Time Commanders

[CrackedAxe]

By far the best TC, imo, was the Battle of Gaugamela. The team did incredibly well, given the task they were set. Or were they just lucky? The team was pretty animated and argumentative as well, which made for more entertainment.

Btw, Boadicea IS a roman spelling mistake and NOT a so called 'latinisation'. How could they latinise a word that was not native to their language without translating it, therefore converting it to a different word or phrase altogether. I mean, how do I 'anglicise', for example, Moa Tse Tung; Moth Eaten Tongue? Or Mahatma Ghandi; Ma hat ma coat?

[Barbarossa82]

Btw, Boadicea IS a roman spelling mistake and NOT a so called 'latinisation'. How could they latinise a word that was not native to their language without translating it, therefore converting it to a different word or phrase altogether. I mean, how do I 'anglicise', for example, Moa Tse Tung; Moth Eaten Tongue? Or Mahatma Ghandi; Ma hat ma coat?

You are already doing it!!! Although your spelling is rather unconventional, you are anglicising Mao's name as an inevitable concomitant of transliterating it. Is "Germany" a spelling mistake for "Deutschland"? Because by your logic it surely must be. Hard to see how one could get so many letters wrong though.

Boadicea for Boudicca doesn't have to be deliberate in order to be a latinisation rather than a spelling mistake. People naturally modify the sounds of foreign names and words when they import them into their own language. You are doing it yourself when you write "Moa Tse Tung", since this will never correspond adequately to Chinese, especially since it is a tonal language.

You also confuse latinisation/anglicisation with translation. Translation means converting the MEANING into your own language, latinisation/anglicisation means modifying the SOUNDS of the word so that it more accurately reflects your own language's structure and natural sound range. "Londres" is not a French translation of "London", it is a Gallicisation which makes it easier and more confortable for them to say, and as far as I'm concerned they're perfectly entitled to do it.

I bet you don't go around talking about Italia, Hellas and Magyarország when you want to refer to Italy, Greece and Hungary!

[Didz]

I think the most common example I come across are Spanish names when studying the perninsula war.

The two that always catch me out are 'Ciudad Rodrigo' which as far as I can verbalise it sounds like "Fray-dad-Rodrigo".

And 'Badajoz' which contrary to the spelling gets pronounced something like 'Bad-a-Hof.'

I have no idea how the Spanish spell the names of these cities but the spelling we use doesn't reflect the phonetic's needed to vocalise their names.

I suspect if the Romans had trouble pronouncing Boudicca they probably wrote out the letters that corresponded to what they heard. It would be a bit like me writing Fraydadrodrigo instead of Ciudad Rodrigo.

[Kraxis]

And 'Badajoz' which contrary to the spelling gets pronounced something like 'Bad-a-Hof.'

Hmm... I always though it was pronounced Bada-hros.

[Somebody Else]

Well, living in Peking, China (or, if I want to get it right, Beijing, Jongo - though even that's a horrible mispronunciation) I've only ever seen a couple of episodes. In both, the teams performed miserably. From what I understand, this is the norm. I would be interested to see what happens if a strategic level command team from the army were to participate.

[AmbrosiusAurelianus]

Badajoz is pronounced with the first d as an extremely soft sound, which is actually more like a "th" than an English "d". The j is like the sound in loch, but is even harsher. The z at the end is the "th" as in thin , as is the first letter in Ciudad. Th-ee-oo-th-ath is as close as I can get without using phonetic letters, which I don't know how to type on the forum!
It is good to know that TimeCommanders is back on. Thanks for the notification. As for the side arguments I agree with Barbarossa on pronunciation, and don't believe that the ethnographic arguments about English and Scottish populations will ever be resolved. Still, 'tis always interesting to speculate.

[CrackedAxe]

You are already doing it!!! Although your spelling is rather unconventional, you are anglicising Mao's name as an inevitable concomitant of transliterating it. Is "Germany" a spelling mistake for "Deutschland"? Because by your logic it surely must be. Hard to see how one could get so many letters wrong though.

Boadicea for Boudicca doesn't have to be deliberate in order to be a latinisation rather than a spelling mistake. People naturally modify the sounds of foreign names and words when they import them into their own language. You are doing it yourself when you write "Moa Tse Tung", since this will never correspond adequately to Chinese, especially since it is a tonal language.

You also confuse latinisation/anglicisation with translation. Translation means converting the MEANING into your own language, latinisation/anglicisation means modifying the SOUNDS of the word so that it more accurately reflects your own language's structure and natural sound range. "Londres" is not a French translation of "London", it is a Gallicisation which makes it easier and more confortable for them to say, and as far as I'm concerned they're perfectly entitled to do it.

I bet you don't go around talking about Italia, Hellas and Magyarország when you want to refer to Italy, Greece and Hungary!

So, by your reasoning, I could correctly use the japanese rendering of our prime ministers name, TAWNY BRAIR!

Cool. This would be ok would it? By your use of Boadicea, you're saying its ok (or are you ancient roman? my you're looking good for your age). Its Boudicca, BOO-DICK-A!

[Fridge]

So, by your reasoning, I could correctly use the japanese rendering of our prime ministers name, TAWNY BRAIR!

If you were Japanese, I'd have thought the only way you would be able to render it phonetically would be in Japanese script (and even then it wouldn't match exactly the sounds of Englis. The whole problem is the Japanese can't (or find it difficult without training) to reproduce some phonetic elements of the English language, and, I imagine vice versa.

Cool. This would be ok would it? By your use of Boadicea, you're saying its ok (or are you ancient roman? my you're looking good for your age). Its Boudicca, BOO-DICK-A!

I doubt he's ancient Roman, but he is, after all, using a language directly descended from theirs. And, having given us the ancient spelling of Boudicca, you're very confident of how it's pronounced, bearing in mind the original was wrtitten in a language with (AFAIK) no, or effectively no, relation to modern English.

So either Boudicca is the original spelling and it's not pronounced BOO-DICK-AH, or Boudicca is a phonetic rendering and the original spelling was very different, or it's both spelt and pronounced that way and it's all a coincidence of astounding proportions.

Did the Britons (or Iceni) even use a latin alphabet in those days? Or was Boudicca just an attempt to transcribe the name in the latin alphabet before the Romans came along and did their latinizing?

[Didz]

I doubt he's ancient Roman, but he is, after all, using a language directly descended from theirs.

Good God. You mean he is posting in Italian. I never noticed and since I can't read Italian I really don't know how I understood his post.

And, having given us the ancient spelling of Boudicca, you're very confident of how it's pronounced, bearing in mind the original was wrtitten in a language with (AFAIK) no, or effectively no, relation to modern English.

Presumably, Boudicca is either derived from Celtic or Gallic and as modern English still retains links to both languages whilst latin was limited to the clergy and eventually irradicated from modern english by the Black Death, I would argue that Boudicca (according to language achaeologists pronounced BOO-DICK-AH) is more closely related to modern english than Boudicea.

Did the Britons (or Iceni) even use a latin alphabet in those days? Or was Boudicca just an attempt to transcribe the name in the latin alphabet before the Romans came along and did their latinizing?

Not sure what that has to do with price of eggs. After all the Chinese don't use a latin alphabet but we still know how they pronounce their names.

Presumably no matter what alphabet the Iceni used the historians have managed to both translate it and read it, as indeed they are able to do with ancient Egyptian, Hebrew and many other languages.

[Barbarossa82]

So, by your reasoning, I could correctly use the japanese rendering of our prime ministers name, TAWNY BRAIR!

Cool. This would be ok would it? By your use of Boadicea, you're saying its ok (or are you ancient roman? my you're looking good for your age). Its Boudicca, BOO-DICK-A!

Yes, well understood. It would be absolutely OK, especially if you're Japanese, and even if you're not. If it makes it easier for you to say in your own native language, go for it.
It's Boudicca in Gaelic, Boadicea in Latin, to me Boadicea sounds more natural and easily flowing in modern English, so that's what I'm gonna say. If you want to say Tawny Brair, fire away.

Must go now, my 2000-year-old Italian bones are feeling the cold!

[tai4ji2x]

for those interested, linguists use what's called the International Phonetic Alphabet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interna...netic_alphabet

[tai4ji2x]

btw, season two is forthcoming. http://www.totalwar.com/time2.htm

still hoping someone out there is generous enough to try and video-capture pharsalus and qadesh from season 1... ;)

[Kraxis]

for those interested, linguists use what's called the International Phonetic Alphabet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interna...netic_alphabet

Imagine when this alphabet is found sometime in the distant future... It will be like:
"It is obvious that sometime around 1500-2200 a group of people splintered away from the main European culture. During their wanderings (also called the 2nd migration period) they developed their latin alphabet into what we now call the drawn alphabet (from the many interestingly drawn symbols). Obviously it has roots in the even more ancient greek and phoenician alphabets, indicating that it was something that survived the ages, until the migrations finally took it up again.
Interestingly enough it has never been found near the large religious grounds, such as outside Roskilde or any of the other places where thousands of people gathered to pay homage to their gods at large altars (usually they would be crammed tightly togther only at one side) for days on end, where they sacrificed many thousands of oddly shaped coins to the ground (circular in shape but with one side ebnt inwards in a serrated fashion). That indicates that the splinter groups were heretics to the normal population and it can explain the migration and the relative lack of physical evidence."

[tai4ji2x]

kraxis:

huh? when i said linguists "use" the IPA, i certainly don't mean that they write everything (letters, email, books, etc) in it. that would be silly. they just use it as a tool for representing human speech in a standard way. it is almost always interspersed as notation within a main body of text, which would be written in the linguist's native language.