Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site allegra.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!eagle!allegra!don
From: don@allegra.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Speaking Latin, Speaking Loud
Message-ID: <1880@allegra.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Oct-83 16:18:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: allegra.1880
Posted: Tue Oct 11 16:18:06 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Oct-83 01:43:53 EDT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 24

Latin looks deceptively regular when you first start learning it
because of the way textbooks are written.  They divide words into
artificial categories like First Declension, Second Conjugation, etc.
At first, it looks like everything is fine and you just add the silly
endings according to simple, regular rules.  Then they show you the
other 50 percent of the vocabulary: Fourth Declension, Fifth ...
complete chaos!

Another problem is that modern languages have many subtle features that
we take for granted but are missing from ancient languages.  It is
non-trivial to say things like "I will have kept talking" in Latin and
capture the complete meaning of continuing action completed at a point
in the future.  Greek has a few more complex tenses, but these
languages were, for the most part, built up from many special cases and
were not as general as modern ones.

With regard to talking too loud, my brother was in Germany recently and
had similar embarrassing experiences with fellow Americans being rude
to waiters and making scenes.  The problem is that Americans are a
young culture and have not learned to deal with "crowding".  Europeans
and oriental cultures have learned that being soft spoken and polite is
the only way to avoid aggravating one another.  Those of you who do not
live in the North East may not appreciate what I am talking about.  Not
all of America has so many impatient, rude people.