[birdman]

Yikes, so much discussion... hope I can remember everything I was going to type.

I know this has already been addressed, and perhaps this is just because of my training in music from a young age, but I always assumed forte came from Italian, not French, and meant "strong point" -- in music, "strength" = loud volume.

et cetera: My 9th grade English teacher pronounced this "egg-SEJ-ruh". As in, "I had a headache THIS BIG, and it had Eggsejruh written all over it!"

I do contest some of the pronunciations found on this page, however. Herb != 'erb? Why not? So is hour pronounced "hower" now too? If we have to give up the silent h in herb, then the Brits have to give up "an heritage" and "an history". The purpose of an is to tie the article a to the vowel on the next word, so an apple becomes "uhNAPple". If the h in history is not silent, there's no reason to use an as we would in an hour (or as I say it, "uhNOWwer").

The page also claims eLECToral rather than elecTORal and points out that mayORal and pasORal also accent the second syllable. My claim is, mayoral and pastoral both put the emphasis on the OR, hence elecTORal should do likewise.

wet != whet. In the Northeastern US the sound [hw], spelled "wh," is vanishing and these two words are pronounced the same. Elsewhere they should be distinguished. Huh? I'm from Ohio and have always heard this as "wet". I can't even imagine how to pronounce "hw", and Merriam-Webster Online only provides a voice sample for "wet". Is it supposed to be "huhWET"?

And in reponse to the other Ohio guy, I live near Cleveland, so perhaps that's why I haven't heard most of those pronunciations, but my dad does sometimes put emphasis on the first syllable of words that shouldn't have them. Like, "Let's see if we can find a MICKdonalds". He's the only person I know who doesn't say "mcDONald's".

Speaking of McNames, how far does an English word have to be removed from its foreign origin for the anglicized pronunciation to be acceptable? I've heard people whine about MACintosh not being muhKINTish.

Some pronunciations that bug me are dialectical, so one could argue whether they're really mistakes. One of my friends who grew up in New York City says "arrinj". Me: " 'Arrinj??' " Him: "Yeah, arrinj. How do you say it? 'Orange'?" Me: "Well, that is how it's spelled..." Any time I hear "harrible" instead of "horrible" I hear that Paul Lynde-esque alien from American Dad saying "haaaaarrible!!"

That all said... there's only so much one can do. It's language evolution. Sherbert is now in the dictionary, and there's no stopping it.

-birdman

[birdman]

Originally Posted by loki74

I'm not sure if this was mentioned before... but I was just thinking about how I missed the Greek festival here in Vegas and it reminded me: Gyros. I think its pronounced similar to "euro," or something like that, NOT "guy-roh" or "jai-roh." I don't care a whole lot, but I have a couple of Greek friends...

It depends which self-annointed person you ask. It's either YEEroh (wav here) or ZHEERoh (wav here). This goes along with what I said about "macintosh" above; how long does gyro need to be a part of the English language before it's acceptable to say JYroh? I suppose the difference is that a gyro is something that comes directly from Greece, whereas Macintosh apples and computers don't come from Scotland.

-birdman

[loki74]

ahhh, interesting..

Just thought of this one... Well, its not a mispronounciation per se, but improper use of a plural. But it bugs the hell outta me. At my HS we have a VisualBASIC class (I know, it SO should be Xcode/Carbon/Cocoa, but theres not much I can do about this...) and It is, VisualBASIC. Some people seem to have trouble with this and say "Visual Basics." wha??? That sounds like an art/visual theory class.

[Tesseract]

I mentioned "gyro" on the first or second page!
birdman is correct, as far as I know. 'gear-oh' is also acceptable at the Greek restaurants near my home (western Michigan). 'gyro' (as in the rotating device, rhymes with Cairo) and 'jeer-oh' are both wrong.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by birdman

Herb != 'erb? Why not? So is hour pronounced "hower" now too? If we have to give up the silent h in herb, then the Brits have to give up "an heritage" and "an history". The purpose of an is to tie the article a to the vowel on the next word, so an apple becomes "uhNAPple". If the h in history is not silent, there's no reason to use an as we would in an hour (or as I say it, "uhNOWwer").

I'm pretty sure if you pronounced the "h" in the word "herb" in the US at least, you'd get corrected. I've never heard anyone pronounce the "h" on that word.

[alex_kac]

Mine is "Tsar" turning into Zar.

[Tiresias]

ThinkInsane's signature line.

It's "nemo me impune lacessit" not "lacesset".

http://www.answers.com/topic/nemo-me-impune-lacessit

I hope I haven't provoked him.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by undotwa

Whenever I see the word 'Zoological' I have an urge to split the 'oo' into two syllables.

Well, that's because the 'oo' is pronounced as two syllables in this word; there is a hiatus. So of course you do.

Originally Posted by undotwa

Do you have a source for that? 'x' is always pronounced 'ks' in Latin as far as I know.

Unfortunately, I don't. In Classical Latin, x is always ks, being the equivalent of the Greek ksi (always unvoiced).

But we read a few texts about how medieval and renaissance scholars read Latin, and one of the things I remember (along with oe and ae always becoming a long e, c becoming an s before e/i/y/ae/oe, g becoming either dj or zh before e/i/y/ae/oe, etc.) is that intervocalic x was voiced.

Obviously, this can't be used as much of a 'guide' for Latin pronunciation, since the language had been dead for more than a millennium as a spoken language; but at the time when the word 'exit' was introduced into the English vocabulary (partly through theatre, partly from scholars), the 'accepted' pronunciation of intervocalic x was, according to these texts, voiced.

(Note: these were English scholars! Scholars from other countries naturally had other standardised ways of pronouncing Latin; in Denmark, for instance, ae and oe retained their late-classical values, because the sounds [ɛ] and [ø/œ] already existed in the language, etc.)

[selowitch]

Originally Posted by Fred_Cokebottle

Labotary!

Laboratory? Well, let's see... in the USA, I hear it pronounced LAB-ra-tor-ee and in England, la-BOR-a-tree. In constrast we have the word lavatory, which Americans pronounce as "bathroom" and the English say LAV-a-tree.

[selowitch]

Originally Posted by CharlesS

I'm pretty sure if you pronounced the "h" in the word "herb" in the US at least, you'd get corrected. I've never heard anyone pronounce the "h" on that word.

Oh, I have. Try Martha Stewart. She pronounces the "h" every time!

Originally Posted by BigBadWolf

I just saw this site the other day, it has the 100 most often mispronounced words. http://www.yourdictionary.com/library/mispron.html

I hate to set off a round of breast-beating, but this article contradicts a lot of the apparently settled points in this thread! So, either some of the folks posting here or wrong, or the author of the article is. Reopen the debate!

[BlueSky]

I hate it when certain women pronounce "Ride me all night cowboy!" as "Get lost". Dumb chicks.

[Doofy]

Originally Posted by birdman

If we have to give up the silent h in herb, then the Brits have to give up "an heritage" and "an history". The purpose of an is to tie the article a to the vowel on the next word, so an apple becomes "uhNAPple". If the h in history is not silent, there's no reason to use an as we would in an hour (or as I say it, "uhNOWwer").

Yep, but it's also the rule in Britain too. The only people you've heard saying "an history" or "an heritage" are morons who don't know how to speak their own language.

[birdman]

Originally Posted by Doofy

Yep, but it's also the rule in Britain too. The only people you've heard saying "an history" or "an heritage" are morons who don't know how to speak their own language.

Heh, actually I don't know that I've ever heard it pronounced "an history", but I've seen it spelled that way. In high school choir we sang a song by an English composer, and we thought "an heritage" was a mistake. Nonetheless, we sang it "an heritage", with the n, since that's how it was written. I thought maybe it was supposed to be Cockney, like "an 'eritage" ("uhNERRuhtij"). The 'eritage of 'ampton 'ardly ever 'as 'urricanes in its 'ist'ry.

Ooh, in my first post I forgot to mention Mario pronounced as "Merry-o". You know, like Super Merryo Brothers.

-birdman

[undotwa]

Originally Posted by Oisín

Well, that's because the 'oo' is pronounced as two syllables in this word; there is a hiatus. So of course you do.

I realise that :-)

Unfortunately, I don't. In Classical Latin, x is always ks, being the equivalent of the Greek ksi (always unvoiced).

As I have been taught.

But we read a few texts about how medieval and renaissance scholars read Latin, and one of the things I remember (along with oe and ae always becoming a long e, c becoming an s before e/i/y/ae/oe, g becoming either dj or zh before e/i/y/ae/oe, etc.) is that intervocalic x was voiced.

'c' more likely becomes 'ch' in mediaeval latin. But again, this is determined from where you live. In Northern Germany, I was told, 'c' was always pronounced 'ts'. There were two main schools of Latin pronounciation - the Northern 'teutonic' pronounciation and the Italian 'ecclesiastical' pronounciation. The 'ts' pronounciation of 'c' occurs is common in Slavic languages, such as Polish. England followed more closely the Italian tradition in pronouncing its Latin.

Obviously, this can't be used as much of a 'guide' for Latin pronunciation, since the language had been dead for more than a millennium as a spoken language; but at the time when the word 'exit' was introduced into the English vocabulary (partly through theatre, partly from scholars), the 'accepted' pronunciation of intervocalic x was, according to these texts, voiced.

Latin never 'died' as a spoken language. Well into the second millenium was Latin used as a living, breathing language for the Church, scholars and the courts. I just checked my Latin grammar ('Scottish Classics Group') and in its discussion of mediaeval pronounciation it makes no mention of the intervocalic 'x' becoming voiced. Of course, the grammar only briefly outlines mediaeval pronounciation (which was very confused) so therefore cannot be definitive. Considering however that England particulary followed the Italian tradition of Latin pronounciation and that I've always heard 'gloria in eks-chel-sis deo' rather than 'egz-chel-sis deo' I find this assertion puzzling. To me, the pronounciation of 'exit' in English has more to do with the way 'x' is more often than not voiced in English and simply when the word was adopted into English it pronounciation changed accordingly. So many Latin words receive new pronounciations when they are appropriated into English!

[Tiresias]

Originally Posted by birdman

Heh, actually I don't know that I've ever heard it pronounced "an history"

It's because the 'h' in history used to be silent, like the 'h' in 'an honest man' still is.

Another of mine is the "glottal stop" (IPA = ʔ). Like people who don't aspirate the 't' in some words like "mountain" but say "I done climb a moun[ta]in me."

That's hillbilly talk.

[undotwa]

Originally Posted by Mr. Gogarty

ThinkInsane's signature line.

It's "nemo me impune lacessit" not "lacesset".

http://www.answers.com/topic/nemo-me-impune-lacessit

I hope I haven't provoked him.

But surely you will not provoke him

[teknopimp]

an harmonica?

[ShotgunEd]

I think the an before a h only really should be used with words that have a silent h, if you have a cold, or if you are a cockney.

Edit: Or if you are doing a cockney accent.

[birdman]

Diction Coach: Now say your line.
Lena: And I keean't stan'im.
DC: And I can't stand him.
Lena: And I keean't stan'im.
DC: Can't.
Lena: Keeaan't.
DC: Cahhhhn't.
Lena: Keeeeeaaaaan't.

-birdman

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by undotwa

Latin never 'died' as a spoken language. Well into the second millenium was Latin used as a living, breathing language for the Church, scholars and the courts.

Meh, you know what I mean! It was dead as a commonly spoken language used among the general plebs. It wasn't a naturally evolving language anymore (the evolution that occured in its use by the Church, scholars, and courts cannot be labelled a 'natural' evolution).

Considering however that England particulary followed the Italian tradition of Latin pronounciation and that I've always heard 'gloria in eks-chel-sis deo' rather than 'egz-chel-sis deo' I find this assertion puzzling.

Well, the x in 'excelsis' isn't intervocalic, so that one would never be affected

To me, the pronounciation of 'exit' in English has more to do with the way 'x' is more often than not voiced in English and simply when the word was adopted into English it pronounciation changed accordingly. So many Latin words receive new pronounciations when they are appropriated into English!

This is no doubt true. Had intervocalic xs not been regularly voiced in English, the x in 'exit' would surely have become unvoiced long ago. And it was probably only logical to the people who initially began using the word as a Common English word to pronounce the x voiced.

But I'm still quite sure that monk who wrote the pronunciation guide to beginning students of Latin, said that x should be voiced when intervocalic. Of course, the harder I try to remember more details of the text, and what that damn monk's name was, the more it escapes me, and the less sure I become. Isn't that just typical?

[DanMacMan]

Supposably where it should be supposedly.

[brink]

Originally Posted by ShotgunEd

I think the an before a h only really should be used with words that have a silent h, if you have a cold, or if you are a cockney.

Edit: Or if you are doing a cockney accent.

Or you're Igor from Count Duckula (an hotel) or Kent Brockman (an heroic hippo).

[SVass]

Chanukah as pronounced by Christian Americans.

[Tesseract]

Lybarry.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by undotwa

Latin never 'died' as a spoken language. Well into the second millenium was Latin used as a living, breathing language for the Church, scholars and the courts

Living != in use.

The definition of whether a language is "living" or not is whether it has native speakers. That means people who learned it as children, by automatic learning -- not classroom teaching. That is determined easily with this test: were any children raised speaking it? The answer in the case of Latin is no. It's been learned only as a non-native language for many, many centuries.

Side note: Hebrew is the only language to have died and been resurrected. It died (had no native speakers, though it did retain special-purpose usage, as with Latin), and was later re-introduced, and now has true native speakers.

tooki

[tooki]

Originally Posted by birdman

It depends which self-annointed person you ask. It's either YEEroh (wav here) or ZHEERoh (wav here). This goes along with what I said about "macintosh" above; how long does gyro need to be a part of the English language before it's acceptable to say JYroh? I suppose the difference is that a gyro is something that comes directly from Greece, whereas Macintosh apples and computers don't come from Scotland.

-birdman

When I was little, we attended a Greek church. It's YEE-roh.

tooki

[tooki]

Originally Posted by mojo2

What are the mispronunciations you detest?

Two of mine are reZource instead of reSource. And deciBELL instead of DECibel.

deciBELL is the correct pronunciation. The unit is a "Bel" (homophonous with "bell"), and a tenth of a unit is a "deci" (as in deciliter), combined it gives deciBel (dB).

deCIbel is shifting the stress backwards one syllable. It's a common thing, too. Take kilometer (kill-AW-mitr), which in some ways should be pronounced "keel-oh-me-ter".

tooki

[birdman]

Originally Posted by tooki

deciBELL is the correct pronunciation. The unit is a "Bel" (homophonous with "bell"), and a tenth of a unit is a "deci" (as in deciliter), combined it gives deciBel (dB).

deCIbel is shifting the stress backwards one syllable. It's a common thing, too. Take kilometer (kill-AW-mitr), which in some ways should be pronounced "keel-oh-me-ter".

Hmm, not so sure there... Merriam-Webster gives us DESSuhbell. or DESSuhb'l. I suppose you could compare it to MILiliter (rather than miliLIter). One way to think of it is the prefix being a clarifying adjective attached to the original word: "No, not a bel but a DECI bel." I think that's why the emphasis in these cases is often on the first syllable. Are there any other metric units that shifted like kilOMeter? Nobody says "cenTIMeter", as far as I'm aware.

-birdman

[tooki]

Merriam-Webster's own website says deciBELL -- listen to the sound clip for yourself.

tooki

[birdman]

Eh? You hear that as deciBEL? Sounds like DECibel to me.

-birdman

[Tesseract]

Sounds like (dec'-i-bell") to me. It may be the (correct) pronunciation of the last syllable as 'bell' instead of the common 'bəl' (that's a schwa, in case you can't see it properly in your font) that makes it confusing.

[SVass]

Originally Posted by tooki

Living != in use.

The definition of whether a language is "living" or not is whether it has native speakers. That means people who learned it as children, by automatic learning -- not classroom teaching. That is determined easily with this test: were any children raised speaking it? The answer in the case of Latin is no. It's been learned only as a non-native language for many, many centuries.

Side note: Hebrew is the only language to have died and been resurrected. It died (had no native speakers, though it did retain special-purpose usage, as with Latin), and was later re-introduced, and now has true native speakers.

tooki

My father was born in Budapest (1901) and went to school in Aszod nearby. I have seen his textbooks written in classical Latin. Thus I have caught you, Tooki, in an error. By the way, I have a copy of pages from an 1846 prayer book with notes written in both cursive Hebrew and German by my great, great grandfather announcing the births of his children. Tooki, quit believing the lies told by the English (especially anti-semites like James Breasted). sam

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Oisín

This is no doubt true. Had intervocalic xs not been regularly voiced in English, the x in 'exit' would surely have become unvoiced long ago. And it was probably only logical to the people who initially began using the word as a Common English word to pronounce the x voiced.

But I'm still quite sure that monk who wrote the pronunciation guide to beginning students of Latin, said that x should be voiced when intervocalic. Of course, the harder I try to remember more details of the text, and what that damn monk's name was, the more it escapes me, and the less sure I become. Isn't that just typical?

There's other Latin words where the intervocalic "x" is voiced.

Compare: exempt, exert.

[undotwa]

Originally Posted by tooki

Living != in use.

The definition of whether a language is "living" or not is whether it has native speakers. That means people who learned it as children, by automatic learning -- not classroom teaching. That is determined easily with this test: were any children raised speaking it? The answer in the case of Latin is no. It's been learned only as a non-native language for many, many centuries.

Side note: Hebrew is the only language to have died and been resurrected. It died (had no native speakers, though it did retain special-purpose usage, as with Latin), and was later re-introduced, and now has true native speakers.

tooki

Well what would happen, educated men and women would be bilingual. Latin was taught alongside the 'common' language of the area right from birth (i.e. the mother, father and tutor would speak to the infant child in Latin and the common language). A good 5% of the population in the High Middle Ages would be equally fluent in Latin and their common language. Religious would often exclusively converse in Latin - at the expense of their knowledge of the plebian language.

[undotwa]

Originally Posted by Oisín

Well, the x in 'excelsis' isn't intervocalic, so that one would never be affected

Thinking about the word 'exercitus', I have discovered it is actually quite hard to pronounce it ecclesiastically:

'eks-er-chi-tus'

'egz-er-ki-tus' flows much better.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by SVass

My father was born in Budapest (1901) and went to school in Aszod nearby. I have seen his textbooks written in classical Latin. Thus I have caught you, Tooki, in an error. By the way, I have a copy of pages from an 1846 prayer book with notes written in both cursive Hebrew and German by my great, great grandfather announcing the births of his children. Tooki, quit believing the lies told by the English (especially anti-semites like James Breasted). sam

Uh, what a bunch of hooey. This has nothing to do with antisemitic lies. This is linguistics, one of my areas of study.

Anyway, if it's learned in a school environment, it's not a NATIVE language, by definition! That was my whole point: nobody learned Latin as their native language, it was always learned as an extra skill.

Native languages are learned in a specific way: a child (adults can't do it!) basically absorbs the language. It takes no effort, and it results in "intuitive" knowledge of the language -- not explicit rules, etc.

Latin has not been a native language (and thus, could not be a "living" language) for a very long time. "Living" Latin evolved into all the Romance languages.

Originally Posted by undotwa

Well what would happen, educated men and women would be bilingual. Latin was taught alongside the 'common' language of the area right from birth (i.e. the mother, father and tutor would speak to the infant child in Latin and the common language). A good 5% of the population in the High Middle Ages would be equally fluent in Latin and their common language. Religious would often exclusively converse in Latin - at the expense of their knowledge of the plebian language.

That was very rare. Most learned Latin as an academic subject -- it was not learned as a native language except by a very few. Latin was (is, really) taught prescriptively, as a static language, from a book. Even if taught to a child, it wasn't learned as a native language, it didn't evolve, it didn't live.

tooki

[SVass]

Tooki, Latin was the language used in the history textbooks in Hungary around 1914. I read a Medieval History of Hungary written entirely in Latin. It was NOT taught as a dead language. Cursive Hebrew was the language used by educated Jews around 1850! Quit reading recent textbooks written in the West. sam

[Tesseract]

Originally Posted by SVass

Tooki, Latin was the language used in the history textbooks in Hungary around 1914. I read a Medieval History of Hungary written entirely in Latin. It was NOT taught as a dead language. Cursive Hebrew was the language used by educated Jews around 1850! Quit reading recent textbooks written in the West. sam

Tooki's point is that if it was taught, it was dead.

[undotwa]

Originally Posted by Tesseract

Tooki's point is that if it was taught, it was dead.

Then so is English!

Latin was the official language of the Austro-Hungarian Empire till its fall.

[undotwa]

Originally Posted by tooki

Anyway, if it's learned in a school environment, it's not a NATIVE language, by definition! That was my whole point: nobody learned Latin as their native language, it was always learned as an extra skill.

In the Middle Ages, people actually did.

Native languages are learned in a specific way: a child (adults can't do it!) basically absorbs the language. It takes no effort, and it results in "intuitive" knowledge of the language -- not explicit rules, etc.

Latin has not been a native language (and thus, could not be a "living" language) for a very long time. "Living" Latin evolved into all the Romance languages.

A living language does not have to be native. A living language is one that is used for communication. Latin was used for communication - it was almost the only language used for communication.

That was very rare. Most learned Latin as an academic subject -- it was not learned as a native language except by a very few. Latin was (is, really) taught prescriptively, as a static language, from a book. Even if taught to a child, it wasn't learned as a native language, it didn't evolve, it didn't live.

Latin did evolve during the middle ages. Syntactically, mediaeval latin is very different from classical Latin. Spellings too changed [mihi becomes 'michi']. It became a language in its own right which evolved with the plebian culture around it. Neologisms were absorbed, meanings of words changed ('comes' becomes 'count' [a noble title]).

[Tesseract]

Originally Posted by undotwa

Then so is English!

Latin was the official language of the Austro-Hungarian Empire till its fall.

English is taught to improve the skills of people who learnt it naturally, as children. It's also taught to people as a second language.

Since the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin has ONLY been a scond language.

Tooki, please correct me if I am wrong. This is not my area of expertise.

[tooki]

That's exactly right.

Kids here don't go to school not knowing English -- English class is only describing how it works, plus adding some prescriptive rules that don't actually work right. (For now, we'll ignore the aspect of attempting to iron away dialect features.)

If a language was LEARNED in the classroom only, it cannot, by definition, be a native language!

Undotwa: the definition of a living language is one with a population of NATIVE speakers. Simply being used for communication does NOT meet this criterion.

tooki

[tooki]

Originally Posted by SVass

Tooki, Latin was the language used in the history textbooks in Hungary around 1914. I read a Medieval History of Hungary written entirely in Latin. It was NOT taught as a dead language. Cursive Hebrew was the language used by educated Jews around 1850! Quit reading recent textbooks written in the West. sam

If Latin had to be taught for the kids to know it, then it was decidedly not their native language!

I am not saying that it wasn't in use, or uncommon. But it was NOT used as a native language.

tooki

[SVass]

Let me explain it this way. I spent the last week at the genealogical library in Salt Lake. In the past few years, I have personally transcribed censuses from 1795 through 1848 from Trencsen Megye (County) in Northern Hungary (now part of Slovakia) for a major non profit group. The 1715 census is available ON LINE from the National Archives of Hungary (http://mail3.folio.net/images/teka23/n78_23_548.jpg is a typical page). The early stuff is all in LATIN. Only by 1848 had they switched to Hungarian, German, Yiddish, and Polish all on the same page. (Some words are Latinized Hungarian.) (Slovakian only appears after 1918.) http://www.natarch.hu/mol_e.htm is the main entry to the National Archives if you want to explore.

What is the native language of a child who speaks one language at home, a second with his neighbors, and uses a third with his textbooks? I have a more serious problem understanding English speakers who totally misuse scientific terms and don't realize it. sam

[tooki]

A textbook-only language is never "native". Never.

I don't mean this to be offensive, but learn some linguistics (language acquisition is the area in question) and then return to this conversation; you don't know what you're talking about, so you're confounding native language learning with "educated" language use.

As for your question there: a child can be a native bilingual -- in fact, there's evidence that polyglotism is the normal state for humans, and it's highly common worldwide. But a textbook language isn't a native language -- it's not learned by the "natural" language acquisition process in a child. (Writing is an inherently unnatural task -- children acquire spoken or signed languages automatically, but there is no such thing as a written-only language. Writing is a skill separate from the capacity for language. A large part of our brain is dedicated to learning language in childhood -- be it spoken or signed. We have no such area for writing.)

tooki

[undotwa]

Originally Posted by tooki

A textbook-only language is never "native". Never.

I don't mean this to be offensive, but learn some linguistics (language acquisition is the area in question) and then return to this conversation; you don't know what you're talking about, so you're confounding native language learning with "educated" language use.

As for your question there: a child can be a native bilingual -- in fact, there's evidence that polyglotism is the normal state for humans, and it's highly common worldwide. But a textbook language isn't a native language -- it's not learned by the "natural" language acquisition process in a child. (Writing is an inherently unnatural task -- children acquire spoken or signed languages automatically, but there is no such thing as a written-only language. Writing is a skill separate from the capacity for language. A large part of our brain is dedicated to learning language in childhood -- be it spoken or signed. We have no such area for writing.)

tooki

Shall I repeat this again, again and again. Latin was not only a written language. It was the PRIMARY SPOKEN language of the upper classes, scholars and religious up until the renaissance times. During the Dark Ages, yes use of Latin declined. But during the reign of Charlemagne a revival of Latin surfaced in which Latin reestablished itself as the lingua franca of all of Europe stretching from Ireland to Poland. It was not merely a language of correspondence, people were expected to be able to converse fluently in Latin. In order for this to have occured, increasingly people were expected to learn to speak Latin from birth. This usage declined with the coming of the Renaissance when the stigma of using native languages lessened in courts. For the first time in the Renaissance writing in 'native' languages became very common. c Despite this however, Latin still held a very prominent role as the official language of the Church.

What do you think happened when the Roman Empire fell in the 5th century? Do you think people just suddenly gave up writing and speaking in Latin? Of course not! Latin was still the official language of the Eastern Roman Empire (or at least was reestablished by Justinian the Great). Classical Latin, which evolved into Ecclesiastical Latin was always syntactically different from the Vulgate spoken by the plebs (from which the Romance languages developed). Cicero would admit to using different style of Latin when speaking to his close associates than for court occasions. So even in Roman times there were two varieties of Latin spoken (the vulgate of course would be broken up into infinite dialects).

[undotwa]

Originally Posted by tooki

If Latin had to be taught for the kids to know it, then it was decidedly not their native language!

I am not saying that it wasn't in use, or uncommon. But it was NOT used as a native language.

tooki

The point is that in mediaeval times Latin was taught from such an early age as a spoken and written latin, often the scholarly classes would be able to speak and write Latin much better than their supposed native language. They would too often learn the language in a similar way in which we learn our native languages - by listening to their tutor or parents speak and trying to imitate.

[tooki]

Classical Latin hasn't changed or evolved in a millennium -- something true native users would cause. It was in wide use, but that doesn't make it a living language. Even if learned from a young age, it was taught in its textbook form. That's not "living".

I'm not making this up, it's been widely studied in linguistics. Read up on it.

tooki

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by tooki

Merriam-Webster's own website says deciBELL -- listen to the sound clip for yourself.

That says DEcibell, with the primary stress on the first syllable, as it should be. Every dictionary I can find here also assigns primary stress to the first syllable.

The prefix deci- always carries primary stress, as do nearly all of these numeric prefixes, both the Greek and the Latin. The only exception I can think of right now is the pronunciation of 'kilometre' that places the primary stress on the second syllable, rather than the first (though the 'regular' pronunciation, with the primary stress on the first syllable, is also common and perfectly acceptable).


As for the conversation between you and undotwa, I think you're talking past each other a bit. Classical Latin has indeed not evolved in a millennium (more). Latin, per se, has; it has become Mediaeval Latin, Vulgar Latin, etc.


And yes, tooki, there are languages that are only written, and have no spoken counterparts. These are, by their very nature, to a greater or smaller extent, artificial languages; but they do exist. Classical (or Literary) Chinese is an example of such a language. Although it is debated exactly how far removed it was from the proto-Zhongzhou dialect on which it is believed to be based (some believe the difference was no greater than that between Modern English and Shakespearean English; others that the two were, even at the earliest of times, they were as far apart as Modern Italian and Classical Latin), it has never been in use as a spoken language.

Originally Posted by SVass

What is the native language of a child who speaks one language at home, a second with his neighbors, and uses a third with his textbooks? I have a more serious problem understanding English speakers who totally misuse scientific terms and don't realize it.

Depending on the particular circumstances, the language the child speaks at home is his native language. The language he speaks with his neighbours may also be his native language (if, for instance, he is an immigrant who speaks the language of the area he immigrated to with neighbours, friends, etc.; but his parents' native language with his family). If the language his textbooks use are in a third language, this language is not his native language, no matter how well he speaks it.

I speak English very well (if I do say so myself), but English is not, and will never be, my native language: I have only one native language, and that is Danish. The fact that textbooks, censuses, and all scores of other written documents were written in Latin, or even the fact that Latin was the language used to teach in the classroom, as well as the official language of a state, does not automatically make it the native language of anyone. To use once more the example of Classical Chinese: all books, documents, censuses—in fact, everything ever written in China before the late 19th century—was written in Classical Chinese, and more or less everyone above peasant level was more or less forced to be at least partially fluent in Classical Chinese. But Classical Chinese has never been the native language of anyone (excluding, perhaps, a few ancient nutters who thought it would be a hoot and a half to raise their kids on Classical Chinese only).

[birdman]

Oisín, you speak (or write) English better than most native speakers I know. How long have you been speaking/writing English, and when did you first learn it? I never would have guessed it wasn't your native language. I'm impressed!

-birdman