Posted by NomNexus 2 years ago Report

Second world War?

Posted by VoidInVoid 2 years ago Report

From my upcoming edition of my document on names:

"Bellum Corium Secundum: I haven’t done an explanation for my main series’ titles yet, have I? I might change that in later versions. I wanted to do a title in Latin for this one, and I also wanted to break the recent trend of single-word titles. Although Latin is quite versatile and easy to learn – if only because it has been taught, documented, defined, and, in some small instances, spoken for over two millennia – it can still be tricky to work the language to one’s liking. To summarize, this title means ' Second Coarse War'. However, you keen-eyed readers might notice that that middle word doesn’t mean 'coarse' in Latin. Since the Siblings’ war party would be on the Coarse Realm’s territory for this second war, I wanted to use the word with which its residents would describe it. I was looking for synonyms for 'coarse' in Latin at first, before realizing that they most likely would not see it in that way, so I then looked for antonyms for 'coarse'. However, I was unsuccessful in finding any that fit between 'bellum' and 'secundum', and I was beginning to think less of the idea. Then, GooInABox suggested words like 'Motherland', on the reasoning that they might view it as their own Core Realm. I kept that logic in the back of my mind, and somehow, I eventually stumbled upon the Latin word for 'heart' – 'cor'. You all know what two words it sounds and looks like. Like that, the sparks went off in my brain, and I quickly sought out a way to create 'heart-land' in Latin. I was unsuccessful; it was too clunky, not impossible. Therefore, I went the adjectival route. Finding an adjectival suffix did not take too long, and although 'hearty' might not usually carry this definition, I am using it to mean 'of the heartland'. Quite complicated, I know. I am also aware that 'corium' already exists in Latin as a noun that means 'leather'. Ignore that definition for the sake of homonyms. To round out this paragraph, choosing 'bellum' as one of the key words was quite simple. Not only is it quite recognizable, but it also sounds and looks similar enough to 'belly' for me to count it as another vore-/digestive system-related pun."

Posted by VoidInVoid 2 years ago Report

So, not far off.

Posted by 2good2btru 2 years ago Report

Jeez, that was a long read for a title explanation, tho I do admire your dedication for it. :3

Posted by VoidInVoid 2 years ago Report

I am nothing if not dedicated to linguistics.

Posted by ThreeStrikes 2 years ago Report

So, do you share the belief that English isn't one language, but three languages in a trench coat, then?

Posted by VoidInVoid 2 years ago Report

English still is a broadly Germanic tongue. If you give a close look to the words in your day-to-day talks, rather than words that are used to mark the crafts or sciences, you will find that most of them are of Germanic root. French did change English, yes, but those new words do not make up an overwhelming amount. English is not an Old English-Old French creole, unless one would want to stretch the definition. As well, folk overplay the thought that English is the only tongue that is a mashup of more than one tongue. Romanian, for note, would like a word. No tongue lives alone. Old Norse, Old French, Ecclesiastical Latin, and even Old Gaelic (along with their offspring, and other tongues come the Age of Exploration), left their mark on English in ways small and big. French itself does not stay free of this, either. In short, no, I do not believe that is three tongues stacked in one trench coat, as much as I believe it is one tongue in its own shirt, trousers, and underwear wearing the gloves, shoes, and hat of others.

As a last note, if you happened to go through all that and look up the root of each word, you would find that most of them are of an Old English beginning.

Posted by brennen 1 year ago Report

If you want to be technically about it, English hasn't been "one" language since the 1800's. After the Revolutionary War, Britain was so angry with America that they purposely changed many of the language rules and terms used in their home country so that European English was entirely separate from American English.

Then you have the third offshoot that comprises the colonized territories in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, where the natives in those regions were extremely diligent about learning the language of their colonizers (Portuguese, French, German, English, etc.), and ended up speaking the foreign language better than the settlers (Even to the point that they couldn't understand the natives despite speaking the same language) because of how the foreigners commonly spoke in slang while the natives learned the language proper.

Posted by VoidInVoid 1 year ago Report

Well, you have to get into the dialects, too, which may be why a fluent native may have a hard time understanding a colonial foreigner. A born-and-bred Northumbrian is probably not going to be easy for a Singaporean clerk who was fluently taught RP to understand. There is a progression from accent to dialect to distinct langauge, but there are not easy lines to draw between them. I'm not one to believe that there is a "proper" way to speak a language. I'm a descriptivist in terms of linguistics, so I find prescriptivism droll and shortsighted. However, prescriptivist methods are easier to use when teaching a language than descriptivist methods. But I digress. I hadn't even mentioned pigins and creoles, but I think that's an obviously different matter. Now, "slang" should really be used as a term to describe newer vernacular terms (of a given time) rather than all vernacular speech.