Many Velites, one ... ?

[Browning]

Yes, what is the singular of Velites?

And while we are talking Latin, there was a mod project somewhere to substitute the speech files by ones with a "native" language, i.e. Latin for the Roman factions, Class. Greek for the Greeks etc. Any hint?

[SwordsMaster]

Velite. Dunno about the mod.

[Kraxis]

Veles.

[Barbarossa82]

"veles" if you are simply importing the Latin term, in which case the plural should be pronounced "veh-lee-tehs" or "weh-lee-tehs", depending on which school/theory of latin pronunciation you subscribe to.

"velite" of you are anglicising the word, in which case the plural should be pronounced "vee-lites".

[hrvojej]

So, following the same logic, it's also "principe" and not "princeps"?

[Kraxis]

The interesting part about anglication (is that a word?) and other languageadaptions is that sometimes it isn't the entire grammar of the word that is transformed.

Since I haven't seen anybody use the term 'velite' but rather use 'veles' and 'velites' interchangeable as per numbers included, I would venture a guess that 'veles' is the correct anglicised word. But of course if anyone has a dictionary that says 'velite', then I will back down.

I have again never heard (or read) the term 'principe' but rather 'princeps'.

[khelvan]

The mod you are talking about is usually just called the "Voice mod," and is now a part of the Europa Barbarorum project.

You can still find the main thread discussing the project in the RTR forums (it will continue to be available for RTR) here:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/index...howtopic=14199

You can find info about EB here:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=70

[Browning]

Thank you for the replies. To be more precise, I asked about the original Latin substantive in singular, so it is "Veles" I understand?

And, being of German-Polish descent, I pronounce it "Veh-lee-tehs", of course.

Thank you, Khelvan, for the links!

[Barbarossa82]

The interesting part about anglication (is that a word?) and other languageadaptions is that sometimes it isn't the entire grammar of the word that is transformed.

Since I haven't seen anybody use the term 'velite' but rather use 'veles' and 'velites' interchangeable as per numbers included, I would venture a guess that 'veles' is the correct anglicised word. But of course if anyone has a dictionary that says 'velite', then I will back down.

I have again never heard (or read) the term 'principe' but rather 'princeps'.

If you read historical books or texts written before anglicisation (US: anglicization) seemed to become "politically incorrect", you will see plenty of references to "velite", as the singular of velites. In fact there is even a model of car called the Buick Velite, so named because of its alleged agility.

Surely anglicising veles to velite is no more groundbreaking than the anglicisation of IVLIVS to Julius, or SENATVS to Senate? It seems a little strange to accept these into common speech while denying the legitimacy of other anglicisations.

If you want to say "veles" in an Enlgish sentence, go ahead - you're perfectly entitled to! Note however that when you do this, it is not an Anglicisation, but rather an importation. Only the pronunciation has changed. As I say, there is nothing wrong with doing this. Some people are more comfortable not Anglicising words, and prefer to keep everything exactly as it was said in its original language. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that position, except it does rather imply that you should stop saying "Germany" for Deutschland, "India" for Bharat or "Mark Anthony" for Marcus Antonius.

I have never seen anyone speak of a "principe" either, Kraxis. It sounds quite unnatural in English, and is therefore a poor anglicisation. I have no trouble simply importing the Latin word princeps. Just because I anglicise one word, doesn't mean I need to anglicise all foreign words.

I simply insist that I be allowed the same right to transform foreign words when using them in my own language which is accorded to every other linguistic group in the world.

If you go to Fontaineblau (sp?) castle just outside Paris, you will see a very nice gallery full of paintings, some of which depict kings of France, and some of which were commissioned by them. Beneath every picture is a pleasantly informative plaque describing the painting, in French, English, Italian and German.
Some of the French kings mentioned had names like Henri, Charles, and Louis. Now in Italian, these names were spelt as Enrico, Carlo, Luigi. In German, they were Heinrich, Karl, Ludwig. Why can they not be Henry, Charles and Lewis in English? There are plenty of old history books (and Shakespeare plays) which refer to "King Lewis" of France. So if the Italians can Italianise, and the Germans can Germanify (is that a word or did I just make it up?), surely we've got to be allowed to Anglicise just as we did before someone decided it was unfashionable.

[Browning]

(...)
If you want to say "veles" in an English sentence, go ahead - you're perfectly entitled to! (...) There's absolutely nothing wrong with that position, except it does rather imply that you should stop saying "Germany" for Deutschland, "India" for Bharat or "Mark Anthony" for Marcus Antonius.

Just because I anglicise one word, doesn't mean I need to anglicise all foreign words.

Sorry for nitpicking Barbarossa, ut you must realise these two qoutes from you look contradictory.

[Kraxis]

Personally I prefer not to change names, so I do say Marcus Antonius and Livius (instead of Livy). But that is because whenever we tend to speak about those people we also tend to use a lot of pure latin words. So while Velite is perfectly good (it sounds ok to me) I do not like the jumping back and forth, I like consistency. So when we talk about India the consistency for me is european.
I just think that many of the anglicised words are perfectly good in their original version and had no need whatsoever to be changed, others are though very complicated and I see no point in not trying to change things.

In the case of Velite vs Veles I see no point for a change, Veles is in fact easier to pronounce than Velite, so why not keep it? Because some librarian in the 19th century thought it would be more fun with changes? No, not good enough reason for me.

IVLIVS to Julius is perfectly ok. The early latin alphabet was a bit restricted (as future genereations might think of our alphabet) and certainly different from ours. Since most languages started out using J like the current english Y it is only time that has changed the name. And you can't blame us for making a destinction between a U and a V.
Senatus is an institution and as such is liable to be changed. I just find it interesting that senate is used rather than parliament. I'm pretty certain that the word Senate didn't exist prior to USA being formed.

But I do get your point about the museum, it is only fair to do it equally.

[Barbarossa82]

Sorry for nitpicking Barbarossa, ut you must realise these two qoutes from you look contradictory.

I'm afraid I don't really see your point, Browning.

The first statement of mine which you quoted was not my position - I was stating the position of those people (and I am NOT accusing anyone on these boards of acting like this) who insist that all anglicisation is illegitimate. I was highlighting that the problem with this idea is that if you believe anglicisation is somehow philosophically wrong, then you should stop using it, even for really common words and phrases like Germany and India.

The second quote from my post which you cited is my actual position - that the decision whether or not to anglicise a foreign word is one which can be validly taken either way, and there is no need to be consistent.
In other words those two passages are contradictory - they're supposed to be, as they're summarising two contrasting attitudes.

Ultimately I think Kraxis and I are in agreement that whether or not to anglicise is a mtter of personal taste and preference. He prefers not to, and I have the utmost respect for his reasons. I only object when it's suggested (not by him) that Anglicisation is somehow ignorant, or even offensive. For example some people suggest it is "colonialist" to refer to the city of Mumbai as Bombay, an argument which I think has no merit.

[Kraxis]

I don't mind people using whatever localized versions of certain things, especially institutions, those things are often global and we can't confine it to one area. Even if we can then it becomes even more important to make certain everybody get the point of it, so a localized version is very important. For instance 'Senatus' for a japanese farmer is not something he will understand. That Japan has chosen a line that is more akin to the british way of naming it (parliament) is of little consequence here.

I just think that names are indeed sacred, and we owe it to to the people that we at least try to understand their names or their country's name. We can then choose to use those names or our own.
For instance here in Denmark Polybius is called Polyb, something I hate to say but I'm pretty much forced to do it at the uni if I make a reference to him. But at least I know his name was Polybios (-us is latin).

Anyway I found a little discrepancy regarding the rules of when a C is a K or an S. What I have heard is that it is an S when the next wovel is an E and I for instance (example Cicero) and it is a K when the next wovel is an O or A (example Agricola and Caius). But then I susprised myself by saying Prin-kee-pes (Principes), it should have been Prin-see-pes as per the rules.

[Simetrical]

velite" of you are anglicising the word, in which case the plural should be pronounced "vee-lites".

Usually not. Words tend to become more Anglicized over time, but according to rules for words not fully Anglicized, velites should be pronounced something like "VEHL-uh-teez." See, for instance, testes, pronounced "TEST-eez"—I can't think of any other examples at the moment, but the Latin and Greek plural ending -es is typically prononuced "eez" until the word in question is fully Anglicized, at which point it morphs to the normal English plural suffix -(e)s.

-Simetrical

[Shadar]

Yep. The singular forum of the word Vēles (meaning light armed soldier/skirmisher) is Vēlitēs.

Vēlitēs is pronounced roughly We-li-tays (soft w, as in "where", and a short i, as in "pin") [Nb. i'm not that great with this sounding-writing out thing. so its a bit inaccurate]


The Anglicised form of Latin mainly came about mainly from the monasteries of the Dark and Middle Ages which kept a lot of the Latin books. As monks copied out the books (since parchment obviously didn't last forever), some monks obviously thought it prudent to distinguish between some parts of the latin alphabet. One example would be "i", as it was used both as a consonant (where it was pronounced as a soft "y", e.g. in Yule) and as a vowel (both as a short vowel in "pin" and a long vowel as in "keen"), The consonant "i" later became "j" (you can see the similarities can't you?). Thus, words like Iulius and Iuvenalis became eventually Julius and Juvenal.

[Barbarossa82]

I agree with your description of how words become anglicised, Simetrical. But surely the degree to which one chooses to anglicise is a matter of personal choice. I would dispute that there are any "rules for words not fully Anglicised" - languages do not belong to scholars but to those who speak them.
I shouldn't have made the mistake in my first post of prescribing how to pronounce the Anglicised version of "velites" - treat it as my own attitude to transforming the word rather than an attempt to lay down a rule.

When I was taught Latin, we were instructed that all letter Cs were to be pronounced in the hard, K form. The Romans did technically have a letter K, but used it exceptionally rarely. However the modern ecclesiastical pronunciation of Latin tends to use most Cs in the soft, S-like form.
There are lots of unanswered questions about the way Latin was spoken, with little evidence to go on. Was the letter V always pronounced softly, like U or W, or could it be a hard V as well? If it could only make the soft sound, then one might expect it to elide like a vowel; but implementing this leaves us with some Latin poetry with its scansion knocked out of kilter by one syllable. On the other hand, if they had a letter making two different sounds, one might think it would have been a prime candidate for the Emperor Claudius to dream up a new letter for (he tried to introduce several new letters to convey sounds not fully catered for in the Latin alphabet). So there is evidence for both propositions.
Until someone invents a time machine we are never going to know everything for sure, which I think is part of the charm of history!

[Piko]

i have a textbook right here

c=k
-on a letter=long pronounciation
õ for instance is a short o
v=w
u=oe
ui=oeie
for example victorius means victory,you pronounce it wiek-torie-oes
Oh,by the way im only 13 and live in belgium so don't be to hard on the english.

[Kraxis]

Ok, I didn't mean to imply the C had an S sound in ancient latin, but rather the medieval rule was like that, and that is the reason why so many languages have those soft Cs.
So my point was really that while we have adopted the medieval latin we have apparently not forgotten the proper latin entirely, as the case with 'Principes' indicate.

[Simetrical]

I agree with your description of how words become anglicised, Simetrical. But surely the degree to which one chooses to anglicise is a matter of personal choice. I would dispute that there are any "rules for words not fully Anglicised" - languages do not belong to scholars but to those who speak them.

The rules I referred to were like those of physics, not law; they were descriptivist rather than prescriptivist. In other words, I was describing how Latin words tend to become Anglicized. And the degree of Anglicization is only partially a matter of personal choice, unless you want to sound either completely ignorant (try pronouncing hyperbole as you would a normal English word) or extremely pretentious (try pronouncing hyperbole as the Romans actually pronounced it).

-Simetrical

[hrvojej]

Hyperbole would actually require the Greeks to do the pronounciation, but seeing that I'm unsure as to how to pronounce it in English myself anyway...

[NicSO]

Great project....Latin language.....:-)....

I always thought it is stupid they used english....

Alea iacta est:-)

[Barbarossa82]

according to rules for words not fully Anglicized, velites should be pronounced something like "VEHL-uh-teez."

Sounded pretty prescriptive to me. If what you meant was "is usually pronounced something like", then point taken.

[Simetrical]

I was using should in a subjunctive fashion, as a synonym of would. Using the AHD definition, I meant it in sense 2, "Used to express probability or expectation," rather than sense 1, "Used to express obligation or duty." Not "It is incumbent upon us to pronounce velites 'VEHL-uh-teez,'" but "If velites were Anglicized, it would probably be pronounced 'VEHL-uh-teez.'"

-Simetrical