Today’s dictionary work, for acies (Cicero, Ad Atticum 10.7): Mea causa autem alia est, quod beneficio vinctus ingratus esse non possum, nec tamen in acie [me] sed Melitæ aut alio in loco simili [oppidulo] futurum puto. My case, though, is different, because I’m bound by a favor and can’t be ungrateful, but nevertheless I’m not […]
Tagged 1913ese, 1st century BC, 2nd century BC, acies, Cicero, Plautus, translation, trochaic septenarius, venter meus(Yeah, I know I haven’t posted here in a while — I’ve been working on a large blog post and have been neglecting the smaller ones.) Horace, Epode 8: sÄ“d Ä«ncÄtÄt | mÄ“ pÄ“ctÅs Ä“t | mÄmmÇ£ pÅtrÄ“s Ä•quÄ«nă quÄ|lÄ“s Å«bÄ•ră vÄ“ntÄ“rquÄ• mÅl|lÄs Ä“t fÄ•mÅ«r | tÅmÄ“ntÄbÅ«s Ä“xÄ«lÄ• sÅ«|rÄ«s ÄddÄtÅ«m. But your chest excites me, […]
Tagged 1st century BC, Horace, iambic dimeter, iambic trimeter, translation, venterOkay, here’s a fun problem from the Latin Wiktionary: trying to sort out category and page titles and needing decent translations for language names. Fun because there are large portions of the world that have one Latin name… and large portions that have many Latin names, muddled together. For ‘Abkhaz’, for example, I have: Abchasius, […]
Tagged Abkhaz, Latin, translationCicero, giving examples of the use of comparison to be witty, quoting a man responding to doubts that money was given to Magius because Magius was so poor, De Oratore 2.66: “Erras,” inquit, “Scaure; ego enim Magium non conservasse dico, sed tamquam nudus nuces legeret, in ventre abstulisse.” “Scaurus,” he said, “you are mistaken; I’m […]
Tagged 1st century BC, Cicero, translationCicero, De Fato, 12.28-29, showing once again that ‘nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum’: Sic enim interrogant: “Si fatum tibi est ex hoc morbo convalescere, sive tu medicum adhibueris sive non adhibueris, convalesces; item, si fatum tibi est ex hoc morbo non convalescere, sive tu medicum adhibueris sive non adhibueris, […]
Tagged 1st century BC, Cicero, fallacies, philosophy, translationSo, being as it’s getting time for me to be writing about some of my writing systems, I got to realizing I didn’t really have a good idea how to describe writing systems. For a grammar it’s relatively easy—just pull out a copy of Describing Morphosyntax and go at it—but for conscripts (and natscripts) I’m […]
Tagged description, grammatology, scriptsAll right, so I’ve managed to get the issues with the Drake alphabet I mentioned in my last post sorted out. Â I was actually pretty much right for the most part, even in the confusing areas. Here is a table of the letters involved, along with their corresponding letters in Syriac, which looks like it […]
Tagged abjad, alphabet, DrakeOne of the hazards of working with a language that you don’t work with often is that you tend to forget things. Â In many cases, this is generally not a problem so long as you have time to look things up, but with one of your own constructed languages it may not be so easy. […]
Tagged abjad, alphabet, Drake, puzzlesPliny the Elder, on selenite mined near Segóbriga (Segobriga near modern Saelices, Cuenca in Spain), Naturalis Historia 36.45: Umorem hunc terræ quadam anima crystalli modo glaciari et in lapidem concrescere manifesto apparet, quod cum feræ decidere in puteos tales, medullæ in ossibus earum post unam hiemem in eandem lapidis naturam figurantur. It is patently obvious […]
Tagged 1st century, crystal, crystallum, lapis specularis, Pliny, selenite, translation