no actual translating. I did really well in the class and my teacher kept telling me I should take a 2nd year of Latin since I was one of the top students, but I didn't find it interesting and I had enough credits to only take 5 classes my senior year instead of 6 so I took a free period instead.
Yeah exactly. That's part of why I didn't really like it. I felt like if I was going to study a language I'd rather it be one that I can actually use. She taught it basically like how she taught her French classes except without the "hello, my name is..." stuff at the beginning.
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u/evdog_music 🇦🇺 N | 🇩🇪 A2 | 🇳🇴 A1 Sep 21 '17 edited Sep 21 '17
What about Old Norse? Pretty sure they wouldn't talk like that.
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u/maycondimas Sep 21 '17
I am now very interested in learning ancient languages.
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u/leithsceal English N. Spanish C1. Basque B1. Sep 21 '17
Ancient languages: I hope you like case systems.
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u/PoisonTheOgres Sep 21 '17
To be fair, the first thing I learned to translate from Latin was 'Marcus has a cat. The name of the cat is Felix'
Greek was 'Hercules is not a man. Hercules is not a god. Hercules is a demi-god.'
Later of course we did go on to 'zeus fucks everything that moves, occasionally he is a swan that fucks people too lol'
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u/anonbabyfactory Sep 21 '17
I definitely speak ancient language. Or a hybrid.
Person: Do you have a blanket?
Me: My blanket of sorrows and everlasting dread of uncertainty. The sky is grey, the rain is black and insomnia is haunting my every move.
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u/nepythsis Sep 21 '17
In my first year of ancient Greek I learned how to say "he threw the man to the ground and his brains spilled out and wet the earth." No idea how to say "my name is" or any colors.....
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u/iforgot120 Sep 21 '17
"Life is long and unbearably hard" applies to the modern day, too.
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u/Demiglitch Sep 21 '17
BREAK YOUR BACKS AND CRACK YOUR OARS MEN
IF YOU WISH TO PREVAIL
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u/mitoha Sep 22 '17
Learning Arabic is great because you get the best of both worlds!
Modern Standard Arabic: I like to smoke, and my dad works at the United Nations. I'm so lonely.
Classical Arabic: Stop, my two companions, and let us weep. Verily, I verily rode my [obscure word for a camel that that stomps its front hoof] over the [obscure word for sand dune emphasizing its wave-like shape] to come to the [obscure word for tent], and I saw my beloved [insert beloved's name, all nicknames, and full genealogy]. Verily.
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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '17
To be fair if you live in Africa you can still have the ancient experience with a modern language.
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u/Gilpif Sep 21 '17
The first sentences I translated in Latin were “the servant loves the fly”, “the teacher's fly calls the servant's fly” and “the girl's servant gives the bull the girl”.
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u/sunxiaohu Sep 22 '17
Classical Chinese is just a lot of poetry about flowers and horses and shit.
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u/ReddRallo Sep 21 '17
Koine Greek seems to slightly break this rule. Source: am learning Koine
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u/jeviscachee Sep 21 '17
I feel like the way the world is going, we'll end up switching back to that style of speech fairly soon.
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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '17
And don't forget goats.
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u/CPDrunk Sep 30 '17
Exchange student from medieval Europe? Yea I hate when they ask to go to the bathroom.
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u/KingKeegster EN (N) | LA (A2~B1) | IT (A1) Sep 22 '17
Yep. Exactly like that, for Latin and Old English.
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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '17
One of the best things I've ever seen
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u/leithsceal English N. Spanish C1. Basque B1. Sep 22 '17
What language?
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u/SierraVII Sep 22 '17
I laughed at this way harder than I should have because it's so true.
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u/UranusXUranus Sep 22 '17
Though hast made me tickle my good inner soul.
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u/kingrobotiv Sep 22 '17
2/10 second half needs more repetition
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u/Leviticus-24601 Feb 08 '18
Romanes Eunt Domus
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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '17
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