Posted on 09/28/2020 10:52:45 AM PDT by nickcarraway
An Irish tourist has been accused of vandalizing Rome's Colosseum after security staff spotted him allegedly carving his initials into the ancient Italian structure.
The Carabinieri police said the 32-year-old man was caught by the Colosseum's private security on Monday and immediately reported to officers.
The man's two initials, about 6 centimeters (2 inches) high, were said to have been carved with a metal point on a pillar of the first floor of the 2,000-year-old monument.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
In WW2 this could have been a drunk GI but they were kept away from these places and, sober, they knew better. Now it is sad to see ugly tourists but nice to see that they aren’t OUR tourists!
And yet ancient graffiti in places like Pompeii are cherished and preserved.
Have you seen the Rijksmuseum Flash Mob from a few years back?
I grew up hearing the Italian pronunciation and still prefer that...but the linguists appear to know how the language was pronounced in Caesar's time.
Thanks nickcarraway.
I carved my initials into a maple tree near our family cemetery plot when I was 12 (1964). I was there recently and they are faded but still visible.
That certainly is what is currently taught about classical Latin pronunciation (i.e., v having w sound). As I understand it, the “evidence” for that is primarily how Latin words were phonetically written in the Greek alphabet at the time. IIRC, the Greek equivalent of “ou” (as in “oui, madame”) was often used. With all that said, I must admit that I’m somewhat skeptical. Considering that the hard Vee pronunciation exists in literally ALL the Romance and Romance-influenced languages, it boggles the mind to think that the W sound involved into a hard V independently. What are the odds of any letter changing pronunciation over time? Pretty damned low, right? Maybe 10% or less over 500 years? Now, so what are chances that Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Romanian and probably a few others, all simultaneously and independently took on this different pronunciation? Seems like 1 in a million kinda proposition to me. If V did have the W sound, my guess is that it lost it by around 100 A.D. when Latin had really spread as the empire reached its greatest extent under Hadrian & Trajan.
This has only been going on for 2,000 years.
As in Pompeii where even graffiti is now historical.
At old Fort Washington in Maryland, 19th century soldiers carved their initials on the stone walls and the year they did it.
“What are the odds of any letter changing pronunciation over time? Pretty damned low, right?”
Knight vs cniht
I touched the rosetta stone in 85, I was stunned it was not behind some barrier, the guard told me I couldn’t touch it...I just had to...
One finger :)
It certainly does happen but it’s infrequent. What are the chances that people are going to start pronouncing M like N anytime soon? Probably close to zero. In the middle ages, populations were more isolated than now, so changes/divergences were more likely, but it’s not as if the phonetic pronunciation of most letters was constantly in flux. It wasn’t. If you look at French/Italian/Spanish, there are certainly different phonetic pronunciations of a few letters but there are more similarities than differences. Even after they’ve been diverging for 1500 years. It’s just a ballpark estimate, but maybe 10% evolution every 300-500 years seems about right.
Now THAT’S the way to handle a shoplifter.
barely relevant sidebar:
by Raoul McLaughlin
PDF version
.epub version
I was there (in the British Museum) in ‘91. Almost had the whole museum to myself, it was a weekday, and not tourist season*. I got locked in the gift shop when they had a bomb scare. It was not uncommon for the underground to skip stations because of security issues in those days.
*Either our British subcontractor or U.S. Navy representatives were AWOL, and we got a day off. Both events occurred at different times.
IO went back in 94 or so, it was behind plexiglass then, and I bought a book on the Bible in the British Museum.
I went back the next day and spent the whole day filming what I could find in the book and for one exhibit, they actually got the Museum boss to open it up for me to film the artifacts!
It was way kewel :)
https://www.bitchute.com/video/lCwKjz519MqE/
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
