A break from the HP wank courtesy of the wank report!

im_nucking_futs: The mouse wrote this up so well that I didn't have to embellish it.

Hey all - this is Takhys from Livejournal and this wank is a beauty. Snark, snark and more intelligent snark. GoogleGroups alt.language.latin (http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.language.latin/browse_thread/thread/8cea2c8909e8dd8)

It starts out small with a comment by Jotapia on pronunciation: "Latin does not need any correct pronunciation."

...and then Agamemnon (his spelling) gets the wank up to full spoogy speed with: "Greek pronunciation has NOT changed one iota since the time of Homer! The Greek language is completely homogenous and has been that way for over 3000 years because Greeks understood from the very beginning that the letters of the Alphabet could only be pronounced in one way and one way only because they invented it." [Link] (http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.language.latin/msg/338836d63fc60cbd)

He returns with a claim that he knows the history of the alphabet and psychiatry! [Link] (http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.language.latin/msg/58d73b59abe9e7fe)

There is name calling, in english, greek, latin, and klingon (http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.language.latin/msg/31601b6ab05d74da). Random religious commentary: "Incidentally, one of my best friends was a Catholic. The discovery that the Latin used in church was wrong was a factor in his lapse." [Link] (http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.language.latin/msg/4da3f2f41de440a7)

Capslock of RAGE returns! [Link] (http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.language.latin/msg/8f0abfd6fb270ee5)

John W. Kennedy attacks! -- Come to think of it, how does Aga-woo-woo account for the history of Greek-eta/Latin-aitch?[Link] (http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.language.latin/msg/e02b5bef00e8bbc5)

Will Aggie take this sitting down? No. He uses his "great knowledge" and comes up with this: "EVERYONE in ancient Greece was fully literate and numerate. They were taught to read and write from the age of 7 up to the ages of 18 in places called schools. Even poor farmers like Hesiod could read and write and people were expected to read notices posted on bill boards and read aloud from books." [Link] (http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.language.latin/msg/00bdfe19fab4d481)

That is one tangled family tree: "DNA research has proven that ALL Greeks are genetically identical." [Link] (http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.language.latin/msg/a0d15aec07d76a57)

The first comment about "the master race!" - [Link] (http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.language.latin/msg/b078e0f20bf99942)

"As for Sophia Loren, she can actually sing better in Greek than Melina Mercuri ever did with no noticeable accent whatsoever, which proves my point that Latin was spoken exactly like modern Greek." [Link] (http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.language.latin/msg/ab9eba52af770092)

What wank wouldn't be complete without an invocation of Goodwin's Law? [Link] (http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.language.latin/msg/de96eb375059d4c3)

...and Doctor Who? [Link] (http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.language.latin/msg/b8287ad61573eed2)

...and the wank keeps growing. (http://www.livejournal.com/~takhys)

(Post a new comment)

	Umm...Accents? jat_sapphire 2005-07-22 11:10 pm UTC (link)
	It's so rhetorically effective that this Agamemnon person cannot seem to tell the difference between "accent" as in diacritical mark and "accent" as in phonetic difference. Now is that ethos or pathos? ('Cause it's SO not logos.) Yay for classics and linguistics wank! (Reply to this)

	lurker32 2005-07-22 11:58 pm UTC (link)
	He returns with a claim that he knows the history of the alphabet and psychiatry! Tom Cruise? Is that you? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	im_nucking_futs 2005-07-23 02:49 am UTC (link)
	Tom Cruise is everywhere! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	naeelah 2005-07-27 02:39 am UTC (link)
	Somehow, that seems like it deserves an icon. (Maybe just cos I saw a Tom Cruise interview recently and the desire to kill has not entirely subsided...) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	ladybirdsleeps 2005-07-23 12:24 am UTC (link)
	Oh my god the stupid. (Reply to this)

keri
2005-07-23 12:52 am UTC (link)

hahahahahahahaha funniest bit ever is that the Greek language is homogenous and hasn't changed once in 3000 years.
hahahaha.

any first year linguistics/greek student could tell you that that's damn impossible. and also, if you're studying classical greek and go to greece, you'll likely get laughed at for your pronunciation on account of iotas going missing or something.

what a dumbass.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

	ataniell93 2005-07-23 01:44 am UTC (link)
	oh lord. I knew some Greek as a kid and whenever I hear people speaking classical Greek it makes me wince. (Reply to this)(Parent)

greenling
2005-07-23 03:39 am UTC (link)

(Much like Shakespeare is read outloud and listened to today but only a
madman would attempt to speak in that manner Just like most people
don't know what every word of Shakespeare means - so the audience of
some formal reading would also not know every word that was being
read.)

Ohhh, wonderful example. No, dear, most people don't speak in iambic pentameter. We do, however, most certainly have Roman prose and *cough* speeches, as you mention.

Unless of course we're meaning to imply here that speeches weren't spoken?

There were basically two types of spoken Latin - a type spoken mainly
in the cities and a ruder type which was spoken in the country. The
modern Romance language have all developed from this "common" type of
Latin.

references plz kthx (No, seriously, I'm a geek and I want to know this shit.)

And I suppose the upper-class city folk's speech had no resemblance to the writing, either. What the modern Romance languages do may not have relevance to written Latin due to being formed from the common, yes; or they may. I think if nothing else the fact that people who study and write books on this shit have decided to teach people a set pronunciation gives one indication that there may be something to it.

So any comparison between the pronunciation of modern Romance language
with classical literary Latin should be avoided.

"Any"? None at all? What, did they pronounce their Ls like Os?

Second of all, no one knows how literary Latin was pronounce. Latin
writers who give us information on the pronunciation of Latin are
usually writing about the common forms of the language - not the
artifical polished literary language which was never used in everyday
conversation.

Would "literary Latin" have *been* pronounced, if it was, as she says, never spoken?

Also, if what we know from writings about pronunciation is based at least partly on writings by the Romans (and I know it is), and we know as much as we do about how spoken-Latin was pronounced but not literary-Latin... why? Why didn't they say anything, or we haven't found anything on it? And why are the other parts of what we know- I know we think Cs are always hard because Greeks transcribed them to Ks- obviously and totally inapplicable to the spoken language?

People who believe that the Romans talked in the same
manner as they wrote are only fooling themselves. You would think that
people who are studying a language who take a little time to learn
about the history of that language but from the looks of this forum -
it looks like they didn't.

You'd think someone so huffy would understand the difference between linguistics and language. Of course, that would also imply they had any idea that linguistics can (and is partly meant to) give us a clue as to how languages *work*; even languages we don't know first-hand, with enough information.

The Anglo-Saxons can't bear to admit that they have been pronouncing other
peoples languages wrong since the year dot so they keep coming up with new
theories on how everyone else's languages were always pronounced like home
counties English so that they don't have to change their own
misspronounciaiton.

Right, and that's why we're still told it was pronounced "Seezer".

On a slightly less pointless and ranty note, eeee an active Latin community that can spell and doesn't have four animated-GIF ads to each post. Yummy.

Oh, and please- if I've said anything stupid or incorrect in this, rip me apart.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

nekoneko
2005-07-23 04:45 am UTC (link)

According to my latin teacher and my choir director, church latin and... whatever Sextus and Marcus were doing (aka the weird stuff in Latin class. Yay for beating wolves with sticks! And ditches!) were pronounced differently, but I wouldn't take them as authorities. Especially not the choir director, as he was a pompous ass.

And I have nothing else of relevance to say.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	greypearl 2005-07-23 06:00 am UTC (link)
	Did you use Ecce, Romani! as well? I so miss that book-- it had the craziest stories. And yeah, I've heard the same thing from my Latin teachers about the pronunciation difference. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)