All I know, is that this literal/figurative argument is making me want to rewatch Archer!

12 minutes ago, GhostofNobodyInParticular said:

But a language can also devolve, which is what happened with Greek and which I feel is happening with English. Not all change is good or necessary.

Wait, do people not speak Greek any longer? Or are you suggesting it's less capable of expressing ideas than it was when Homer was describing the sea and wine as the same color?

7 minutes ago, OlaphOfTheNorth said:

Wait, do people not speak Greek any longer? Or are you suggesting it's less capable of expressing ideas than it was when Homer was describing the sea and wine as the same color?

I think that whole sea wine biz is a can of worms more tied to that you don't name a color till you can artificially produce it. Look up that idea its nuts. Radiolab did a whole bit on it in their color episode. If you can't make blue the sky isn't blue it's just sky. I'll plug it again because it's so interesting Radiolab their color episode it's awesome and informative.

26 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

So, how's that Civilisation: A New Dawn article going for people?

24 minutes ago, Noosh said:

I like this, it's a good way of expressing it.

Now that we have all enjoyed our argument over the finer points of English........

WHERE IS OUR ARTICLE!?!?!?

You guys need to stop this. If you keep it up we run the risk of this thread literally becoming about articles.

1 minute ago, Megatronrex said:

You guys need to stop this. If you keep it up we run the risk of this thread literally becoming about articles.

You article got article a article problem article with article that article ?

20 minutes ago, cynanbloodbane said:

All I know, is that this literal/figurative argument is making me want to rewatch Archer!

This is a literal literal/literal argument. Go figure. And I always want to watch Archer.

1 minute ago, Drasnighta said:

You article got article a article problem article with article that article ?

I love it when you talk article to me.

Just now, Megatronrex said:

I love it when you talk article to me.

Art icle .

2 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

Art icle .

That was so art icley done.

11 minutes ago, Megatronrex said:

You guys need to stop this. If you keep it up we run the risk of this thread literally becoming about articles.

I like to think that I'm the conductor of the d-rail line.

25 minutes ago, OlaphOfTheNorth said:

Wait, do people not speak Greek any longer? Or are you suggesting it's less capable of expressing ideas than it was when Homer was describing the sea and wine as the same color?

The latter. After the Greek Revolution the powers that be redesigned the language into what is now known as 'Modern Greek'. It is a poorer language, for it has been stripped of much of the subtler points of 'Ancient Greek' (though that term only really applies to one attic dialect) and thus cannot reach the same levels of meaning and depth.

Just now, Noosh said:

I like to think that I'm the conductor of the d-rail line.

All aboard!!!

Just now, Megatronrex said:

All aboard!!!

Now boarding the 3:20 off topic. ALL ABOARD!

3 minutes ago, GhostofNobodyInParticular said:

The latter. After the Greek Revolution the powers that be redesigned the language into what is now known as 'Modern Greek'. It is a poorer language, for it has been stripped of much of the subtler points of 'Ancient Greek' (though that term only really applies to one attic dialect) and thus cannot reach the same levels of meaning and depth.

I didn't know that. Where can I read more this interest me?

1 minute ago, Noosh said:

I didn't know that. Where can I read more this interest me?

Erm. I do not quite know where it can be read. I can try looking it up, but it may take a little while. I got the info from Greeks who either knew and spoke both 'Ancient' and 'Modern' Greek, or had studied them and Greece's history and thus knew a great deal about it, so I cannot refer you to any articles. I can try finding some though., but then I would return nothing you wouldn't find through Google yourself.

For now, I can tell you that Ancient Greek used to have 3 major (and maybe more minor) stresses which indicated where the word was stressed. Like hAppy bIrthday sort of thing. They also indicated how to pronounce the letter. Have you noticed in English that when converting from Greek sometimes you put an H in front of the e, like in Helen? Or write the f as ph? That is because the stress indicated a slight variation in how the word was pronounced. Indeed, Ancient Greek sounded more like poetry (and Homer) than 'normal' speech. The stresses had more importance than merely indicating pronunciation also, for they indicated relationships between words, allowing for extra levels of meaning to be found in which words where used when (Modern Greek still has this, but not to as great an extent). This is but a bit of a partially remembered discussion - there was far more involved than just this.

Modern Greek did away with all but 1 stress (among other things), which resulted in all the meaning and variance of the words bound up in the rest of the stresses being lost.

Sounds to me like the language grew more streamlined through use. People don't tend to use ten words when five will do. Being able to speak clearly and accurately while being concise is a teachable skill that makes for more refined thought.

I never feel unable to express the depth of my thoughts, and I used to write philosophy papers in university. I think the complexity of ancient Greek may in fact be the reason it was abandoned and changed over time. Keep it simple stupid, and all that.

1 hour ago, GhostofNobodyInParticular said:

But a language can also devolve, which is what happened with Greek and which I feel is happening with English. Not all change is good or necessary.

Do you have anything to back up that statement? I'm not challenging you, just honestly curious. I've never seen anything from an actual education journal or from a linguistic scientist that has ever stated that any language has ever devolved. You can find hundreds if not thousands of think pieces and journalists attempting to fill quotas by writing rant filled screeds against emojis and what not, but I've never seen anything with any authority decrying that English or any other language has actually devolved.

I'm certainly not a professional linguist though, and I have my own issues with the English language.

Change is inevitable. Resistance to change is a futile action. Language changes and evolves. No amount of cloud yelling will slow it down or change it's course.

Sadly, no amount of cloud yelling will get us an article either it seems.

I agree with thebiglev to a degree, that simplicity is frequently an increase rather than a decrease in the power of language, but it’s also worth remembering that Ancient Greek sounds like Homeric verse to scholars of Ancient Greek because only the best and most moving ideas and turns of phrase it recorded are still studied.

There were just as many lousy fart jokes and complaints about Armada articles failing to ever appear in the ancient world as there are today, but the simple speech patterns of common people tended not to be written or remembered prior to the recent development of YouTube comments...

1 hour ago, kmanweiss said:

Do you have anything to back up that statement? I'm not challenging you, just honestly curious. I've never seen anything from an actual education journal or from a linguistic scientist that has ever stated that any language has ever devolved. You can find hundreds if not thousands of think pieces and journalists attempting to fill quotas by writing rant filled screeds against emojis and what not, but I've never seen anything with any authority decrying that English or any other language has actually devolved.

The fall of the Roman Empire meant the devolution of the Latin, at least for some people. As long as centuries of knowledge were lost vulgar latin lost the capability to deal with those ideas. Latin was used from the cultural elites cause romance language were not able to express some ideas. Romance languages were derivated from Latin so, technically, they were devolved Latin as a Latin unable to do what true Latin did. Only when the romance languages evolved were able to be used to talk about almost everything. Latin stagnated at that point.

I wouldn't say impoverishment is the same than devolution but I can understand why some people say that.

Anyway, devolution is possible. When a language is relegated from the reality or from a piece of it, it loses capability to deal with that reality. In a monolingual environment, the language will use several tools it has to update itself as neologisms but in a bilingual environment the speakers will use the language that didn't loose that capability. Step by step, the language will devolve more and more and, maybe, it will die.

Do you think that mozarabic people just stopped to speak in their own language? It doesn't matter if it happemed by political reasons or whatever. A language takes the place of another. At some point the original language is even unable to recover its place cause it cannot deal with the world around. Sometimes the speakers kept their language no matter what happens. Sometimes those languages come back, sometimes they survive relegated to some speaking uses.

As a brief: a language can dissappear cause external reasons (like killing every speaker) or internal reasons (the language doesn't work anymore when the speaker want to express something, that's devolution). Almost always is a combination of both.

But my knowledge is limited. I just studied Spanish philology.

On 10/20/2017 at 0:56 PM, Alzer said:

Apparently you're new to the Armada article cycle.

Does this mean that Armada has always gotten the shaft and they STILL expect the game to flourish?!?!?!?!?!? Honestly thats proof that they have a real bread winner with armada. Virtually nill support and its still going strong! Which leads to the obvious question: Why dont they support it more?!?!?!?

14 minutes ago, BCvalor said:

Does this mean that Armada has always gotten the shaft and they STILL expect the game to flourish?!?!?!?!?!? Honestly thats proof that they have a real bread winner with armada. Virtually nill support and its still going strong! Which leads to the obvious question: Why dont they support it more?!?!?!?

The shaft? I wouldn't go that far. But they aren't cranking articles and releases out by any means.

At the same time, I'd say that Armada has a rather leisurely release rate compared to many other miniatures titles, but I think it's a good one, after having seen many other games become grotesquely overburdened with endless releases.

They're FAR better about supporting Armada than certain other unmentioned game companies with alliterative names that are two years behind on some releases.

But if you're used to releases and article pacing for the poster-child superstar that is X-Wing, you're going to be dissapointed.

7 minutes ago, Alzer said:

The shaft? I wouldn't go that far. But they aren't cranking articles and releases out by any means.

At the same time, I'd say that Armada has a rather leisurely release rate compared to many other miniatures titles, but I think it's a good one, after having seen many other games become grotesquely overburdened with endless releases.

They're FAR better about supporting Armada than certain other unmentioned game companies with alliterative names that are two years behind on some releases.

But if you're used to releases and article pacing for the poster-child superstar that is X-Wing, you're going to be dissapointed.

Now that you mention it, I do think X-wing is releasing things too fast at this point. I mean, they add at least half a dozen ships a year, honestly more, and it seems like its getting a little over saturated. Tho I would definately like to see maybe an article a month. I dont think that is too much to ask?

1 hour ago, ovinomanc3r said:

The fall of the Roman Empire meant the devolution of the Latin, at least for some people. As long as centuries of knowledge were lost vulgar latin lost the capability to deal with those ideas. Latin was used from the cultural elites cause romance language were not able to express some ideas. Romance languages were derivated from Latin so, technically, they were devolved Latin as a Latin unable to do what true Latin did. Only when the romance languages evolved were able to be used to talk about almost everything. Latin stagnated at that point.

That's definitely not right.

Vulgar latin was not some inferior dialect, with some lesser utility. It was Latin as it was spoken, whereas classical Latin was Latin as it was written; much as we write/type in English very differently from how we would actually speak it to a person in front of us. It wasn't until long, long after the Western Roman Empire that the two were even considered separate languages at all.

And in general there's just no such a thing as a native speaker having a lesser ability to express a certain idea than a forebear, due to linguistic changes alone. If your children never learn math they won't be able to talk about algebra, but the reason has nothing to do with the language they speak or the slang they use. Nothing of value was ever "lost" by the language - some words, expressions, grammar rules, yes; but the capacity of language to express itself was never impeded. Your English doesn't become "devolved" English if nobody ever taught you how to calculate the slope of a line; you could learn it just as well, although you would probably invent different specific words than "rise" and "run".

If you had no other languages to compare to - just 200 AD Latin, 800 AD Latin, and Spanish - it would appear as one smooth progression from the past into the future. It didn't emerge one day, fully separate but infantile. It started out as Latin with a few different words and pronunciations, and each passing year acquired a few more.

As an example: it's very difficult for modern students to parse Shakespeare when they're first exposed to it, but that's not because Romeo and Juliet is composed of themes that've been lost to civilization.

11 hours ago, TheBigLev said:

Sounds to me like the language grew more streamlined through use. People don't tend to use ten words when five will do. Being able to speak clearly and accurately while being concise is a teachable skill that makes for more refined thought.

I never feel unable to express the depth of my thoughts, and I used to write philosophy papers in university. I think the complexity of ancient Greek may in fact be the reason it was abandoned and changed over time. Keep it simple stupid, and all that.

The language was changed for political reasons, more than anything, in an attempt to separate the people from their culture (somewhat successfully, I might add). Being accurate and concise is commendable, but in the change I can assure you that depth and meaning was lost. Because it isn't only about being able to use a certain amount of words to express a thought, but what those words themselves represent. I mean, Greek has three letters that make the 'EE' sound, and two that make the 'OH' sound. Each of those have a very specific meaning and an important significance. Some argue that in the interests of simplification the redundant letters ought to be removed. This would be disastrous for the language. Sure, they would still be able to express themselves the same on a superficial level, but just like in the losing of the stresses, dropping these letters would radically limit the ability of the language itself to express deep political thought, owing to the diminishing of the words and the obscuring of their predecessors and relations (root-wise).

Thus, as the language is diminished, so is the ability of the people to express deep thoughts, and I think that most Greeks today do not even know their diminished language well enough to see the deep thought that it itself expresses. For it is not just the speakers of a language that express thought - the language through its structure can also do so. I mean, as an example, 'human' comes from humus and implies that the people came from the earth - the people were oriented downward. 'Anthropos' the Greek equivalent, comes from 2 words and implies a movement upwards, meaning that the people thought of themselves as trying to reach the heavens, trying to imitate the divine (there is more to be said here, but this is all from a remembered discussion). Thus the language itself expresses the political thought of the people. As letters and stresses are dropped, the relationships between words that would show a chain of thought (logic -> logos (word) -> dialogue --> interaction with another (thus logic is that which leads to the other)) are lost and the language becomes poorer. The people may think that they are fine, but the language itself expressed meanings that are now hidden.

The above may be a bit confusing (I doubt I managed to express it properly) so please ask me if you have any questions.

10 hours ago, kmanweiss said:

Do you have anything to back up that statement? I'm not challenging you, just honestly curious. I've never seen anything from an actual education journal or from a linguistic scientist that has ever stated that any language has ever devolved. You can find hundreds if not thousands of think pieces and journalists attempting to fill quotas by writing rant filled screeds against emojis and what not, but I've never seen anything with any authority decrying that English or any other language has actually devolved.

[...]

Change is inevitable. Resistance to change is a futile action. Language changes and evolves. No amount of cloud yelling will slow it down or change it's course.

I would argue that Greek is the perfect example of a devolved language, and that Latin was so chaotic multiple versions were in use even at during the time of the Empire. The latter has been mentioned before though.

Change is not inevitable - but there is good and bad change. Industrialization, for example. So resistance to it is never futile because we must attempt to stave off the bad change. In everything. If we didn't, why bother voting against anything? Why teach somebody proper rules of etiquette? I think that change is a choice, much like all else, and though it may take an extra effort to resist, we must choose to do so, if we think it necessary, rather than meekly give up. In the cases discussed here, I think that the changes are mistakes - not good for the languages (English and Greek), and not good because of what they say about the culture that allows them to happen.

As an aside, did you know there are some villages of southern Italy where 'Ancient Greek' is still spoken?

6 hours ago, svelok said:

much as we write/type in English very differently from how we would actually speak it to a person in front of us.

This is not exactly true, as I can assure you that there are some who speak as they type. Myself, for example, as one extreme, and others who speak in slang and incomplete sentences, and write the same way as the other.

6 hours ago, svelok said:

That's definitely not right.

Vulgar latin was not some inferior dialect, with some lesser utility. It was Latin as it was spoken, whereas classical Latin was Latin as it was written; much as we write/type in English very differently from how we would actually speak it to a person in front of us. It wasn't until long, long after the Western Roman Empire that the two were even considered separate languages at all.

And in general there's just no such a thing as a native speaker having a lesser ability to express a certain idea than a forebear, due to linguistic changes alone. If your children never learn math they won't be able to talk about algebra, but the reason has nothing to do with the language they speak or the slang they use. Nothing of value was ever "lost" by the language - some words, expressions, grammar rules, yes; but the capacity of language to express itself was never impeded. Your English doesn't become "devolved" English if nobody ever taught you how to calculate the slope of a line; you could learn it just as well, although you would probably invent different specific words than "rise" and "run".

If you had no other languages to compare to - just 200 AD Latin, 800 AD Latin, and Spanish - it would appear as one smooth progression from the past into the future. It didn't emerge one day, fully separate but infantile. It started out as Latin with a few different words and pronunciations, and each passing year acquired a few more.

As an example: it's very difficult for modern students to parse Shakespeare when they're first exposed to it, but that's not because Romeo and Juliet is composed of themes that've been lost to civilization.

The process is quite complex. I brought Latin as a bad example to explain it. I didn't say vulgar Latin was worse. For whatever reason vulgar Latin was relegated from cultural speech. As long as it was no used to talk about some topics it lose words and structures to explain those ideas. If a speaker would like to talk about it she simply cannot (after a long time). The language keep the potential as long as is a living language and can easily recover whatever it lost.

In bilingual environment it usually happens that the language able to express what the speaker want to express survive and the other devolve.

I cannot say "I listen to music with my mp3" in Latin. Even if Latin would take mp3 as a word it need to integrate it within its system and structure. Latin is unable to do that anymore. I would say this happens cause the lack of speakers but that would no be completely true as long as there are still some people who know Latin and are able to speak in it (in some kind). The true is that Latin is so relegated in a tiny area of use that lost the capability to deal with common life these days. Latin is a special case though cause is a dead language but the process is possible for every language and happened with all those lost for good or close to it. It also happens with main language cause they devolve in some aspects and evolve in others. In Spanish we have several words to express colors but in other languages they have tens. I could deal with some "strange" colors with modifiers like clear, dark, etc. But definitely my languages is not as evolved as others to deal with the chromatic world.

We could also kill every native English speaker. The language would not dissapear but definitely would devolve cause the rest of English speakers have difficulties to express some ideas in that language. And the language lost the way to do it with the lost speakers. Unless we kept the need to talk in English it would be hard for it to evolve up to its currently evolution level. In this case devolution would be abrupted.