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20:02 / 23.03.04

What are the 'romantic languages' and where does the term originate?

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:40 / 23.03.04

"Romantic languages" is an Americanism, I think - the common term is "romance languages". These are languages derived closely from Latin, and thus the languages from the areas which had a significant Latin-speaking population at the death of the Roman Empire, and so developed a subsequent language culture based on Vulgar Latin. Offhand, I can think of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and Romanian (although the latter two are a bit odd) - I've probably missed some, though.

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:46 / 23.03.04

Deva - not sure... it sounds like Suetonius, but the only Suetonius stories I can think of involving an actor making gestures at Nero is Datus, who accompanied the lines "goodbye father, goodbye mother", with a mime of drinking and swimming (Nero having allegedly poisoned and attempted to drown his parents), and then accompanying "Hades guides your feet" with a wave to the senators, whose position under Nero was tenuous at best. Pylades is exiled (or rather driven out of Italy) for pointing in the middle of a show by Augustus, but I don't think he was actually pointing *at* Augustus, but just at a heckler...

I'll have a think.

08:15 / 24.03.04

grant - i thought the whole point of Job was that he didn't kvetch (good word by the way!) about God, come what may.
ibis - any other clues?

Now, this whole Sedna planet business. I want to know why Mr-I'm-going-to-name-this-planet-before-anyone-else-has-a-say-so, decided to name the planet Sedna - which I believe is an Inuit Goddess of the Sea. Nuff credit to her, I'm sure she was dead good at being goddess and all, but won't she feel a bit left out with the Greek and Romans up there. I mean - for the sake of uniformity if nothing else, why not Greek or Roman and WHY Inuit for fuck's sake? Is there any good reason other than the word Sedna sounding kinda cool?

08:23 / 24.03.04

Ahah! Thanks, Haus - I think the Datus one was the one I was thinking of. (I checked Suetonius online but my Latin isn't good enough to skim-read and none of the search terms I tried came up). Is the Pylades one in Suetonius' Augustus?

Though there is something else tiggling at my brain. All I can think of is the word tympanum. I'm sure it's Suetonius as well... Oh, buggerit. Someone must have written a book collecting anecdotes about actors. I'll go look it up in a library.

Crunchy, I talked to a vegan about this the other day and he said soy cream is pre-sweetened and makes the food taste weird. So he recommended using unsweetened soy milk (thickened with flour) - unless you can get unsweetened soy cream there, of course.

08:28 / 24.03.04

Ahah!

Sed et populus quondam universus ludorum die et accepit in contumeliam eius et adsensu maximo conprobavit versum in scaena pronuntiatum de gallo Matris Deum tympanizante: "Videsne, ut cinaedus orbem digito temperat?"

Suetonius, Divus Augustus 68. Thank Christ for that. I found the Pylades reference there (Div.Aug. 45) as well. Thanks for the pointer, Haus.

12:45 / 24.03.04

grant & Jub: Ah, sorry to be so vague. It wasn't Job. The other names you mentioned don't ring the bell either grant. All I can really recall was that it was a old man nearing the end of life, and beginning to question whether there really was a God at all. There may have been some narrative of his life & aging, but now I'm letting my imagination take over. Maybe I should try to contact my former professors for this totally random question....

14:29 / 24.03.04

Well, ibis, Tobit does pray for death. His book is also considered apocrypha by Protestants, but is in the Catholic Bible (and, apparently, used in some Anglican wedding services).

Jub: grant - i thought the whole point of Job was that he didn't kvetch (good word by the way!) about God, come what may.

Ha! No, he actually calls God out. Kvetching isn't the same as blaspheming or rejecting. He just demands an explanation.

Job 16:11-21 --
God has delivered me to the ungodly,
And turned me over to the hands of the wicked.
I was at ease, but He has shattered me;
He also has taken me by my neck, and shaken me to pieces;
He has set me up for His target,
His archers surround me.
He pierces my heart and does not pity;
He pours out my gall on the ground.
He breaks me with wound upon wound;
He runs at me like a warrior.

"I have sewn sackcloth over my skin,
And laid my head in the dust.
My face is flushed from weeping,
And on my eyelids is the shadow of death;
Although no violence is in my hands,
And my prayer is pure.

"O earth, do not cover my blood,
And let my cry have no resting place!
Surely even now my witness is in heaven,
And my evidence is on high.
My friends scorn me;
My eyes pour out tears to God.
Oh, that one might plead for a man with God,
As a man pleads for his neighbor!"

That's just one of his complaints. The pattern of the book is that Job gets a lecture, then he complains, then he gets another lecture, then he complains, and then he gets another lecture, and then he keeps complaining. There's a good outline of the whole process over here. I can't help but picture a little old Jewish man demanding to speak to the manager.

14:37 / 24.03.04

fair play. I thought it was essentially Job being fabulously rich and groovy, and loving God, and God thinking he'd still lvoe me if I took all this away and so he does, and Job does, so after much tooing and froing, God gives him loads of childran and lets him live for 900 years. or something! Now I'm off to read that thing. Cheers grant.

14:44 / 24.03.04

By the way, you can read about Tobit over here, (in a topic I started) and Jonah's complaint over here. Jonah, by the way, was seriously pissed off. And he shows up in college curricula every so often.

15:02 / 24.03.04

Thanks for the links grant, I was just off reading the book of Tobit in fact. I don't think that's it. And I didn't find it in the rest of the Catholic Apocrypha that I found online. I thought it was a first person narrative, and I thought I was sort of surprised & intrigued by the idea of a Bible book that challenged the existence of God without any solid, sure conclusion.But after a few years, imagination tends to skew memory so maybe I'm just dreaming this up. At any rate, I found some other interesting books to read, right?

15:26 / 24.03.04

Is it disc, or disk? Or either/both, and if so, when which?

15:36 / 24.03.04

I think it's a bit like 'Programme' and 'Program', Deva. The American English 'Disk' is often favoured when talking about 'disk drives' and 'floppy disks', because the vocabulary of computing is pretty much Americanised. But otherwise I'd tend to stick with disc.

*looks up thread* So does no one have any idea about why the pronoun 'I' is capitalised?

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:40 / 24.03.04

UK disc, US disk, I think. However, disk is acceptable usage in the UK when talking about data storage devices, on the grounds that it is/was an abbreviation of "diskette". So, disk drive, floppy disk are regularly used. These days almost completely interchangeable, due mainly to that confusion.

17:52 / 24.03.04

Are you only referring to computer dis(k/c)s Deva? Round things in general are still spelled with a c, as in compact disc, disc jockey, etc. At least in the UK.

Here we go, from Fowler's Modern English Usage:

"In the 20C. there has indeed been a marked preference for disc in Britain but for disk in America. The division has been lessened by the almost universal spelling of the computer storage device as disk. For the time being, however, disc brake, the sun's disc, compact disc, disc jockey, etc., remain the standard froms in BrE. For most of these disk is the more usual form in AmE."

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:13 / 24.03.04

I think it's a bit like 'Programme' and 'Program', Deva.

Before this leads to misapprehension - a program meaning a series of commands given to a computer to get it to do something is "program" in both US and International English. It is only the spelling of programme in other contexts that varies.

20:27 / 24.03.04

Here we go, from Fowler's Modern English Usage:

"In the 20C. there has indeed been a marked preference for disc in Britain but for disk in America. The division has been lessened by the almost universal spelling of the computer storage device as disk. For the time being, however, disc brake, the sun's disc, compact disc, disc jockey, etc., remain the standard froms in BrE. For most of these disk is the more usual form in AmE."

I hate to contradict Fowler's, but from someone from the heart of the midwest, I can tell you that in the list there, I would probably use disc for all of those. The only time I see it spelled "disk" is in terms of Floppy Disks; which are virtually obsolete, or when the word is being used by itself (referring to the shape or an unspecified type of disk). We Americans just can't make up our minds. Or can we?

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:30 / 24.03.04

It's a confused one, certainly - as I mentioned above, floppy disk is from "floppy diskette", hence the "k" in both dialects. Likewise hard disk, I imagine. Interesting, though, that you would use "disk" for a non-specific circular object and disc for specifics... would you say that was a local variation?

07:57 / 25.03.04

Before this leads to misapprehension - a program meaning a series of commands given to a computer to get it to do something is "program" in both US and International English. It is only the spelling of programme in other contexts that varies.

Doesn't this make 'programme/program' a lot like 'disc/disk'? Is it not the case that the American spelling been adopted in BrE for both, in a computing context, while the division remains elsewhere? Exactly what misapprehension are you warning against, Haus? Because I think I might already be under it.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:14 / 25.03.04

Ah, no - you were quite correct in terms of usage, Smoothly. The danger of misapprehension was that one might think that "program" was universally used in American English and "programme" in British English, which I was seeking to clarify from your original statement. Although I would suggest, as above, that the situation with "disk" is a bit different, as "disk" is an abbreviation rather than an Americanisation per se.

08:24 / 25.03.04

Smoothly; the short answer is, it seems no one really knows why I is capitalised, but it became the norm around the 14th century, which might have had something to do with the Great Vowel Shift. It has also been suggested that egotism lead to capitalising i.

More here

08:29 / 25.03.04

Oh, I see. Although, I have to admit, I did think that 'program' was universally used by Americans (ie. wherever Englishers use 'programme').
Also, is disk really an abbreviation of diskette? I would have thought diskette (or discette) was more likely to be an extension of disk (disc). Were floppy diskettes the first kind of disks to be used in computing?

08:33 / 25.03.04

Ahhh, thanks Jub. I admire your google-fu. I was beginning to think I might have to consult books. Really, books.

Whisky Priestess

09:23 / 25.03.04

I wonder if captital "I" is anything to do with residual bits of German in the language? The formal version of "you" in German is capitalised ("Sie") and so are a lot of their nouns and words that have, in modern English, lost their capitalisation. Can't remember if Ich always takes a capital and I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually, which is a shame because that would go a long way towards proving a link.

Any Germanists out there?

09:52 / 25.03.04

Not since Standard Grade ( = GCSEs but far, far more Scottish) -but I remember that 'ich' isn't capitalised at all, mainly because capitalising it was a mistake I made quite frequently.

Also fred, re : the soft toys question -I am going home at the weekend, so will see if there are still books on soft toy making there that I can dig out. They will be pretty vintage though, so I probably won't be able to tell you the current thinking from the field.

09:56 / 25.03.04

What the fuck is this? I keep getting emails from them saying "Someone is researching your background!" and when I follow the links, I get scary scary info about how many anonymous people are talking about me behind my back, but if I want to get in touch with the anonymous people or try to find out what they are saying I have to pay them $20 a month or something. Or at least I can't find a way of finding out what they are saying without paying over money.

So, obviously, it's a scam based on people's paranoia, and I won't pay them the $20 and I should just get over it. But... does anyone know what the fuck this thing is?

11:57 / 25.03.04

Deva hon - fear not - it's a pile of steaming bull. A spam bot nicked your email address, then they email you and ask you to cough up.

See here for more.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:22 / 25.03.04

Oh, I see. Although, I have to admit, I did think that 'program' was universally used by Americans (ie. wherever Englishers use 'programme').

I think it is.

Also, is disk really an abbreviation of diskette? I would have thought diskette (or discette) was more likely to be an extension of disk (disc). Were floppy diskettes the first kind of disks to be used in computing?

The first disks to be used in computing were magnetic disks, which I believe were called magnetic discs in the UK - they were invented in 1956, but use much the same principle as our modern hard drives - a layer of metal oxide on a disc. The first floppies were, I think, called floppy disks (discs), were about 8 inches across and were actually floppy (or at least bendable) - hence the name. These then shrank to 5.25 inches, at which point I *think* they started being called diskettes - the disc itself was still floppy, because the oxide was on a plastic disc rather than a metal one, although the case was becoming more rigid - and then 3.5 inches. Likewise, the drives found in your computer are diskettes, although to be honest you'd get a funny look if you insisted on calling them such, since the "full-size" hard disk no longer really exists. So the word diskette sort of bingled through the language and died out, but left the dominance of "k" as its legacy.

12:34 / 25.03.04

Talking of -ettes, doesn anyone still have a kitchenette? It was the kitchenette all through my childhood and then morphed into a plain old kitchen.

Which reminds me -- in New Zealand small supermarkets are known as superettes. Which is cute but nonsense.

13:01 / 25.03.04

I think this line of discussion shows how wonderful it is to have a living language, and I find it fascinating to see how quickly in the relative scheme of things our language can change. And, of course, it reminds me that the definitions on paper are static and approximate; as each word can mean vastly different things to different people.

13:03 / 25.03.04

What is a kitchenette anyway? The dictionary says it's a small room or alcove that combines a kitchen and a pantry. But I'm sure I've heard the term used long after people stopped having pantries. Which is a shame, cos pantry is such a lovely, jammy word.

I think it is.

Oh, then I don't think I do see.
I thought 'programme/program' and 'disc(ette)/disk(ette)' were parellel cases because in both instances, the US English preference for 'program' and 'disk(ette)' were adopted, for purposes of consistancy, as the norm in the language of computing. Is that not the case?

13:26 / 25.03.04

I think a kitchenette usually describes something that's not a full kitchen, maybe without a stove or maybe just not an eat-in kitchen. I would describe my apartment as having a kitchenette, because though it has all the major appliances it's just a corner of the front room/living room. Plenty of people around here still have pantries, but maybe that's a regional thing (N.E. US).

13:26 / 25.03.04

Smoothly,

Again, from a Midwestern US perspective, I would say you were correct; most of the computer stuff I find has "disk" and "program". Now, whether that means it is a universally accepted standard; I don't know. Just because we Americans win out in sheer numbers doesn't mean we are always (or even frequently) right!

13:45 / 25.03.04

Well, retracdet, how universalised this terminolgy has become is something I'd be quite interested to know, as a side-topic. While the internet seems to have strengthened the position English (in all its forms) as a lingua franca, I'd be interested to know how many of these terms are now standard within other languages. In France is it le disk drive, etc?
And in language, sheer numbers often do win the argument (if there really are arguments to be won), and I don't know that there's a whole lot wrong with that.

13:52 / 25.03.04

Smoothly - time prevents me from delving deeper into this, but I, too, would be interested to know. And, yes, numbers often do win out, this is true. But I was heartened to see all the differentiation made between American English and British English. I think it is incorrect for us to assume that it is actually the same language. Granted, when we are talking about the "official printed word" it is supposed to be the same, but in terms of everyday common usage, I think they are two distinct languages, and should be treated as such.

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