Novae, Bulgaria Bronze Segmentata?

[MeinPanzer]

I lost the link, but last year there was a commission of international linguists trying to find out which language by structure is best suited for scientific communication, and, amazingly, German was the winner. One of the reasons was that German can easily produce simply understandable words by using known words and setting them together. e.g.
Rhein-Main-Donau-Dampfschiffahrtskapitänsmützenabzeichenherstellerzulieferbetrieb.
Which would be in English something like:
Company delivering materials to a company making hat signs for captains working for the Rhine-Main-Danube steam ship company

Other interesting facts:

[url:3i1oydlo]http://www.goethe.de/kue/lit/dos/dds/en146304.htm[/url]

The article also gives a small insight in the German debate about the importance of German as scientific language...

And to tie this back into Classical history, this is exactly the reason that so many Romans learned to write and read in Greek: because, like German, it was very well suited to creating compound words which could then easily be used to discuss unusual or abstract topics. Anybody who has studied both German and Greek can appreciate opening a technical treatise totally foreign to the reader and being able to at least roughly translate many technical terms.

[Doc]

You cannot begin to tell me that Italian is not an equally discriptive language to German. Please, it is well known how precise and deliberate the Italian language can be.
Christian you mentioned something about simplicity "Dampfschiffahrtskapitänsmützenabzeichenherstellerzulieferbetrieb"? You have got to be joking. Unless someone studies a Germanic language and knows its structure, that though looks like someone threw up the alphabet (no offense). At least in Italian, French, Spanish, etc. words are broken down in smaller segments. Granted it may take more words to say but it is "clean" when finished.

Do not get the wrong idea since I will be studying German shortly since it is one of my favorite languages. I have wanted to study it since highschool but never had the chance.

[Magnus]

Anyone have anything else to add about Bronze segmentata? 8)

[MeinPanzer]

You cannot begin to tell me that Italian is not an equally discriptive language to German. Please, it is well known how precise and deliberate the Italian language can be.

Many scholars who speak many romance languages, including Italian, attest to German's precision as a language. No one is saying that romance languages or English are not precise, as they certainly can be, but German, because of its structure and its propensity for forming compound words, is widely recognized as being moreso.

Christian you mentioned something about simplicity "Dampfschiffahrtskapitänsmützenabzeichenherstellerzulieferbetrieb"? You have got to be joking. Unless someone studies a Germanic language and knows its structure, that though looks like someone threw up the alphabet (no offense). At least in Italian, French, Spanish, etc. words are broken down in smaller segments. Granted it may take more words to say but it is "clean" when finished.

The whole point is that if a person is equally versed in, say, Italian and German, writing a scientific or technical treatise would likely be more precise in German - not necessarily simpler. Christian's example is an extreme one, but it proves the point that concepts or things that other languages often need to use phrases to refer to, German can usually use a single, precise word. As such, while you may not consider large compound words to be "clean," many people do, and did, including the Greeks. There is a reason that in many scientific disciplines English and other languages have borrowed numerous terms from German.

[caiusbeerquitius]

You have got to be joking.

Happens from time to time.
The example is easily understood even by kids (in fact it is a word popular among elementary school kids, which make ever new variations of it. You can put it to extreme. ;-) ) ) since all the single components are very simple and commonly known words. Nonetheless it is very precise and leaves no room for misunderstanding. A better example would be "Geschichtswissenschaften", of course, or others like: Bierkrug, Kindergarten, Rucksack, Bergstiefel, Arbeitsanzug, Steckdose, Dachgepäckträger, Übersetzungsgetriebe.... etc. p.p.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Jurgen,

I had misunderstood what you were referring to. No problem.


Byron,

It is the video games. You know as well as I do that they are now building computers primarily for games while word processing and applications are taking the back seat.

No kidding... :roll:

"the worldwide publishing industry is dominated by the Germans, who own a majority of large publishing houses,"
Hmmm, sounds like a monopoly to me :lol:

Anyway, getting back to bronze segs..... :roll:

[Doc]

Well, No-one said that German was not precise and it it true that many technical papers are written in German. As I said, in the US, German was once required for Chemistry degrees.

Christian, it may be simple even for children so long as they are brought up in Germany. Every person I have spoken to that has tried to learn German including the chairman of my department has said the German is very difficult because of this merging of words into one phrase, and he is German. Well, I am looking foward to this challenge. Like I said, I always wanted to learn it. Another issue is that giant words or phrases of that nature are difficult to pronounce unless you know components of that phrase. In Italian, we do not have words or phrases that are enormous like that and thus lend themselves to easier decipher.

Anyway, this has gone beyond the brass seggie and we should return to the actual topic.
I guess Matt, that unless someone has more concrete info on the brass seggie, there really is not much more to say. If this is what you were trying to hint at, I agree with you.

[Matt Lukes]

Hello- there've been several gentle prods to get back on subject... anyone notice? LOL

[Magnus]

Apparently not LOL. Let's try this:

Keep the discussion on bronze segmentata not language please!!!

D D

[Doc]

Matt,

I think that I made the point on the post before yours.

[Magnus]

Yeah, after you posted more language stuff lol. But thanks for getting things back on track.

[Matt Lukes]

Matt,

I think that I made the point on the post before yours.

I was referring to mine and Magnus' suggestions to get back on topic before that.

[Doc]

Matt,

The other Matt.

[Caratacus]

so bronze will always be worth more than brass.

Bronze is simply produced by admixture of copper and tin - both metals being easy to obtain (relatively speaking) in the ancient world. Both metals are somewhat unreactive, consequently they can be extracted from their ores without much difficulty. Brass, however, is a different kettle of fish. Zinc (the other alloying element) is much more reactive and therefore much harder to produce. As a 'free' metal it wasn't known until the Middle Ages. The Roman method of production was called the cementation process. It was a batch method and probably failed as many times as it worked as it depended on fairly precise temperature control - which was presumably achieved through looking at the colour of the pot in which the reaction was taking place (in the same way that a blacksmith judges the temperature of the iron from the colour of the hot metal). The Romans called the resulting alloy 'oricalcum' and it was also used for the lower denomination coinage. It certainly looked pretty. Some of the armour fittings that came from Chesterholm (Vindolanda) emerged a bright golden colour despite being underground for nigh on 2,000 years! Given this, I would certainly not agree that bronze was worth more to the ancients than brass.

A feature of the occurrence of fitments from lorica segmentata armour is that in many cases it has the appearence of being wrenched from the armour - i.e. it was being recovered for recycling. Many of the hoards (including the Corbridge one) were clearly collections of scrap metal. That in and of itself says a lot about the value of the metal.

Doc: I know what you mean about having to do German as an undergraduate student. We had two terms of this and then had an 'examination' into which we could take a dictionary. The whole thing was a farce and an exercise in how quickly you could look everything up. We were told that we couldn't do research unless we had the 'qualification' - which was a bit of a porky, actually. When I did my Ph.D. nearly all my papers were in - you guessed it - German and Swiss German at that! I don't think that German is the best scientific language at all. IMO that would be English, which is much more inventive and has a much greater nuance and subtlety of meaning.

BTW, how did the experiments with the Roman glue go?

Caratacus
(Dr. Mike Thomas)

[Matt Lukes]

Even though there's 34x more zinc than tin available? If the amounts were closer I could see ease of refinement and such being relevant, but I'd have thought that sheer lack of abundance in relation would make tin more costly regardless of it being less-easy to make brass by cementation...