docoflove1974

From the San Francisco Chronicle's site (full article here) I find it interesting that the tattoos and scarring not only were visible, but that there were so many on her in the first place. I had heard of men undergoing such ritualistic 'skin art', but not so much on women!

I was under the impression that the Celtic (mostly Irish) monasteries had a much longer tradition of copying, and that via the travelling monks (I'm blanking on a name...something like Columnus?) this tradition was brought back to mainland Europe? As for the illiteracy...I'm pretty sure that it was in the monasteries, only, that literacy was achieved...few 'lay' people, regardless of status, were even partially literate until the late dark ages (11th century).

While waltzing around the library today (it really did feel like that), I had to pick up Antoine Meillet' s 1966 Esquisse d'une histoire de la langue latine. While there are other, more modern, tomes on the topic, it is still a good discussion on the topic of the origins of the Italic branch of Indo-European, as well as the various stages of Latin. If you have at least a reading knowledge of French (which is about where I'm at), and a modicum of linguistic knowledge, then this is one for you to look at. There are several editions, with Amazon.com showing one from as late as 1977, but I'd say anything post-1960 is fine.

Not even slightly. Hablando/Comiendo/Viviendo are present participles, and are used in progressive constructions. There is nothing remotely passive about them.

Not so easy is it? I was born in northern England, but possibly Viking in far-off origin (my name Dalby is Scandinavian) -- but my aunt insisted we were French (d'Albi) which might even make my ancestors Albigensians or Cathars. Which should I go with? DNA testing perhaps? Many of us Americans have gotten used to the term 'mixed up mutt'...I know I have in describing my father's side. Perhaps this is the course to take?

This is Vulgar Latin...the spoken register. See my previous posts for a clearer description.

Vulgar Latin is considered to 'start' around the time of Plautus...~200BCE, perhaps earlier. As Jozsef Hermann (2000) states in his book on the subject, the term 'Vulgar Latin': He later notes on that same page that the most of what we have comes from the first century CE--Pompeii, Petronius. But as far as we know, 'Vulgar Latin' existed earlier, but was not recorded. Old Latin, by contrast, was a totally different version of the language, and was in use much before the Republic era even existed. Completely different from VLat. Ooooooh...another reference to check out later...thanks!

They would actually say 'lu pa'' and 'lu ca'' , some other exmaples would be the word 'fish' that would be (phonetically) 'puh-sh' instead of 'pesce' and instead of 'siedi' (sit) they would say (phonetically) 'ah-loo-gat-ee) Yeah, that's the pure dialect...I was using the 'standard' words with the 'dialect-ish' articles, since there is a wide variation in pronunciations and article forms.

Sorry I didn't see this earlier. There are various stages of Latin, but the 'oldest' (Old Latin) was very similar to what we have as Classical Latin. Classical was in fact spoken, but was not the 'language of the people' for nearly as long as it was written. That is to say: Classical Latin is more of a written 'register' than spoken. What we have of Old Latin is limited, mostly to tombstones/inscriptions. It seems that it was the language of the people of Latium (the general area of where Rome is), with the city of Rome becoming more prominent and their dialect becoming the standard--leading up to what we know as (Old, then Classical) Latin. Two closely-related members of the Italic branch of Indo-European was Oscan and Umbrian, spoken by the peoples of the same names. It is mostly through those two languages that we know about Old Latin, albeit there were differences in morphological markings. They were spoken more to the east, much of where the regions of Umbria and Le Marche are now. The Etruscans were a different group of people, with a different language. As of right now, there is no difinitive proof that it is an Indo-European language; there have been attempts to link Basque with Etruscan, but I don't believe that they have been successful in that endeavor. Much of the southern heel of the Peninsula, including the island of Sicily, was under Greek rule, and had Greek speakers there. I'm not sure what is known of any indigenous languages...but I'm sure someone on here has more info on those.

Language is the soul of human life...it is through language that we defend our existence. Ok, maybe not, maybe I'm just a biased linguist They're all Indo-European languages, and thanks to the Renaissance (I never spell that blasted word correctly) and the Age of Enlightenment, there are a ton of words which were spread all over Europe. Still, it's amazing to look at two distantly related languages and see how much they share in common. I know I tried to learn a little German, and still didn't come back with much. Although I kinda understand many aspects of the grammar, it would definitely take some brain power to learn that one. For me, I would like to improve my Portuguese and learn French (I only have a reading knowledge of it now), but I am dying to learn (Ancient) Greek. So much to do, so little time to do it in!

That's exactly it. You were highly exposed to the phonetic aspects of the language at an early age, which is why your cadence, stress patterns, and general pronunciation is 'native-like'. You're what is called a 'heritage speaker'--you may not be fully bilingual, but you were exposed to it by your family. It's quite an ecclectic combo of dialects, tho...northern and south-central! I know aspects of it...what I studied was last chronicled by Rohlfs ini 1968, which is the mass-noun markings. The quick and dirty version: mass nouns are those which must be quantified while being counted. An example is 'rice'; you can't really say 'one rice' (outside of the restaurant scenario), rather 'one grain of rice', 'one cup of rice', 'one bag of rice' and so on. In dialetto, south-central dialects (particularly of Marchese and Umbriano, and some of Abruzzese) will use different definite articles than count nouns (which, yes, can be counted individually, e.g. table, chair, dog, etc.). An example would be lo pesce, lo pane, since 'fish' and 'bread' are often counted in groups, but lu cane since 'dog' is seemingly always a count noun. NOW...it should be said that this is all dialetto...and as we have discussed on here a couple of times, the dialetti are dying out, or are already dead. So, I do want to do more research in these areas of Italy now, to see if these distinctions are still around. There is a similar phenomenon in the Asturias region of Spain, and there's another area of research...but that's for the future.

The language itself I started taking 14 years ago. But I wrote my master's thesis on an aspect of grammar of 12th and 13th century South-Central Italian (Le Marche, Umbria areas), and it continues to factor in heavily in my doctoral studies.

By default I must root for the American team...although we're much like the 'slow kids' in the accelerated class when it comes to footie. Damn, we suck. My heart lies with Italia.

Heh I know. My grandparents' generation only spoke dialect (Milanese and Genovese), and did it sparingly. Once I started taking Italian in school, they stopped speaking all-together...they didn't want to 'corrupt' me! And once I was doing my graduate work, and was trying to get them to speak in dialetto...they wouldn't! They didn't understand that I was trying to learn stuff for my studies!

Hah...follow me, instead! I'll lead you, and then I'll teach you! (Meh, what am I saying...I have no time for this. Too much to do, no time to do it in.)

I don't even have the API font here..anyway hers is an "individual variant" (or whatever it's called in English), she articulates /r/ as an uvular [ʀ] instead of [r] Ah, gotcha...'French r'... Exactly, speakers of northern dialects tend to pronounce the palatal lateral as [l] (ex. gli--> li) This helps me a ton. I never was able to take an Italian dialectology course...and have no time to put together some readings of my own (although I have the sources here). Start with Rohlfs, and on I go!

What cracks me up about the Myers-Briggs tests is how rigid they are. Every time I take it, I'm either ENFJ ('teacher') or ENTJ ('general')...I'm not purely a thinker nor a feeler, but a bit of both in equal amounts. And yet, I don't feel (hah) that I'm much of the emotional kind...I tend to be much more of the thinker, according to my own intuitions. They need more of a sliding scale!

A 'lazy' r...ma non so esattamente di quello parli. Mi puoi descriverlo? Yeah...I pretty much have to give (American) English speakers a mini-phonetic lesson on how to say it. Interestingly enough, my great-aunt (a Genovese-speaker) can't say it, either. She's taking Italian courses, so that she can learn the standard (Florentine) dialect. I guess Genovese doesn't really have that sound? (I do admit I'm not that good at my own dialects! They weren't taught to me.)

Actually, that's a different story. 'Romance' r is a tap/flap--which is literally just that, the tip of your tongue tapping quickly against your alveolar ridge--and this does exist in English, but not as a 'r'. For many English dialects (particularly in the Americas), this is the 't' or 'd' which is between vowels when said in rapid speech: butter, button, ladder. Just getting the Anglo-speaking brain to not think 't/d' and to think 'r' instead takes some practice!

Actually, the [dz] sound does exist in English, in borrowed words mostly: pizza being the prime example. It's not a hard affricate for English speakers to come up with...unlike the palatal liquid (gli), which is murderous on English speakers.

A good resource for this is: Lewis, Henry and Holger Pedersen (1989). A Concisce Comparative Celtic Grammar. G

Trust me, you're better with Nikki or Ashley...

Just do it

Heh I have Kevin Spacey...a good choice. Second runner up was Mel Gibson...another good one. Personally, I was hoping for George Clooney. *sigh* back to dreamland...

God: Apollo Goddess: Athena/Minerva I need all of the knowledge/wisdom help that I can get!