Classical Languages/Cultures?

Question

Proposal: Latin Language

Now, I may get a lot of initial skepticism for this, but since most Classicists know both Latin and Ancient Greek, and since the Greek proposal is going nowhere, and since ancient Greek is closer to Latin—not in the genetic sense, but in the cultural sense—why not do a Classical Languages community? Or even a Classics community, for all questions related to the Ancient Mediterranean (perhaps also the Near East?).

This way, people could ask questions not just about Latin, but all Roman literature, even that in Greek, and the literature from which the Romans drew, i.e. Greek, and the contexts of the texts. As of now, history.stackexchange does not do well with questions relating to classical antiquity, and presumably people who have Latin and Ancient Greek questions also are likely to have questions of ancient Greece and Rome (and the reverse is true, that people who know Latin and Greek are the best experts in knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome).

Thoughts?

Edit: Just wanted to add one more point that hasn't really been addressed, but Latin + Ancient Greek + cultural and literary questions about ancient Greece, Rome, and their neighbors stands to have a better chance number-wise than being all split up, no? This is similar to history.SE being all history, not just history of one particular nation, region, or even continent.

Answer 1

I would not like to see the Latin Language StackExchange co-opted into a Classics StackExchange. As much as I'd like to see a Classics StackExchange succeed, many of us, including me, have a backlog of hard questions about medieval, renaissance, and even contemporary Latin, and the Latin Language StackExchange promises to be the best place on the Internet to ask them.

Here are some example questions that got at least 10 votes:

• When did the term “a fortiori” originate? Which known written work first contained it?

• How much different were medieval latin dialects from different parts of Europe?

• When did U and V become distinct letters rather than alternate forms of the same letter?

• Who created the word "computatrum"? Why is it different in Italian?

• What conventions existed when Latin was still a spoken language for transcribing foreign words into Latin? (This was the most highly upvoted example question. Technically, Latin is still a spoken language, but it was widely spoken up to around 1800.)

Here are a couple more, which didn't get 10 votes before we reached the commitment phase, but which I think are excellent questions for the Latin Language StackExchange, and they illustrate the vastness of the topic of post-Classical Latin:

• 'QUID HIC? INTUERI NATURAM - QUO MUNERE? CURIOSUM ESSE'. In this phrase I would like you to explain to me the use of the verb Sum.

• I just discovered a new species of dust mite. It's found in Peru, is shaped like a shamrock, and makes llamas angry. What’s an appropriate Latin name?

Please see also this discussion question and this answer.

Probably the best thing to do is just propose a Classics StackExchange. Nihil obstat.

Answer 2

I'm a very basic Latin "beginner" but even so I'm already seeing that Classical Latin language and literature are inextricably interwoven with Ancient Greek (my next learning project lol). I would like to see both on topic, personally. As an example, I have been involved both on HistorySE and WordReference as to the usage of domine or ere as the common term a Roman slave would use to address his/her master. One view was that ere was "very colloquial" Greek, roughly translatable as boss or guv. Another was that it was "definitely not Greek". Wider latitude on the proposed site would give space for such discussions.

It may be relevant to add that there is already a WordReference Forum which just deals with Latin language - like "Why the subjunctive here?" I suggest we need to broaden our scope if we're to attract sufficient users.

http://forum.wordreference.com/forums/lingua-latina-latin.64/

Answer 3

I would just like to post my thoughts on how many questions we can expect.

Currently most languages sites are hovering at around 2-3 questions per day:

questions per day — days in beta

(ordered by beta launch date, youngest first)

2.1 — 600 days Italian.SE
2.1 — 1110 days Russian.SE
3.1 — 1293 days Chinese.SE
2.6 — 1321 days Spanish.SE
3.1 — 1411 days French.SE
10.1 — 1489 days Japanese.SE
5.7 — 1496 days German.SE

(According to the new graduation guidelines, graduation is considered at 10 questions per day.)

Currently all these sites are about modern languages. In fact, currently SE hosts language sites exactly for the top 8 business languages (ordered by Gross World Product according to IMF data, second table here). (Next in line being Portuguese and Arabic at 100% commitment.) That is, these languages are widely studied and widely used and the corresponding language sites have lots of questions like

• My boss told me to X. What does he mean?
• Is [word] internet slang?
• How do you say "homebrew beer" in [language]?
• I heard [word] in this song [YouTube link]. What does it mean?

While all of these probably should have an answer in Latin, too, I don't think we can expect the same number of questions pouring in, because Latin is not widely used. There is little popular literature in Latin, there are few TV shows or radio shows in Latin, etc., so I expect there to be fewer questions and comparing to the other language sites probably fewer than 2 questions per day. In fact, after a cursory glance at questions on Japanese.SE & German.SE, it looks like more than half of the questions are from people using the languages, not studying them.

If that means we can expect at most one question per 1-2 days, the community needs to find a way to stay motivated. It's not like we can visit the page every few hours and expect much new information. But users shouldn't forget about it either, because that will lead first to death and then closure. (Example: Literature closed at 0.4 questions per day.)

I don't know if adding Ancient Greek will improve the situation, because more unrelated questions might actually be detrimental to the health of the proposal. I think it would be good to have a show of hands of how many committers actually know or study Ancient Greek.

Answer 4

I am very interested in doing something like what was proposed in this question. We really need a site for discussions on the various versions of Classical Greek, Koine, Attic, Ionic, Homeric, etc. It's undeniable true that we may fall short of people for a site just with this theme. So I thought that we could expand it to other Indo-European ancient languages, of related interest, such as: Hittite, Biblic Armenian, Anatolian, Celtic and Sanskrit? Let the Romance languages apart. I think we will feel at home together.