docoflove1974

Hmmm...never thought of taking the bus. There's another idea to explore. Thanks, Maladict and CN! I do need to go through the Rome Meet thread a bit more closely; hopefully I'll have some time in the next couple of days.

To my fellow UNRV'ers! I'm going to be travelling in Italy for a couple of weeks in June--my very first trip to the Motherland, as it were. I need some help in finding out information. I'll be flying into Rome on 10 June, spending a couple of days there, and then go to the Sienna area. I fly back out of Rome on the 24th. I'm really looking for some websites and information on a few things: --inexpensive places to stay in Rome (something that's near the train stations, which is how I'll be getting to Sienna, perhaps downtown-ish near the sights). In Spain they have pensiones--government-subsidized hotels--which is more like what I'm looking for. --any festivals or such celebrations that might be worth checking out at that time --train schedules...this seemed easy to do for Spain a few years ago, but I don't know about Italy Finally, any advice for a single 30-something woman traveling alone through the lovely Peninsula? (Other than the usual...common sense, don't go anywhere alone at night, etc.) Any and all pointers are welcomed! (Oh, by the way, I plan on going to one place in particular--AAA, for the Americans--for info...the books I got there for Spain helped immensely. But my thought here was to see if there was any other hidden gem in cyberspace that you guys knew about.)

February...what the hell! Ya flew by me without a bye or leave. Then again, it's probably for the best, as it sets up a first half of 2010 that is keeping me busy. Pedal to the proverbial metal. And this is all leading up to... *cue the trumpets* my trip to Italy! Yes, the Motherland is calling me, and I am heeding the call. Well, my parents, my godmother and her kids are, too. My parents will be there a total of 5 weeks, me only 2, but oh what a 2 weeks. My parents are renting a villa just outside of Sienna, but I'm flying a few days early to Rome to see how much I can take in over a couple of days. (I'd love to stay longer, but I have very little money to spend, so I'm saying that this is just a taster course of the two areas.) The best part of the trip is what I'm planning in the middle. See, 2010 is the centennial of the last of my great-grandparents immigrating to the US, so I want to go up to Lombardy to see where 2 of them came from: Ferno and Magnago, just outside of Milan. I'm trying to get a hold of the one cousin my great-aunt kept in contact with, but this is proving difficult. But at any rate, it would be awesome to go there, see where we're registered as citizens (newly minted, as of last year), and if we're lucky to see where my great-grandparents came from. Granted, in the 100 years since they left these towns have changed from po-dunk hicksvilles to suburbs of Milan, but still. Aw no, it's 8am. Need to get a move on for the day. Oh how this day has already flown, and I've only been up an hour.

Happy birthday, LW! Hope you have a most wonderful day!

Too bad, those ones in Florence looked awesome, but I won't be there until June. Eh, I know there's plenty going on then!

Same here, buddy. SS, DD

I guess the better question is: why is this 'news' now? Did Zahi Hawass need a bit more attention, or did a Reuters big-wig just read a book?

Happy birthday, Neil! Hope you enjoyed the day with family and friends!

Honey, we'd do that anyway

LOL sounds wonderful. I took a quick glance at your daily reports...looks like all's well in your neck of the woods?

Well, I guess I should explain my absence and lack of participation. To say the least, I've been a very busy doc. It breaks down like this: I've been doing more, although I haven't exactly been paid any more, but with the added responsability comes recognition and, hopefully, something more permanent. There were late classes thrown at me, various curriculum and planning duties. I do love it...I'm back to teaching an intro to linguistics class, which I haven't taught in over 10 years, along with my usual 2 Spanish courses at my main emplolyer. (This course is taught at a local charter high school, which has two AmeriCorps or something volunteers...basically, they're like Teaching Assistants, but I can't have them grade anything. But copying and stuff...it's all theirs...I mean, whoa. This is so hella cool! A girl could get used to this!) I've also been recruiting potential clients for 4 different private courses, with more to come. It's amazing how this business is taking off, so much so that soon I may have to 'legitimize' it in the eyes of the government. Really, I'm quite amazed. I'm not suggesting that I've become a total small business owner, or anything, but pretty soon this is gonna take off, if I'm not careful. Oh, and then there's the private life. Because my weekends are now filled with family, friends, and one loved one in particular, I'm working dilligntly during the week. In short, the free time I used to have farting around, well, just doesn't happen much anymore. Much less time is being devoted to all things InterWeb...sad, but true. My games are being neglected, my online toga parties are not being attended to...basically, I'm back to being a fun girl in the real word, but not so much in the virtual world. But don't dispare, my UNRV friends...I'm still here. I'll always be here. Just be patient with me, please.

Nah, not impossible...I can teach you! It's just al alveolar trill!

Safe travels, and happy birthday!

Eh, no worries on the belated birthdays...I'm even more belated in getting here! Thanks, all, for the kind wishes. My birthday was spent with my man, and much fun (and sweet sweet elixir called 'beer'...ever heard of the stuff? ) was had by all. The day was also marked by a full moon, the closest one to the planet all year long, so hopefully that's a sign of wonderful things to come this year. May you all have a happy and healthy 2010...good luck and sweet dreams to all!

Dude, this is hella cool! (Oops, reverted to the youth in me...) Nice one, Klingan!

Mutual intelligibility is a tricky thing. It's not 100% measurable...sure, we can measure how much the grammar and lexicon is similar, but what one person says is intelligible versus what someone else says is intelligible is different. But overall, I think it's not wise to assume that even a native Latin speaker of the Late Republic/Early Empire would be able to understand a modern Romance language speaker. And, for the record, I'm talking about spoken language as well. Perhaps one vital clue is the Appendix Probi and other such grammars of the end of the Empire days through to the 7th century, which documented the evolution of Classical Latin to the Vulgar Latin of the time. Even then Latin grammarians were trying to correct lexical, phonological, morphological and syntactical 'errors'--changes in case due to the use of prepositions, lack of case use, collapse of declension, evidence of change in the phonological inventory. And this is in 3-4th c. CE! Click here for a reproduction on the University of Pennsylvania's site. This would lead many (including myself) to question whether a native Latin speaker of that 3-4th c. CE could understand Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Sardinian, Rumanian, and the like. I completely agree with sylla, that the evolution of these Vulgar Latin speeches (and I only say this because we end up with various Romance Languages later...not because we've found evidence of different Vulgar Latin speeches--how ironic!) was over several centuries, such that taking speakers of one century wouldn't necessarily understand someone from even 1-2 centuries later. *Perhaps* (and I do mean to imply a great deal of doubt here) you could say that someone from the same town in northern Italy from 5th c. CE and 8th c. CE would be able to understand each other, but I'm not even sure about that. I will say that one element that is up in the air is the lack of documentation in Romance (the speeches of the people in these areas between "Latin" and the modern languages). We have some margin notes (the "glosses") from monks in the monasteries, made while they were copying the manuscripts, but what we have is from closer to 9th/10th c. CE. We have the jarchas, poetry written by the Iberians during the Moorish occupation; these love songs were written in Arabic or Hebrew for the most part, except for the last stanza, 4 lines written in Semitic script but in Ibero-Romance words. Their translation has been going on for the last several decades, but it's a slow and tedious process, so our collection is growing. In terms of the modern languages, even if we went to the 'old' versions of these language--say, 11th/12th c. to 15th/16th c. CE--the syntax and morphology have changed drastically, the phonology has changed in various ways (vowel system reduced, sibilants changed, palatalization to varying degrees), that I don't know how much a native Latin speaker of any Roman period would understand them fully. I think mutual intelligibility would be compromised. The two books I go to to start on Vulgar Latin are J

Don't worry, Pan, some of us 'former regulars' have been bit by the busy bug...glad to know you're doing well.

She is! She is! I've seen it with my own eyes! lol Happy birthday, my friend. May you enjoy the day, and have a great birthday week!

Correct; just reading a good biography of Marco Polo tells this story (I highly recommend Laurence Bergreen's Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu ) tells this, as well. But to my knowledge, if there are Latin-speakers in Constantinople, they were 'underground', so to speak. Greek was the standard language, if you will, as well as the language of the traders. Other immigrant communities existed, particularly the Syriac-speaking peoples, but I don't know of a Latin-speaking one in particular.

I just found this in the Oxford English Dictionary:

Vulgar Latin and Early Romance 'handbooks'--basic references that one should consult: Elcock, W.D. 1960. The Romance Languages London: Faber & Faber Herman, J

This is a great question, and one which doesn't have a single answer. That is to say, the formation of the sound is one set of answers (and varies from language to language), while the convention of using the letter "J" is another issue altogether. One thing is certain, that the 'fall' of the Roman centralized education system, which is held to be in the 6th century, led to various differences around the former Empire--one of these being decline of open education (usually being pushed to the realm of the monastic life), and another fall in literacy rates. In general, when this type of situation happens, it creates a vacuum in the 'standards' of acceptability; one of the results is isolation of linguistic speech communities, which facilitates divergence among speech communities. Simply put, these steps help in the development of the Romance languages that we have had for some 1200 years. The word-initial Latin "I" represented a sound which in reality could have represented a number of sounds. What is probable is that, when followed by another vowel, it probably was more fricated--think 'friction'--and that, with certain combinations, this led to a variety of possibilities. It is a type of 'yod'--a palatal (think the roof of the mouth) semi-vowel/semi-consonant (a sound which is more vowel than consonant), which affects the consonants around them. This is a very rich area of historical Romance phonology, one which has been documented and studied for centuries. What it boils down to is this: this yod makes sounds more palatalized--pronounced more in the central part of the mouth. It works in different ways in the various Romance languages, which explains why "JULIUS" (the voiced palatal semi-consonant, which sounds like a "y" in English) in Latin became: "Giulio" (with a voiced palatal affricate) in Italian, "Jules" and "Julio" (with a voiced palatal fricative) in French and Portuguese respectively, "Julio" (with a voiceless velar fricative) in Spanish, etc. All in about the same range, but different. (This information is a paraphrase of both Herman (2000) and Elcock (1960)...see the next post for reference information.) What seems to have happened is that as this yod became more fricated ("harder") and represented not only the sound of the initial "I" in Latin words, and as this yod worked more of its palatalization magic, the various languages had to represent the sound in various ways. Herman (2000:44) states that the various inscriptions of the second century CE are full of confusions. Herman goes on to say that these various spellings and 'confusions' could have represented different, although similar, sounds, which all merged into the same type of sound...which we see today. As far as the actual orthography issue, well, I don't have a specific answer. The materials I have here (the major handbooks on Romance) don't mention this specific orthographic question--other issues ("H" is a great one) are taken up in much more detail. If I run across something, I'll add it...and hope that some others do the same. For more information on this, go to any of the handbooks on the formation of the Romance languages, both individually or collectively. I'll post a list in a later post.

Yeah, but Keith pretty much made himself 'seen' and 'known'; usually drummers are just the goof dudes in the back. Glad to hear that Compy is going to pull through. Hopefully you have insurance?

Libraries: check...in particular the ones at the University of Texas. Museums: check, sorta...they're ok, but the bigger collections are at Houston. But the UT museums usually have pretty good exhibits, too. Austin Museum of Art has been steadily growing in endowments and in quality over the years, however. Art Galleries: see 'Museums'. I mean, it's cool here, and all, but Austin is not Atlanta, for example, let alone some of the major cities in the country.

Heh yeah, that line gets used a lot. This might be the only place on earth where a country bar is situated next door to a jazz club, which is next to a salsa bar...all in the main entertainment district...and no one bats an eyelash.