Ye Olde Foreigne Languages

[tezcatlip0ca]

Woohoo Second Page!

The only "old" source commonly known around here is Don Quijote, and even that is hardly printed in old orthography...

[Taernsietr]

I'm not sure BP can be archaically faked :s

There are, however, some characteristics of the language that aren't really used anymore, and make it look formal or old if used. These would be mesoclisis, oblique pronouns, the singular and plural forms of the "formal" 2nd person pronoun etc. Also some words and verbs.

"Do mesmo modo que furtou-te, e dos teus bens deixou nada, furtá-la-ia."
Today, this would be:
"Da mesma forma que te roubou, e deixou nada das suas coisas, ele ia roubar ela."
The same way he robbed you, and left nothing of your possessions, he was going to rob her.

[Aurora Rossa]

I'm not sure BP can be archaically faked :s

What does "BP" stand for?

[Astraios]

What does "BP" stand for?

"Brazilian Portuguese".

[sirdanilot]

I'm not sure BP can be archaically faked :s

Well, those more complicated constructions, as you gave examples of, can also be found in some older Bible translations, so it probably is possible. I think that if one would try to do this, it would look more like Eur-Portuguese.

Something I think looks old-fashioned is the name Lourenço. I think it's in the <ç>.

[Drydic]

I just want to say <3 to all of you who don't fake it and use actual Old <insert language here>.

mildy on-topic: I pissed off my Latin-3 teacher in High School when I wrote a story for the 2nd years to translate. What was she mad about? I included Greek nouns, declined in Homeric Greek
(in my defense, the forms were in the Latin dictionary we had abundantly in that classroom. And I graciously wrote them in Latin letters, not Greek.)

[tatapyranga]

Fake old-style finnish is usually just modern finnish written with the orthography of Mikael Agricola who first developed an orthography for finnish language.

What about using -vi in the third person singular, and, like -mahan instead of -maan? Or is that fake Kalevala-style?

And sometimes word "se" (it) used as a definite article.

I thought this was modern Finnish only.

Like Taernsietr said, old-style Portuguese uses archaic words, mesoclisis, and the second person conjugations.
(Or you can just use European portuguese in Brazil and that will look instantly old-fashioned and/or funny.)

[Taernsietr]

I'm not sure BP can be archaically faked :s

Something I think looks old-fashioned is the name Lourenço. I think it's in the <ç>.

Actually that is a modern rendering. <ç> was introduced in Portuguese, AFAIK, to substitute <ss> (/s/) in contexts where <s> would be realized as /z/ and <c> would be /k/ (such as caCa, where casa /kaza/ "house", caca /kaka/ "poo" and caça /kasa/ "hunt", "game"), though I really don't remember why. It must be because this occurs after <n> in some words (see alcança, /awkãsa/ "he/she/it reaches"), and I can't think of another example besides <ch> that'd be valid in that spot (concha /kõʃa/ "shell" is valid, conlha /kõʎa/ is not).

As far as doing it with European Portuguese goes, I can't be certain, but I think you'd be really getting into Old Portuguese or something like that. (Wikipedia, however, hints at different spelling used near the 14th century).

[Ser]

*Strongly stresses the "hardly ever"*

Years of watching TV and I can't even remember a single instance of fake old language...

Perhaps this is a bit of a cultural thing? I think that in an environment where most people are monolingual, or just generally suck at the foreign languages they speak (German, Spanish and Japanese speaking areas, for one), there will be less consciousness of the language they speak, and as a result you'll see less of these things.

Do you consider that Americans and English-speaking Canadians (the French-speaking ones often learn English to a significant extent) don't suck at learning other languages?

Do people in Spain mimic other people's accent, know exactly where someone comes from based on their accent etc.?

Of course they do, (and so we Salvadorans do, ask any to imitate what a Guatemalan sounds like). Do you consider Spain to be a world where sociolinguistics is thrown out of the window?

The only "old" source commonly known around here is Don Quijote, and even that is hardly printed in old orthography...

But the thing is, is I don't remember ever seeing old language mocked at all. It's true that in the Spanish-speaking world there's this contemporary convention to respell all old works, much in contrast with English-speaking countries where works by Chaucer and Shakespeare are presented in the original orthography (okay, somewhat); but nonetheless I don't think I've seen mock old language at all regardless of the orthography used.

[Jipí]

I just want to say <3 to all of you who don't fake it and use actual Old <insert language here>.

*cheers*

And I graciously wrote them in Latin letters, not Greek.)

τρείτορ τέξτς βαί κλέσσισιστς νέϋερ ἶϋεν τρενσλείτ Γρῖκ·

[CrazyEttin]

Fake old-style finnish is usually just modern finnish written with the orthography of Mikael Agricola who first developed an orthography for finnish language.

What about using -vi in the third person singular, and, like -mahan instead of -maan? Or is that fake Kalevala-style?

And sometimes word "se" (it) used as a definite article.

I thought this was modern Finnish only.

Finnish doesn't have indefinite or definite articles, Agricola used them because his language was heavily influenced by swedish, german, etc... (He was propably native swedish-speaker).

And i don't know about -vi or -mahan. I think they sound more fake Kalevala-style, as you said, but i'm not sure if they could be used in fake medieval-style finnish.

[Drydic]

I just want to say <3 to all of you who don't fake it and use actual Old <insert language here>.

*cheers*

And I graciously wrote them in Latin letters, not Greek.)

τρείτορ τέξτς βαί κλέσσισιστς νέϋερ ἶϋεν τρενσλείτ Γρῖκ·

I didn't use greek letters because I couldn't put the proper diacritics or breathings on them, as all I had available was the ass-looking Symbol font.

[sirdanilot]

mildy on-topic: I pissed off my Latin-3 teacher in High School when I wrote a story for the 2nd years to translate. What was she mad about? I included Greek nouns, declined in Homeric Greek
(in my defense, the forms were in the Latin dictionary we had abundantly in that classroom. And I graciously wrote them in Latin letters, not Greek.)

In our school, there was only latin and not greek. In the book that contained the latin texts (we did mostly ovidius, cicero, martialis, catullus), if there was a noun inflected in the greek way, it would simply be included in the glossary with translation.

[Drydic]

mildy on-topic: I pissed off my Latin-3 teacher in High School when I wrote a story for the 2nd years to translate. What was she mad about? I included Greek nouns, declined in Homeric Greek
(in my defense, the forms were in the Latin dictionary we had abundantly in that classroom. And I graciously wrote them in Latin letters, not Greek.)

In our school, there was only latin and not greek. In the book that contained the latin texts (we did mostly ovidius, cicero, martialis, catullus), if there was a noun inflected in the greek way, it would simply be included in the glossary with translation.

There were no Greek courses in my school either.

[Jetboy]

Yeah, most texts I've seen just gloss it as "Greek Accusative" or some such. Though I do have one Ovid reader that includes the stories of Thisbe, Eurydice, and Penelope, but when each of their names first comes up, the gloss refers the reader to the other two for Greek case endings, where one finds the same note. But between the three it's not too hard to figure out. On the other hand, my Latin dictionary's grammatical charts at the front include a spread on Latin treatment of Greek nouns, so even before I learned Greek I probably could have managed to avoid entirely mangling it.

[Drydic]

Yeah, most texts I've seen just gloss it as "Greek Accusative" or some such. Though I do have one Ovid reader that includes the stories of Thisbe, Eurydice, and Penelope, but when each of their names first comes up, the gloss refers the reader to the other two for Greek case endings, where one finds the same note. But between the three it's not too hard to figure out. On the other hand, my Latin dictionary's grammatical charts at the front include a spread on Latin treatment of Greek nouns, so even before I learned Greek I probably could have managed to avoid entirely mangling it.

I really, really wish I still had a copy of that story. It was totally awesome and random. After all, who doesn't want to read a story where the high priest of Apollo slaps the oracle at Delphi for going crazy wacko, references the wizard from the Wizard of Oz and manages to plagiarize the swamp castle bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail?