/alg/ - Ancient Languages General

Reminder that a real historian knows Latin and Greek.

What if they specialize in Asian or Mesoamerican history?

Are there any practical reasons for taking Latin in college?

So I only began learning Latin recently and I'm confused on how to turn nouns ending in -x into ajdectives. Consider the word "nox," which means night. If I wanted to say "nightly" in Latin, how do I change "nox"?

King in latin is "rex" and kingly in latin is "regno." Is "nightly" something like nogno? Or are -ox and -ex completely different endings?

I realize the word "noctis" exists (means "of the night" or "night's", right?). That's probably the closest I'm going to get for a good translation of "nightly."

I was only joking. Anyone who claims a real historian does a specific thing like learn latin is fallacious. "No true scotsman"

Depends on what your major is. I think, besides Greco-Latin historians (christian / biblical ones as well), the people who benefit the most from knowing Latin are people in the medical field, but people in most science fields typically benefit from knowing some Latin due to scientific terminology. Knowing terminology is completely different than being conversational in the language though.

no fucking idea but in spanish and french -ly is -mente and -ment, maybe its the same ending in latin

What does "nightly" mean? Every night? Or "imbued with the quality of night" which you could just say "dark." Anyway nouns that end in "x" are irregular and you just have to learn the forms for each one

we wuz nognos

>What does "nightly" mean?

Both of those definitions you gave would fit.

The suffix "-ly" can denote time as in words like "hourly" or "daily" but the suffix "-ly" also is a shortened form of "-like", meaning something along the lines of "related to." "Cat-like reflexes" for example.

Yeah clearly I understand the usage. I was wondering in what sense that guy wanted to use the word because it would be a different construction in latin depending on which it was

Doesn't really matter in this context, but a little fun to point out: the suffix -ly also turns adjectives into adverbs. Quick -> Quickly. English is fun, but I guess we gotta save that for Veeky Forums.

rex -> reg-is
nox -> noct-is

Yes, they are completely different. Also, it's regnus.

Ah, my bad. Regno is a declension of the noun regnum meaning "kingship". Also a conjugation of the verb regnare meaning "to rule."

thanks for a simple answer btw

Which are the best books for learning latin?

Anyone /ñ/ here?
If so, how did you learn?

A historian not knowing Latin is laughing stock.

>tfw only got 90 in my advanced attic greek final

Feeling like a dirty pleb desu senpai

To tack onto this, are there any good places to learn vulgar Latin for the true romaboos?

I am finishing my master thesis on ancient artillery, and I translated some 30 excerpts of ancient sources.

Here is one for you, fellow /hellenists/. An easy one, if you want to train your greek.
This is a very interesting machine from the VIth century p. C., described by Procopius, base on the greek gastraphetes.

Βελισάριος δὲ μηχανὰς μὲν ἐς τοὺς πύργους ἐτίθετο ἃς kαλοῦσι βαλλίστρας. Τόξου δὲ σχῆμα ἔχουσιν αἱ μηχαναὶ αὗται, ἔνερθέν τε αὐτοῦ kοίλη τις ξυλίνη kεραία προὔχει, αὐτὴ μὲν χαλαρὰ ἠρτημένη, σιδηρᾷ δὲ εὐθείᾳ τινὶ ἐπιkειμένη. Ἐπειδὰν οὖν τοὺς πολεμίους ἐνθένδε βάλλειν ἐθέλουσιν ἄνθρωποι, βρόχου βραχέος ἐνέρσει τὰ ξύλα ἐς ἄλληλα νεύειν ποιοῦσιν ἃ δὴ τοῦ τόξου ἄkρα ξυμβαίνει εἶναι, τόν τε ἄτραkτον ἐν τῇ kοίλῃ kεραίᾳ τίθενται [...]

Unless you are extremely resilient, I think the best would be to take university classes.

My school gave a course for 6 months, but after the student number dropped from 30+ to 3 the teacher said "fuck it!" and that he'd never give the course again :c

Haha god. The problem is that latin is very difficult, and learning from books probably isn't the best idea. However, with a good method, you could learn the basics, and wait for the next semester.

But be warned. For my part, in seven years of latin classes, I still can't read a litterary text fluently.

How about nocturnus or regius?

Lingua Latina per se illustrata. You won't fall sleep, and you will actually learn.

>nox

The actual dictionary form of 'nox' is nox, noctis. You change noctis, not nox. Nox does not change. Noct- is the stem.

To make an adverb in latin, you can't just affix adverbial endings to noun. Regno is not kingly, but in kingship/by means of kingship/for kingship/to kingship. Abl/dat. The adjective 'kingly' would be your mark, regius, a, um. The adjective would be rēgiē.

The problem here is, do you want the English 'nightly' to represent the adjective 'nightly', e.g. the 'nightly sleep'; or an adverb, e.g. 'he sleeps nightly'.

The Latin adjectival form would be 'nocturnus', but the adverb as a word seems not to exist. You could of course just say 'dormit nocte', which would give the same sense.

This.
Stunning nobody pointed out before.

> Latin
> difficult
It's possibly the easiest language out there (except the artificial 'ease' of Esperanto, etc.).

My church offers once a week language classes in Latin and Ancient Greek. $50 a lesson. Would you say it's worth it?
My miner in college was Italian, but it's very rust. But with a foundation in Italian, would Latin be the better choice?

Heh, the first year is easy indeed.

Then the number of rules becomes so big that you will regret the modern languages.

50$ ? Depends on where you live... But even for me it seems high.
Italian will help you, but not much more than any other language of latin origin.

I live in Chicago, so there's a higher cost of living if that matters.

Well you can try then. The ancient greek of the Gospels is very easy. You could *relatively* quickly learn to read it.

After studying South-southeast asian history, I'm getting quite good at Sanskrit lol

Why pay? It's just as easy when self-taught.

If you think the 'number of rules' is large for Latin, don't try any other languages. Seriously, Latin is pretty easy.

Oh, you meant easy among the other ancient languages ? Well that, as far as I know, is true.
Ancient greek is harder, and akkadian is horrible.

Is there a list of ancient languages that can still be learned and spoken today?

Not sure about Latin, but this suffix in French and Spanish developed in Vulgar Latin as a combination of words "x" plus "mente" meaning "of the mind". Ex: "Claromente", meaning, "of a clear mind" (French "Clairement")

>tfw I'm going to learn ancient Greek in my college next year.
Why are romanboos so clueless? Don't they know they have to start with the Greeks?

Any place online where i could learn Latin, I heard duolingo is making a course but i'd like to start of on my own.

Would Yale's Learn to Read Latin, be a good self study book? What about Lingua Latina

>He's actually learning a dead language

>Latin
>dead

Latin may not be an official language of any existing country and may not be spoken in conversation anywhere in the world, but its far from dead. Random native american language #435 is a dead language.

A language is dead when it has no native speakers.

If language "death" means that it has no more native speakers then you're right that it's dead, but that's kind of a misnomer because there are other ways that it can be "alive".

Latin has had more influence on western civilization than any other language. A whole family of indo-european languages evolved directly from it and a huge chunk of the vocabulary of English comes from it. Knowing its basic vocabulary and some of the grammar is very useful in science, medicine, and history. That's why you learn it. It's far more important and useful than 99% of the 6000 or so living languages on Earth right now.

>Tfw cultures you study have little to no written language remaining to study
Being a Carthagoboo and celtiboo is suffering

>The Holy See uses Latin as its main official language, Italian as its main working language and French as its main diplomatic language; in addition, its Secretariat of State uses English, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. The Swiss Guard, in which commands on parade are given in German, also uses French and Italian, the other two official Swiss languages, in its official ceremonies, such as the annual swearing in of the new recruits on 6th May.[1]

Anybody self taught hebrew?