They might be able read our language at some point, but they would first have to choose one of the hundreds of languages on this planet. If they choose English then they would also have to learn about our alphabet and our grammar. They would have to find out how we order our words and the multiple meanings of some of them. None of this is doable unless they can actually translate our language though. We can translate ancient languages from our own planet because they have influenced our modern languages, we can make connections that greatly simplify the process. Speaking this language is a completely different problem.

An alien species trying to learn one of our languages doesn't have anything to make connections with. It would certainly be able to find patterns in our language, but it would have no way of knowing what the patterns mean. The only way to be sure is to just hold up a ball and say "ball".

Are you saying that aliens have no access to Sesame Street?

"This is a ball. B-A-L-L. Ball. This is a bat. B-A-T. . ."

Latin is still a spoken language today, yet that has very little to do with how it was pronounced almost 2100 years ago. Besides, Spanish, French and Italian accents are each very different, and there is no good reason to pick any one of them over the other. Maybe it'd be best in future movies set in antiquity to have Romans played by Mexicans.

I meant american accent..

When I watch WWII movies I always expect the different nations to speak their respective language. As I mentioned, if they do speak english and manages to pull it off good enough I won't mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Q_mZNiGQs&feature=plcp&context=C47f8a14VDvjVQa1PpcFNoDlwCuypKo6kKztv6G4N8iLRqfZQP7SA%3Dhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-Q_mZNiGQs&feature=plcp&context=C47f8a14VDvjVQa1PpcFNoDlwCuypKo6kKztv6G4N8iLRqfZQP7SA%3D

The Latin spoken when French developed is closer to Latin's form when there was a Roman Empire. Here's http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Latin/Grammar/Latin-Pronunciation-Syllable-Accent.html http://www.ai.uga.edu/mc/latinpro.pdf. Italian is its closest cousin, so it would likely be pronounced similarly.

Romans played by Mexicans? I'm game. Maybe they'd sound like Caesar Millan.

What about the popularity of gaming platforms out there?

It seems that in US majority of the gamers are "consolers", that would seem almost opposite form my country. Let's just say, that our largest gaming magazine, that is on the market since 1996 and usually has up to 4 full versions of games on cover-dvd*, started reviewing console games in...2010! Lately the PC<>console markets started to be more of an even market, but several years ago the PCs were a vast majority.

There has been a computer(s) in my house since about my birth in '92, but I've never really had a console, besides having a PSX for a short period back in '90s.

* - do the Western gamer magazines have cover-discs with games too? If yes, how much do they cost?

There are some WWII movies that use that kind of authenticity, and some of them are considered the best ones, like Saving Private Ryan. (And they also used actors from Germany, for the Germans who had lines.)

I didn't know we had a Pole in our presence!

Dzien Dobry!

Evidence for pronunciation of Classical Latin is often difficult to interpret.
Orthography is conventionalized, and the contemporary Roman grammarians’ comments lack clarity, so that to a considerable extent it is necessary to extrapolate from later developments in Romance in order to describe it. On the whole, linguists think that Latin probably sounded something like Italian, though some features make it close to Castillian Spanish.

Educated guesses still, though probably pretty good ones.

I'd definitely watch that!

That's interesting, I didn't know any of that. It's weird, when you think about it, all the modern romance languages come from the same source (latin), yet from what you're saying two of them (Italian and Castillian Spanish) might sound (and be) closer to Latin than the others. Why did some of the languages stick closer to their roots while others (French, Romanian...) didn't? Have they "evolved"/changed more rapidly or something? Maybe they've had more influence from other languages?

Actually that's not what I'm saying, it's a quote from one of SF's links. Sounds very plausible though. I don't know about Romanian, but I suppose in the case of French there might be stronger influences from the Celtic languages that were still spoken in Gaul besides Latin (local languages remained in use besides Greek and Latin in most of the empire) and maybe there's an influence of Frankish.

In Italy many different languages were spoken as well (Latin, Greek, Etruscan, a whole bunch of Italic languages and several Celtic languages in the north) but I suppose because Italy had been conquered much earlier in Rome's history and it has for such a long time been the centre of the empire, Latin became much more widely used there. I wouldn't know really, I am neither a linguist nor a classicist. Interesting stuff to think about though.

Yes, very interesting, at least to me. I think I read somewhere that the French language stole borrowed a few sounds from Germanic languages, like the pronounciation of the letter "r" that is close to modern German. Or something like that, I'm no expert.
By the way, I wonder if there's a known equivalent to Latin for Germanic languages, a language from which all Germanic languages come from. I've never heard of one, but there must be.

Nice to see someone interested in my country, you must be either form here, or have Polish ancestors, I bet.

PS. You're missing a line over n, it should be ń.

Yes, I am quite interested in your country and was hoping someone would come around and represent.

I am American, but with strong Polish heritage. I am the third generation born here, but it is very important to me to be in touch with the culture and keep the various traditions alive.

I knew "Dzien Dobry" wasn't spelled right, but to be honest, I've no idea how to make that fancy little "n" with an accent.


Now for the big question... This will settle a score for me.

What is a Kolachi?

Mind you, I know very well what it is, but I want an authentic Polish description of it for argument purposes.

Honestly I don't know that word, are you sure it's properly spelled? Because it sounds like diosrted Polish word with English spelling. Did you, by any means, mean "kolacja"?

Also, you might want to know that, that line ("kreska") over the "n" is not an accent, it's a diacritic mark, same as ?, ó, ?, ?, ?, ?, ? and ?. They sound different than the letters without the marks.

Interesting about the diacritic mark, I'll keep that in mind.



Okay, hope you guys are ready. Here she goes.

Perhaps Kolachi is Americanized. Basically, it is a nut roll, typically with walnuts and maple:

http://luvaproject.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/kolachi.jpg

There is one kind of legitimate Kolachi. One. Not any others.

I'm from Northeast Ohio, which has a lot of Eastern European ethnicity and this is regarded as fact. You never say what kind of Kolachi you want because there is only one kind. And like most Polish food in America, they are made by lovely old Babcias. And of course, the quality of the taste is directly proportionate to the flabbiness of the arms that create it.

It's true, I didn't make that up.

Then...I moved to Texas. And much to my horror they have these little bakeries called "Kolache Factories" with an "e" oddly enough, They claim to sell all types of "Kolaches": Sausage and Cheese, Jalepeno and Ham...

Wha......? No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You put cheese and meat into bread and that is a sandwich. If you bake it with sauce or something, it become a calzone or stromboli. It is most certainly not a Kolachi (with an "i"). And to make things even more interesting, these wannabe pastries look like danishes. Can't tell you how many arguments I've gotten into about this. I have heard that Kolachis are sometimes considered to be Czech, which may have some truth to it, but I've always known them as Polish

Anyway, was hoping you would give an unequivocal ruling on the authenticity of the Polish Kolachi. I would then print the post out and carry it around with me and starting waving it around when people start talking about what type of freakin' panini (er...Kolach"E") they want. And if they argue, I will say: A Polish person said so...damnit

Bitter Coast out.

The known equivalent Latin for Germanic languages as far as I know is actually Latin. German, English, Spanish, French and Italian are all fairly similar to each other because they all were heavily influenced by Latin, all of them being conquered by Rome at some point.

I understand (partially) Italian, Spanish, French. I also speak Portuguese and English. Latin languages for the win!

Interesting. That image looks like "makowiec", that is a yeast cake with poppy seed filling, not nut. It can have nuts, but just as an addition, next to orange peel, bit of honey or raisins. You can make cakes the same way, but with different filling - marmalade, apple mass, white cheese mass (wthite cheese + sugar + yolk) , but it will be named differently. So "makowiec" is "makowiec" and has only poppy seed.

I just remembered something, "kolachi" sound like Polish "ko?acz", but that is a kind of Slavic bread made of wheat, round shape (since the name - "ko?o" is Polish for "wheel"), without any filling.

Hope that I cleared some things.

And yes, babcias make great cakes. I'm very fond of my grandmother's apple pie (szarlotka), it tastes great! My grandmother from my father side also makes great szarlotka. I also like yeast cake with white cheese, I even prepared a English recipe some time ago, PM me if you awnt it.

Diacritical marks are commonly called accents.

German's influence from Latin came later, after Rome's fall, through the church and later in the Renaissance through classical texts. They were never really conquered by Rome. English got it primarily via Norman French.

Damn, I came so close to sounding intelligent. Though english is both a bastardized and harmonized combination of dozens of different languages.

If you're interested in languages then take a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI5uekd517s&feature=player_embedded. Its long for YouTube, but it's a very interesting way to learn the history of the english language.

I have thousands of dollars worth of useless education, have to use it when I can. lol

Rome had a good go at them but Ulfric Arminius kicked them back across the Rhine and hence Germanic languages survived in Central Europe and passed on to England, or else we'd all probably be speaking a romance dialect. In the Middle Ages, they took a lot of loan words from Latin to express philosophical and cultural ideas. Martin Luther reacted against this and tried to re-Germanize things a bit, and he pretty much single-handedly created a literary German. You still had some Latin influence from the philosophers but not in average speech so much.

I've actually seen that video before- it's cute. I wish we'd stuck with Anglo-Saxon, I think it's much nicer than Chaucer and beyond.

I know it's drifting a bit of topic, but I could not resist posting http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/IndoEuropeanTree.svg As Celan said, Latin is not related to the Germanic languages, except for taking in a bunch of loan words.

This discussion of Polish pies is making me very hungry... A Greek friend of mine made a fantastic chocolate cake last Thursday, but I do not believe that there is anything inherently Greek about that.