Silentium

Leaving aside all the other comments, which made me smile, in a good way, all I am going to say is that such an ambitious transnational treaty is not something the uneducated masses can vote on, with the sole exception of Switzerland, the only country in the world where direct democracy has ever worked. Also, I find quite diverting and amusing the fact that Ireland is one of the countries (if not THE country) who benefited most from EU membership.

As far as proto-romance is concerned, I think it is clear that we are not talking about a perfectly homogeneous linguistic system, Hall never claimed that and saying otherwise would mean to misquote him. I would not dismiss Proto-Romance tout-court without having illustrated it, nor make it sound like the ravings of an individual linguist. Moreover, the evidence of what he and many other romance linguists say (Hall is certainly not the only one who worked on Proto-Romance, there is plenty of evidence from many other studies) is so overwhelming that I think it is really difficult to disprove it, unless one has a better hypothesis to explain the systematic similarities in the evolutional patterns of the romance languages. Hall is very moderate in what he says, he takes into account different isoglosses, substratum, dialectal/geographical peculiarities etc., as Pulgram pointed out:

Asclepiades, what do you mean exactly with Doctum? Doctum as in "doctum doces"? Anyway, it would be interesting to discuss Proto-Romance and the Romance languages in a separate thread, I don't want to go off-topic here.

Hmm..I love pesto =) I suggest one particular kind of pasta that goes with pesto, "linguine" (called trenette in Liguria). In Genova they also make a particular kind of pizza (focaccia) with pesto, which is delicious, but if you call it pizza they will kill you . Focaccia recepy here =).

Or you could refer to the 2004 Euro - "Due due Nordic victory" :-) [sweden and Denmark did what had to be done to qualify in the last game, at the expense of the italians] Naah, in that case Italy really deserved to be kicked out, as the Augusta said =) Oh I remember that. We were driving around Lazio with a poster of the Korean squad on our rear window. It was magnificent. You were a very, very, very, very brave man, Mal. Still, I bet you had a fast car Hahaha I think so too.

My chosen avatar for the duration of the Championships will show you that I too am one of the tifosi, Silentum. And, yes, bitterness still abounds about 2000 and that damned Golden Goal. However, it's not quite as bad as the bitterness of the 2002 Mondiale and South Korea! I will never, ever, forgive them, or that damned referee! I think that now Canna has been lost to injury, we have something to fight for, and I can see us winning this. Before Fabio's injury my money would have been on Germany, to be honest. Beh - speremo.... FORZA AZZURRI Haha, nice =). You're right about the 2002 mondiale, If you REALLY want to annoy an Italian all you have to say is "arbitro Moreno" XD.

Forza azzurri, of course =). They did the same thing in Italy for the world championship, because they thought Italy would not stand a chance...well, they are bankrupt now XD. Everyone here is still bitter for the Euro 2000 final with France

I watched again Der Himmel

Oh yes, I'm sure that is the great panacea XD.

It is interesting to see how they've translated the English ones. Indianapolitana is just too funny, at least for an Italian speaker .

I agree with what Andrew Dalby said. The key variable in the learning process is motivation. One could attend the best course in a given language and yet fail miserably for lack of motivation. Using the wrong approach in class might imply students' demotivation and consequent failure. Language courses these days are so comprehensive and covering all aspects of the learning experience that while tutoring and guidance are undoubtedly a valuable contribution, they are not altogether necessary, in my opinion.

Nvidia..I asked on Ubuntu Italia and they adviced to use either Envy or Synaptic to download the drivers. I managed to download the drivers with Synaptic but the screen is still not working properly...so I gave up, sort of, lol. I'm going to look on ubuntuforums then, thank you.

I tried to install Ubuntu 8.04 but apparently it messed with my video drivers.. At first it did not detect my screen, so I tried to go back to generic drivers but it didn't help much..I had a screen resolution of 800x600 and couldn't change it. I guess it's just me not being able to set it up properly.. Sounds great!I have my doubts I will be able to install it properly but I guess there's no harm in trying . I'm "obsessed" with network security and tired of installing useless software that never works anyway. Thanks for the tip!

Wow, I love Linux!I have a couple of centuries old Pentium I with an astonishing 32 MB ram and 2GB hard disk somewhere in the basement. Would that do the trick? XD

I totally agree with Doc. The scriptoria played a crucial part in the preservation of Latin Literature and language, as Ludovicus pointed out. Not to mention the production of glosses to religious texts in latin (I am thinking of the Reichenau glosses to the Vulgata, for example, or the more peculiar Kassel glosses, providing equivalents in old German as well), a precious and invaluable source in the study of semantic shifts occurred over time and therefore a crucial element for the advancement of romance philology. Bah..I am defending the Catholic Church, what is the world coming to? XD

Oh dear.. Go De Pfeffel, go!XD

"The Latin Mass had been largely abandoned in the 1960s, as part of reforms to make Catholicism more relevant to its worldwide congregation. Father Reginald Foster, an American priest who is the Pope's official Latinist, praises the virtues and the clarity of the Latin language. "You have to say something and move on," he says. "It's not like French and some of these philosophical languages where you can write a whole page and say nothing - in Latin you can't do that!'' " I think these last quotes from the BBC article show some bias on the part of the speaker. It's entirely possible to "write a whole page" in any language without saying anything. I posted the link to the article because I thought some of our members would be interested in reading Latin online, esp. newly coined terms from the Internet age. Well, if we look at this from a Sapir-whorfian perspective I think it is undoubtedly true that the English language, for example, is infinitely more pragmatic (and so is Latin) than the French, perhaps also for historical reasons.

This reminds me of Appius Claudius Caecus (caecus=blind), legend has it that he was punished by the Gods and made blind for wanting to unify the greco-roman, celtic and germanic pantheons. Apparently his life as a politician was not compromised by this infirmity.

They're wonderful pics. Does anyone know if this was a re-enactment society, or did they just dress up council employees? It is a re-enactment group called "Gruppo Storico Romano", someone I know attends the schola gladiatoria there, they forced me to dress up as well..most embarrassing moment in my entire life XD

Video on Rai 2 news here (in Italian..sorry). It shows the excavation site, the fragment and Angelo Bottini (soprintendenza archeologica di Roma) saying that the statue was probably part of the original decoration of the Colosseum and may depict a very important -perhaps imperial- character. They are hoping to find the head of the statue in order to identify the period in which it was made.

..and in French as well "

You should see the marks of the tyres on the basoli...very sad.

Thank you Nephele!In Europe that word is [sadly] famous because of a certain tv show . The story about Scipio Asina's cognomen is very interesting!Several millennia later the pejorative connotation can still be perceived by Italian speakers . In Italian asino is used in sentences such as "sei un asino" or "sei stupido come un asino", to say that one is helplessly/completely stupid.

Pues

LOL syntax...there was something like that in Latin too, but I can't remember the sentence.