h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A few typos etc.

The vowels a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i (or j), l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, and x.

long E sound, like in "greet." [as in 'greet'.]

pronunciation rules utilized [utilised]

Early latin made no distinguishment [Early Latin made no distinction]

Word order means nothing in latin, and in poetry [Latin]

"I" is the Nominative for, ['I' is the nominative form, ] You have capitalised the names of the cases many times - in error, I think.

Vocative, which is used only on masculine (used only with)?

Posession is the primary function of the Genetive. [Possession is the primary function of the genitive.]

because it is posessing [possessing]

(unless the sentence is more complicated, if something (unless the sentence is more complicated - if something...)?

the Accusative case are the object acted upon. [the accusative case are the objects...]

The Ablative case is the swiss army knife [Swiss army knife]

Students of latin will often [Latin]

punctuation was entirely omitted from writing, as was the case in written Latin. (punctuation was omitted, as was the case in written Latin)? ('entirely' used again in the next sentence).

,without which, Latin students would be lost entirely. [,without which Latin students would be lost entirely.]

Sorry, I wasn't very clear there.

ThinkSoft says he/she is 'perpetually leaving things unfinished', and in a week or so we'd be thinking about moving this if it isn't ready enough. As it looks fairly comprehensive, I thought it would be worth reaching some kind of concensus about what should happen to this next.

Personally, I think if it needs work in terms of tidying up, as Rudest Elf's post suggests, then it would be fine to go forward as they could be dealt with by the Sub, but if it needs more fundamental work it would be for FM. But I'd rather open up a discussion now than have a brief debate in a week or two's time and get the wrong result.

I wonder if Echo has had a butchers...

Well, we have well over a week to consider its merits before we even need to think about moves, so let's see what else comes up. It would be great for EMR to have a look if possible, though.

I think there is a lot more that could be said about Latin - there should be less about the different cases, and there should also be a section on how different tenses of verbs use different endings as well, rather than all the little connecting words that English uses.

Perhaps the entry should give the names of a few famous Latin authors, such as Ovid, Virgil etc.

I'd recommend a move to the Flea Market, unless the sub-editor is a Latin scholar.

There could be more said about a lot of subjects though, I suppose, but as it stands is the information in the entry correct?

I'd far sooner accept an entry that could be polished but which wasn't definitive than not have an entry at all. Then if someone comes along with a better understanding of the subject, we can direct them to the UpdateForum.

Is there anything in the entry which is not actually correct?

Latin (Latina Lingua) is a horribly, horribly, complex language -- I wouldn't state this as strongly. Latin was complex, but so is English in a different way. Latin used word endings to denote the use of words. English uses small connecting words as in the sentence "I would have looked at it carefully if I had been going to buy it".

It may sound impossing -- that's wrong, the author intended to say "it may sound intimidating".

The vowels a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i (or j), l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, and x -- that should be "the letters"

A Roman title, similar to "Mr." was Gaius --> A common Roman first name was Gaius

The description of the Nominative is not actually wrong, but it is confusing. It should not really mention the Predicative Nominative, but should instead give an example of a normal nominative.


if something were happening to Mark's story, both words would be in the Accusative -- incorrect as far as I know. It should be:

if something were happening to Mark's story, then 'story' would be in the Accusative

The Accusative case should be moved to after the Vocative and before the Genitive.

G

Gnomon: >You're speaking my kind of language there, R. People often think my writing is childish and simple, probably because they understand it all. Later I hope they realise that they now understand something that they didn't before. I hate abstruse articles on a topic that are only intelligible to someone who already understands what they are trying to explain.<

I couldn't agree more. People who can't write clearly are either blinded by the illusion of their own spurious intelligence or pompous charlatans.

Recumbentman: >In The Life of Brian they came up with one I hadn't heard of: the locative<

A vestige of Old Latin. Not how the locative 'domum' is identical to the accusative. This may well be why it died out.

Gnomon: >I think there is a lot more that could be said about Latin<

Definitely - Latin is a huge subject. This entry would benefit from a more precise title I reckon.

Back with a look at the entry later

You call and I come - this entry came about while I was away during summer, or else I'd have noticed it to start with.

I know I'm not a Scout anymore, but my view is Flea Market. To reply to Jims, or whatever he prefers himself to be known as now:

<>

Yes, the information about Latin is - though the information about English isn't. English doesn't just have a nominative and a genitive case; it's got all the cases Latin (and every other language) has. The thing is that our accusative case happens to have exactly the same form as our nominative case, though that wasn't true back in Old English, a highly inflected language. But anyways, I digress. My point is that this entry is woefully incomplete as it stands. An entry on an entire language which only covers vestigial elements of its pronunciation and spelling and an overview of the cases of nouns is not really descriptive of the Latin language. This entry would not have to include a complete grammar, but in addition to including some discussion of Latin grammar and how it differs from the grammar of English and the Romance languages, it would be good to include information about Latin literature and the culture that accompanied the language (inscriptions, Senate deliberations, etc, in addition to Virgil, Ovid, Plautus, etc).

<>

This may be just because I have particular familiarity with the subject, but I'd be embarrassed to see this entry in the EG in its present state. While the information certainly is accurate, it has a very long way to go to reach a polished state - something which it's unfair to place upon a sub-editor, particularly a sub-editor unfamiliar with Latin (and no, I'm not volunteering for the job). If this entry were accepted I'd have an update in before you could blink an eye - but I could just as soon write a new entry as update this one.

Sorry to be so overwhelmingly negative - ThinkSoft has done some good work so far, but the entry has an enormous way to go, in my opinion, before it's EG-ready. If ThinkSoft doesn't show interest in working on it some more, it should go to the FM, and then maybe when I do have time I'd certainly consider rescuing it.

Hiya EMR

Well, I do agree with some of what you said, but I wouldn't have put it so harshly. Some entries take a long time to come to fruition after all. Latin is worthy of a project rather that a single entry, so, yes, this entry must be narrowed in focus, but hold on there. Easy tiger.

If I was feeling pedantic, I could point out that you're quite wrong about English (and all other languages) having all the cases Latin has. Since the days of the gerund-grinders, English grammar has been shoehorned into an allegedly superior Latinate version that is totally unsuitable for a synthetic language. There's no point in inventing cases that have no function*. I *could* say all this, you understand

*I didn't say the Ch-word! It was hard, though.

Anyway, since this entry is a starter for some areas of grammar, maybe you could be persuaded to have a go at one of the other areas?

OK, now a look at the entry...

>Latin (Latina Lingua) is a horribly, horribly, complex language.< Perhaps you could call the entry 'Classical Latin Grammar' and change this sentence to 'Latin grammar is horribly complex'or use 'morphology' instead on 'grammar.'

>The Latin Alphabet< You need to point out that the Romans devised this alphabet, it being a modified version of the Greek one [with some Etruscan influence]. Maybe you could put something like 'The Latin alphabet is used on every continent.'

There's certainly enough to say about the Latin alphabet for its own entry.

distinguishment -> distinction
>The case of a word provides hints to the word's purpose in the sentence.< provides hints to -> determines

>Word order means nothing in latin,<
Not strictly true. First, it was only in Classical, Literary Latin that word order was completely free - Vulgar Latin had a strong preference for SOV - and second, even in Classical Latin, putting a word at the end of a sentence served to emphasise it.

>English rarely uses these cases,<
As I mentioned in my reply to EMR, it is foolish to force English into the Latin grammatical model. English does not have these cases, not for nouns anyway. For pronouns, I suppose so.

That'll do for now

I wouldn't bother saying too much about the Latin Alphabet since it is already well covered in "The Development of the Western Alphabet".

Hey Jack

My apologies if I seemed too harsh, I was just stressing the point that this entry isn't quite ready to go into the EG as yet. I'm perfectly happy to help out with it if I ever have more than two minutes at the computer at any one time... don't count on that though.

Old English, a highly inflected language, does have some of the Latinate cases and other ones besides. I use the Latinate terms to describe English, though - at least "nominative", "accusative" and "genitive" where I might use "subject", "object" and "possessive", because I am a pompous git.

The author ThinkSoft last posted on h2g2 on Sept 2. Propose move to Flea Market.

Galaxy Babe
Scout

Seconded.

Thank you

Added to both Scout Databases