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View Full Version : Cohors/Cohortes and othe languange stuff...



gamerdude873
10-26-2008, 06:45
What's the diference between Cohors and Cohortes?

In the info card for Curoas it says that it is pronounced like "CURE-rows". The voicemod says "CURE-ro-ahs". I may be a crazy american, but i think there's some discrepency here. Or am i just not interpreting the pronunciation key right?

And finally... Where do you guys get your info for more obscure languages like Celtic? As far as i know, they had a very limited form of writing, and most info about them through writing would come from the highly un-biased roman and greek historians, if at all. I also hear that Proto-Germanic is coming out w/ EB2 or something. HOW do you find info about that?!

I have a feeling i'll be sorry for asking...

||Lz3||
10-26-2008, 07:09
I have a feeling i'll be sorry for asking...
I dont like you... you sense the future... :jester:

I don't know how they got their voicemods hehe but I'm sure that was discussed earlier

Conradus
10-26-2008, 08:47
Isn't cohortes the plural of cohors?

Lysimachos
10-26-2008, 10:23
Isn't cohortes the plural of cohors?

Exactly.

SwissBarbar
10-26-2008, 13:15
As far as i know, they had a very limited form of writing, and most info about them through writing would come from the highly un-biased roman and greek historians, if at all.



Yes, in celtic culture the art of speaking was a big deal - understood as a pure oral art. Using writing was taboo out of didactic and religios reasons. Exceptions counted only for Druids and of course for merchants. Celtic language was sophisticated, full of ambiguousness, hidden humor and insinuations. Especially for the romans it was quite a shock to learn, that they were rhetorically heavily inferior to the celtic art of language. So roman historians did, what they did most of the time with other cultures.. they downgraded it.

Foot
10-26-2008, 13:45
Celtic is hardly dead, you see. Its spoken in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England (well Cornwall, and not really anymore, which is a shame) and France (in the strangely british province of Brittany). Obviously it has evolved heavily, particularly the last four, but in Ireland it hasn't had as much contact with other languages. Furthermore we have evidence from early AD of a much earlier gaelic language written down by monks. We can use linguistical techniques to remove loan words and generally work our way back to an older form of celtic that was probably used in Gaul and elsewhere.

Foot

blitzkrieg80
10-26-2008, 19:34
Proto-Germanic is still quite late as an assignment, despite the varying degrees of anachronistic use of this name/term over the period of Germanic language developing during 500-150BC, partly called so because what we would know as Proto-Germanic was developing, but developing and developed are 2 separate things- Proto-Germanic is inaccurately called so by Wikipedia and generally any others not interested in the minute differences of the language (many respectable academics in the field, so no criticism- but a fact). Basically, Proto-Germanic language is primarily (there are other rules though) defined by the linguistic process known as Grimm’s Law (aka the First Sound Shift (1st SS), which in short was discovered by Grimm (of the famous Brothers) and explains the high fricative discrepancy [obstruents became aspirated and continuant] / alternate values in a series of stops between Germanic and sister Indo-European languages of the Centum family who generally agree in more similar value (phase 1 & 2: [ p > ph > f | t > th > þ | k > kh > χ | kw > khw > χw ] + [ bh > β | dh > ð | gh > ġ | ghw > ġw ])… The reason I do not call the time period in question Proto-Germanic but Pre-Germanic Indo-European is because this process had begun but did not complete until near Caesar’s time or later, since the last phase [non-continuant obstruents became devoiced] had yet to still occur (phase 3: b > p | d > t | g > k | gw > kw ).
Here is a scan for further explanation: https://img530.imageshack.us/img530/3643/chronoutlineff2.th.jpg (https://img530.imageshack.us/my.php?image=chronoutlineff2.jpg)https://img530.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif (http://g.imageshack.us/thpix.php)
We have an extremely useful date for when certain linguistic rules became applicable based on the occurrence of silva Bācenis (‘Beech Wood’) recorded by Caesar around 50BC:
”The adj. Bācenis is from early Gmc. *bāk, which comes from IE *bhāg and occurs in later Germanic *bōk as ‘beech.’ Thus the occurrence of Bācenis seems to indicate that the 1st SS had already occurred, but not the ā-TO-ō change” (Voyles 78).
So we have evidence that points to the fact that certain changes happened during a general (but very useful) period and specifically the ā-TO-ō change had not happened yet, of which other rules have some dependencies such as the 'Labiovelar change > ā-TO-ō | o-TO-a change' conditional statement: “in order for the Labiovelar change to apply, IE /ā/ must still be distinct from /ō/ and IE /o/ from /a/” (Voyles 77)... this would then affect ‘Loss of Nasals’ and ‘Loss of Mora on Unstressed Word-Final’.
Also, some fun stuff and I am lazy, so I will quote Wikipedia for the well-put words, not the ‘authority’ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verner%27s_law :

* The discovery of strong arguments for dating Grimm’s Law only to the (end) of the first century AD (cf. Common Germanic). Especially the tribesname “Kimbern” and the old name of the river Waal (Vacalus) suggest that the change from initial k to h happened only shortly before the turn of the millennium. In the new scheme, the argument for the earliest possible dating of this change to the middle of the 1st millennium BC, that is, the change of the Greek word kannabis into Old English hænep and modern German hanf, is not stable anymore or at least not mandatory anymore at all.

However, the presence of /k/ in these two words may be due to Roman scribes hearing the early Germanic /x/ sound as a /k/ rather than an /h/, particularly since their own /h/ did not often occur between vowels and was at any rate already in the process of going silent.
There are many levels of linguistic rule application I could go into that would help to illustrate at what level the language is in comparison to its derived daughter dialects, but it is not an easy and quick explanation, so I will save all from that for now. ~;)

Old English, Old High German, Gothic, Old Norse all have a good deal of Common Germanic cognates who even have Indo-European cognates to compare to and those terms which can be identified as existing before the dialectal evolution of changes within the Germanic language and form the basis for our reconstruction of Pre-Germanic Indo-European. These terms can be useful in military application even when confronted with a total lack of contemporary accounting by their own people, especially because they carry-over into all of the Germanic cognate usages. Yet some terms can be very hard to find, much harder to find than others- such as terms concerning pagan religion which were almost eradicated or taken over in meaning by Christianity for similar purpose (ever notice Christmas, Easter, ect. all try to cover-up legitimate pagan holidays? their brainwashing was smart but not respectful). The death of pagan terminology is largely due to the Roman Catholic system whose educational foundations and ambitions allowed for the writing of those lovely languages in the first place (c’est la vie), but additional intolerance to native tradition and pogroms helped to make the silence lasting. I have a special method for uncovering these elements and only through deep research and interpretation of existing documents / stories / language have I truly discovered the basic elements of Germanic pagan religion, best seen in its specialized off-shoot in Norse mythology.

Since ancient Europeans in general did not fight in weapon-only formations and their battlefield tactical elements were far more dynamic than static, each warband would have been relatively unique to each clan conglomeration or ‘lord of the warband’, containing various specialists within a whole, with varying degrees of personal loyalty and placement among their own, like a gang (the original gang OG ~;))... all of this is nearly impossible to represent within the Total War system, so many unit names, ect. have been creatively conceptualized and linguistically constructed using my expertise in ancient Germanic language (a love I picked up at my university where I was fortunate enough to have interesting classes in these matters), my technique was an application that keeps in mind Indo-European commonality which is greater than many know, while equally applying important cultural terms and designations seen later in Europe by Germanic descendants who had common usage of said items to support a basis for an original item, which can all assist in making the strange weapon-only system seem as plausible as possible.

FYI - Pre-Germanic Indo-European is already in EB 1.1 and will shows its perfected form in any upcoming release. The Voice Mod is to be added later.
Search around the forum here if you are interested in some good books on the subject... don’t have time to track it down right now, err- well here’s a link: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1970989&postcount=12

desert
10-26-2008, 19:55
Well, I understood the last line.

Elmetiacos
10-27-2008, 15:10
It would be my contention that there is and was no such word in any Celtic language as "Curoas" so it doesn't matter how you pronounce it. "Paid soldiers" would be something like *talenedes.

blitzkrieg80
10-27-2008, 18:04
Elmetiacos, that is something worth looking to- the Germanic Mercenary as 'Guest' was in the build as a make-do until something better was made, so there is no reason a more authentic and Celtic-sounding word form can't be found, agreed upon, and implemented. Your constructive / objective attitude IS appreciated.

Elmetiacos
10-27-2008, 20:15
But alas, we both know that is not really the case. The moment I (or certain others) say something someone doesn't like - and what I say will always hurt vested interests - the thread gets locked. I'm happy to help individual posters on matters Celtic, but I've long since abandoned all hope of setting matters right with regard to EB or EB2.

blitzkrieg80
10-27-2008, 21:08
that's because you were neither positive/constructive, nor objective, at the times you received a baleful eye. so if giving suggestions reasonably (to your mind) must come with derogatory flames against people unable to defend themselves, so be it (or so it not be).

PS - I just said your suggestion was appreciated, and you can't say it isn't because you don't get to decide that sort of thing, you can comment on what you think, but you don't know what we really think, existing as a separate being from me and others as we are to all - and again I say I appreciate that suggestion you made [and the polite / objective manner it was put] just now on the term for 'mercenary'. I cannot vouch for everyone obviously.
~;p so there (i am not being sarcastic)

Foot
10-27-2008, 23:59
But alas, we both know that is not really the case. The moment I (or certain others) say something someone doesn't like - and what I say will always hurt vested interests - the thread gets locked. I'm happy to help individual posters on matters Celtic, but I've long since abandoned all hope of setting matters right with regard to EB or EB2.

There are ways of dealing with us. Making personal attacks on members (or ex-members) of our team is going to get you black-balled. we've all worked really hard for many years and so we are protective of our own. You have hardly ever made any helpful comment without following it up with some attack or other, so yeah, when you say something we don't like (say a personal attack on an ex-member) then we'll close ranks because before anything there is self-respect and respect for one's co-workers. You give none to us and we expect none from you. We would love to be able to talk with you about what we have, but unfortunately you have made that impossible.

I'm closing this thread because the questions have been answered and this looks to devolve into one of those endless "celtic" threads, and we just don't have the time for it.

Foot