16
votes
Marsupial blackletter difficulty
The word is reservaculum, "something used to keep things in", from reservo "keep (back)". I believe this word is used to describe the pouch of marsupials in similar texts from that period. Praesumably,...
- 19.8k
10
votes
Latin transliteration of Ιησούς
The consistency of Greek spelling tends to hide the sound changes that happened within the language. Greek originally(*) had three different "o-like" sounds, written ο, ω, ου. Since they had only two "...
- 65.1k
10
votes
Why was Z used in digraphs?
Note that the letter Z has been associated with affricate sounds like [ts] for a very long time.
Ancient use of "Z" for affricate sounds
Zeta in Classical Attic Greek is thought to have ...
- 27.3k
9
votes
Accepted
Why was Z used in digraphs?
Archaic and Classical Latin
First of all, the letter Z has never been common in Archaic and Classical Latin, for a number of reasons, primarily because there was no such phoneme (see more on ...
- 11.6k
8
votes
Marsupial blackletter difficulty
I can answer the second part, at least. That's a tilde ĩ, not a macron ī, and it's one of the most common scribal abbreviations, representing a following N or M. So anĩal, tẽpore, oblatũ = animal, ...
- 65.1k
8
votes
How to transliterate 中文 in Mandarin pronunciation to Latin?
Chinese contains many sounds without Latin equivalents. These include (Pinyin) zh and ng, and the tones. So it comes down to how you'll approximate those.
zh is /ʈʂ/, a retroflex affricate. Latin ...
- 65.1k
7
votes
Accepted
When transliterating from Latin to Greek, what kind of rho is used?
First, a pretty banal orthographic point. In Greek, only initial rho has a breathing mark, and there are only two recorded words (ῤάρος and its diminutive ῤάριον) that use a smooth breathing. Though ...
- 39.5k
5
votes
How to transliterate 中文 in Mandarin pronunciation to Latin?
Actually zhong wen isn't the closest in English. Though that is the official transliteration, Pinyin wasn't created solely from English pronunciation. In English, it would be something like "jong ...
cmw♦
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5
votes
Accepted
Quintilian's name in Ancient Greek
For a Classical example, threre's this dedicatory inscription from the sanctuary in Olympia, from the second century BCE (perhaps 143 or 142):
Δάμων Νικάνδρος Μακεδὼν ἀπὸ
Θεσσαλονίκης Κόιντον ...
- 19.3k
5
votes
What is the proper Greek title for the Moriae Encomium of Erasmus?
As far as I know, Μωρίᾱς Ἐγκώμιον is correct.
This would be standard Attic Greek for "Encomium [praise-ode] of Folly".
Neither Greek nor Latin had a letter for the sound [ŋ] (which English ...
- 65.1k
5
votes
Accepted
Why choose σ versus σσ in Hebrew loans?
Note: this answer is pure speculation (or original research, if you're feeling generous), not backed up by any scholarly references.
Neither Varro nor I marked vowel length in our Hebrew and Aramaic ...
- 65.1k
5
votes
Accepted
When were /k/ and /q/ first distinguished in the Greek or Latin alphabet?
There are not many Latin-text sources for Phoenician-proper, only for its descendant/close relative Punic, the language of Carthage which was settled by Phoenician colonists from Tyre
Luckily there ...
- 66
4
votes
Identifying a type of dog transliterated from Latin to Hebrew
-ico- is a regular suffix forming an adjective from a noun.
mĕlicus melodious. mĕlicae sonores, tuneful sounds (Lucretius)
More promising is
mēles, also mēlis, -is f. also mælis, a badger or pine ...
- 8,643
4
votes
Do barbarians have nomina?
The Italian Wikipedia page on Roman onomastics states, without references though,
Former auxiliary soldiers and other categories of people that earned the Roman citizenship, could and often would ...
- 4,438
4
votes
Do barbarians have nomina?
I think you answered this question yourself with the humble word "also" in the second sentence. "Nomen" has two meanings in Latin, "name" and a particular part of a Roman tripartite name. Even ...
- 17.6k
4
votes
Why was Z used in digraphs?
In Byzantine and Modern Greek τζ is used for /dʒ/ and τσ for /tʃ/ in foreign words, in MG especially in loans from Turkish, e.g. τζαμί < T. cami /dʒami/ “mosque”, and τσάι for çay /tʃaj/ “tea”. ...
- 17.6k
4
votes
Accepted
M N U V confusion in textura
It says Vn~, so vn with a general mark of abbreviation. This mark normally stands for -de if it is written above an -n at the end of a word (provided that -de fits), so it must be unde here, "...
- 19.8k
4
votes
Is there a Latin standard for transliterating Russian?
I'm sure there is some system - or, rather, convention - of transliterating Russian names into Latin. I will do more research over the weekend.
Examples of famous Russian classical scholars with ...
- 11.6k
4
votes
How to transliterate 中文 in Mandarin pronunciation to Latin?
I think cmw's answer above is on the right track, but Draconis is right about the -ong, so I would consider ZVNGVEN the closest that can be expressed in Latin.
Of course, this is based on the modern ...
- 4,678
3
votes
Accepted
Latin transliteration of Ιησούς
Looking back at this, it seems like a simpler answer might be more appropriate, but my other one's been seen enough I don't want to completely gut it.
Basically, every sound in "Iēsūs" exists in both ...
- 65.1k
3
votes
Is there a Latin standard for transliterating Russian?
We discussed this question in the “History of science” forum:
https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/5329/why-saytzeff-and-zaitsev-rules-are-named-differently/5342#5342
where I argued that “there is ...
- 17.6k
3
votes
Why choose σ versus σσ in Hebrew loans?
I think that TKR's remark on the occasional spellings with υ may also be relevant to the matter. Note that in Ἰησοῦς with the single σ, the the ש is in the vicinity of a rounded vowel.
Also ...
- 4,678
2
votes
What is the proper Greek title for the Moriae Encomium of Erasmus?
It is not a typo.
It's just that neither Greek nor English spelling is phonetically perfectly accurate, and they have chosen a different way to represent a sound that has no separate letter.
...
- 111k
2
votes
Quintilian's name in Ancient Greek
Luke 2:2 Greek genitive, Latin ablative absolutes.
αὕτη ἀπογραφὴ πρώτη ἐγένετο ἡγεμονεύοντος τῆς Συρίας Κυρηνίου / Κυρείνου (h)
2 haec descriptio prima facta est praeside Syriae Cyrino
King James ...
- 8,643
2
votes
Accepted
Pronunciation of Jehovæ
If you wanted to pronounce it like:
English scientific or legal Latin, it would be pronounced "jah-HOE-vee"
If you wanted to give it an Ecclesiastical or modern-Roman
pronunciation, it would be ...
- 4,448
1
vote
Encoding abbreviated 'quod' in Unicode
Recently the needed glyph has became available in the JuniusX font as a stylistic variant of U+0111 LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH STROKE (cv06). As the text in question does not contain U+0111 in its ...
1
vote
Encoding abbreviated 'quod' in Unicode
I think you're asking for a Unicode glyph to represent the flourished d in the abbreviation.
The Unicode standard doesn't have one.
However, you might be able to approximate with Latin Small Letter D ...
- 448
1
vote
Is there a Latin standard for transliterating Russian?
To the primary question, "Is there a standard for transliterating Russian words?", I'm pretty sure the answer is no. After all, who would make such a standard?
So, the real question is how to ...
- 4,678
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