Woah, that’s an interesting one to think about. It’s kind of true, in a way, since every word is a representation of a thing and not actually a thing? That might stick with me for a while, too.
Latin, in my opinion, is a grand touchstone for better understanding any romance language, including English and Russian. ;-)
Things we take for granted are spelled out in word endings. Male/female, noun cases nominative/genitive/dative/etc., verb conjugation present, past, future, future pluperfect, etc. word endings tell you which.
& if you're like me, you'll never forget that Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres. :-)
The word ending thing is driving me nuts! I'm not used to it. I wish there were MORE WORDS—laboriously studying each one to see how the two letters at the end completely change the meaning of the sentence is insane. I guess you get used to it? It's a fun challenge, at any rate.
Also, I genuinely can't tell how serious you are about Russian, haha.
It's quite the ironic little paradox isn't it? I made the observation in a philosophy group where the person who started the group was a classical reformist who wanted to create a resurgence of antiquity and constantly used extremely obscure archaic words in his posts. While I understood what he was doing he was constantly shooting himself in the foot because it was unlegible for even the most well studied of people. It's one thing to slip in a few words that would cause a curious mind to look them up, and it's another for your writing to feel like homework.
It led me to what I call the Goldilocks zone of communication. In order to effectively communicate you need a 'not too hot, not too cold' approach where your lexicon is chosen for your audience. If you're speaking with experts in a field you can be free to use extremely technical terms but it's counterproductive to do so with laymen. And don't get me started on philosophy majors who use every 2 dollar word they know to say extremely simple things that they want to make look as impressive as possible to hide the fact that they didn't say anything enlightening.
I too made the odd choice of trying to learn Latin a few years ago on Duolingo. I always loved Latin phrases and the ancient mysterious quality of the language so I figured I'd give it a go. Not a very useful tool unless you are a scholar trying to read in the original Latin. I stuck with it for a while and then lost interest when I realized how deep of a commitment it would require to become truly fluent enough for it to be useful. Hopefully you can stick to it, I did often enjoy my lessons, just not enough to go deep.
I recently read a piece that made the statement, “All words are metaphors.” I am still thinking about that.
Woah, that’s an interesting one to think about. It’s kind of true, in a way, since every word is a representation of a thing and not actually a thing? That might stick with me for a while, too.
Do you have a link to the piece,
Sorry… it was a post by someone I am unfamiliar with. The short conversation we had about that one phrase was not enough to remember the source.
Latin, in my opinion, is a grand touchstone for better understanding any romance language, including English and Russian. ;-)
Things we take for granted are spelled out in word endings. Male/female, noun cases nominative/genitive/dative/etc., verb conjugation present, past, future, future pluperfect, etc. word endings tell you which.
& if you're like me, you'll never forget that Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres. :-)
The word ending thing is driving me nuts! I'm not used to it. I wish there were MORE WORDS—laboriously studying each one to see how the two letters at the end completely change the meaning of the sentence is insane. I guess you get used to it? It's a fun challenge, at any rate.
Also, I genuinely can't tell how serious you are about Russian, haha.
https://stevenakey.com/news/revealed-for-the-first-time-the-neural-aum/
It's quite the ironic little paradox isn't it? I made the observation in a philosophy group where the person who started the group was a classical reformist who wanted to create a resurgence of antiquity and constantly used extremely obscure archaic words in his posts. While I understood what he was doing he was constantly shooting himself in the foot because it was unlegible for even the most well studied of people. It's one thing to slip in a few words that would cause a curious mind to look them up, and it's another for your writing to feel like homework.
It led me to what I call the Goldilocks zone of communication. In order to effectively communicate you need a 'not too hot, not too cold' approach where your lexicon is chosen for your audience. If you're speaking with experts in a field you can be free to use extremely technical terms but it's counterproductive to do so with laymen. And don't get me started on philosophy majors who use every 2 dollar word they know to say extremely simple things that they want to make look as impressive as possible to hide the fact that they didn't say anything enlightening.
Excellent! I’m a little tired so I read this fairly fast. I will do a deeper dive tomorrow thank you Melissa!
I too made the odd choice of trying to learn Latin a few years ago on Duolingo. I always loved Latin phrases and the ancient mysterious quality of the language so I figured I'd give it a go. Not a very useful tool unless you are a scholar trying to read in the original Latin. I stuck with it for a while and then lost interest when I realized how deep of a commitment it would require to become truly fluent enough for it to be useful. Hopefully you can stick to it, I did often enjoy my lessons, just not enough to go deep.