I am better than CICERO

Latin Learning Latin
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1/[That’s right. You heard right. Now I don’t claim to be more fluent in latin than he, certainly not nowadays, though there were one time I could pretty much speak.

I am sick of people saying ooh I can understand this ooh could you have spoken with the romans could you have assimilated yourself son. Well they is gone. Die sind schon ausgegangen. The deal is, how well can you write. Not how much can you read, not ooh I can smell roman bread from their burned down excavated house ooh I am the best at latin in cambridge. You’d have to be a mighty fine loser to think that you have really achieved something in such a case. Actually I am lying. The deal also is, why would people care about the writings of a welsh loser. Das richtige Antwort ist, no one does! That’s why your mother hasn’t been studying my works in her old girls’ school, because I am not a roman. Ich ask you this, if a boy learn french who be not french and write a genuinely book in said tongue, is he rejected? But no unless it be thousands of years old it can’t be loved. I think, come on lads, come on Diggle, how CRAPPé is Caesar? My mother can write better than he with cheap latin borrowings in english! My girl can write better than he and she’s pretty dull!

My stories are better than your latin professors’ best attempts to be original my stories are greater than the roman empire’s entire pathetic attempt at writing something meaningful. How people eat up ridiculous tas de merde about random gods and balls being thrown at 2 year olds is beyond me. Oh yes I know they don’t have LIVES. I don’t have a LIFE but I am trying not to like oooh god of thunder oooh I am scared ASIF he exist.

/pleasingly arrogant rant over] ^-1

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:unamused: ^-1

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How fluently can you speak Latin?

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The difference is Cicero’s works are all over the place but you don’t even link to expiare!

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Not very any more son, I used to be able to, but now there has been no one to talk to, no reasons wherefore to continue.

There is only one copy of Expiare and it is in the Secret Vatican Library.

I find that Latin does actually make one slightly antisocial, because you are above most intellectually and keep correcting them or at least thinking thereof beingve distracted from real world; annoyed by the lack of any learning whatsoever. I am enjoying ignorance and slight stupidity at the moment. Zhi is the man.

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You do know that the “folder” they put it in gets emptied daily, right?

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No one dare “empty” Expiare they are still probably trying to decipher it also the paper whereon it is written when harmed turns pink with smiley face (and deadly) electrons.

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waiting for benissimus to join in the thread… :laughing:

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Well, they have to put it someplace, you know? The Vatican does have health regulations and decency laws.

from what I hear, it’s the psychology department.

It was filed by dour clerics with frowning faces in shielded cassocks.

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I keep PM Steven and he never replies. I don’t know whether he still like me then occasionally he gives me a message. His computer is broken virus had it :frowning:

But he said “…and you are better than Cicero”

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Remember when even the Oracle of Delphi herself named Socrates as the wisest, and the philosopher still denied it?

Hybris te non congruit, Episcope.

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(atque memento: it’s the U.S.A. Thanksgiving holiday weekend.)

(this is one of the straightest straight lines…)

gull·ible: easily duped or cheated; see episcopus

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ALPHA: whether he meant it or not is irrelevant for I know it to be a fact

BETA: I know steven long while and he was in fact sincere, some of you can’t spot sincerity if it jumped up in your face and said 1/SARCASM

GAMMA: I am NOT gullible

MU: moo eat my cow

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Cicero: “Now, O conscript fathers, in support of my disputed claims of fact
I shall provide some irrelevant hearsay support.”

These arguments are so very Ciceronian it’s hard to tell them apart.

Well now, that’s Ciceronian eloquence for you, right there.
All that’s missing is the, “NYAH NYAH NYAH-NYAH NYAH!”

Are too.

Cicero: “Eat, O Catalina, my cow!”

Yes, yes; much better.

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Then why bring it up?

Anyway, my point is that language, to be understood truly and wholly, must be spoken. Otherwise one’s sense of language is inherently limited and poor. Take, for instance, the Japanese; English is taught in a fashion extremely poor on the island nation, for the curriculum is centrally focused on reading, writing, and translation only. Therefore most Japanese find it extremely difficult ever to comprehend English in any interalized sense, and often, as you may have noticed, tend to have terrible, often crippling accents in their English speech, including my fabulous Japanese teacher who over the past several years in America has slowly but surely come to unlearn many of the bad habits ingrained by her unfortunately organized education system. Few come close to the kind of fluency in English acquired by most Germans and Indians (where English is taught well). But moreover, despite how well any non-native speaker of English has been taught, he will never approach a native English speaker of comparable education and talent in either writing or oration. It is still just that person’s second language. They would have to have spoken the tongue since birth.

You can’t be better than Cicero. You aren’t Roman.

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Lucus aren’t you “flip-flopping”, giving the example of your Japanese teacher becoming fluent and then saying you must be native? If you’re saying that you have to be native, well gee talk about a billion counterexamples, Vladimir Nabokov comes to mind (and I am coincidentally “e-friends” with a native Japanese girl and she writes beautifully, better than anyone i know personally, despite both having never spoken English with native speakers and never having taken an interest in learning to speak/listen to the language beyond school. this is because she is a genius and is into reading English stuff - i’m 95% certain she only talks to me to improve her um coscriptial fluency :slight_smile: Just a counterexample)

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Well, let’s review precisely what I said:

Therefore most Japanese find it extremely difficult ever to comprehend English in any interalized sense, and often, as you may have noticed, tend to have terrible, often crippling accents in their English speech, including my fabulous Japanese teacher who over the past several years in America > has slowly but surely come to unlearn many of the bad habits ingrained by her unfortunately organized education system> .

Li-sensee has great fluency in her English, and has earned the designation of “fluent,” I will eagerly agree, for she requires no assistance at living in America. However, she lacks the ingrained sense of the language required for competant oration, speech, or poetry. Put more simply, she doesn’t quite have the ear for those things; her mind hasn’t been structured that way.

If you’re saying that you have to be native, well gee talk about a billion counterexamples, Vladimir Nabokov comes to mind

I said this:

But moreover, despite how well any non-native speaker of English has been taught, he will never approach a native English speaker of > comparable education and talent > in either writing or oration.

Vladimir Nabokov was exceptionally talented (Lolita is a personal favorite of mine), a true genious. G-n Nabokov is also a bad example because he was essentially bilingual from birth, due to his wealthy, Anglophilic family; he also spent most of his college years at Trinity, no slouches for language they. Few “non-native” English speakers receive such a lifelong education.
But look at this practically: take a reasonably creative and well-educated Saudi writer, and compare him with an equally creative and well-educated English writer, both the same age. Assuming the Saudi has only had about half a dozen years of English study, which of the two do you think will be the better writer in English? The Englishman has the inherent advantage — obviously; he knows all the 'in’s and 'out’s of his own tongue, has access to enumerable idioms and figures of speech, the precise emotional significance of which he has full understanding; he has the homefield advantage. That is justly my point.

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Let’s review what I and steven said Luce, I am better than Cicero. It takes a great also to appreciate this, which you despite your whiteoctavesque attempts are by any means not.

EDIT GO HOME LUCE you ignorant shit!

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I so wish I could care about your opinion of me … oh, how I wish ! … then I could waste my time in a stupid, childish flamewar. If only I could be arrogant and childish …

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laughs Fabulous edit.