Disputatio:Sambahsa-mundialect

Antiqua et nova verba

Amice: You've changed comprehensibilis to intelligibilis, a word that seems to be quite rare, as it's in only one of three dictionaries I consulted (it's not in the biggest, L&S). The ordinary Classical Latin word for the idea of English 'intelligible' seems to be comprehensibilis (as used by Cicero). Similarly, you've used the word similaritas, which isn't in any of those three dictionaries, and has the appearance of being a back-formation from modern languages. There's of course nothing unnatural about back-formations, but they may well bother readers & writers who consult Vicipaedia to strengthen their grasp of Classical Latin. Verb. sap. IacobusAmor 17:28, 26 Octobris 2007 (UTC)

Interestingly...someone completely rewrote an article of mine recently, claiming to make it "intelligibilius scripta"...--Ioscius ^(disp) 17:46, 26 Octobris 2007 (UTC)

That points up a problem with vocabulary in any foreign language: it's hard for nonnative speakers to appreciate the sorts of textual environments to which native speakers typically restrict many words. Since the earliest author my dictionary cites for intelligibilis is Pliny, Cicero may never have encountered the word, and so, to mark its oddity, he may have wanted to put it inside scare quotes (if he'd known about scare quotes). Similaritas isn't in any of the three consulted dictionaries, so something must be wrong with it, from a Classical viewpoint: either it didn't exist then, or it was so rare as to be negligible. ¶ I'm currently compiling a list of technici basipilae termini, and it's a fair guess that Cicero wouldn't have understood many of the Latin versions; indeed, many native speakers of English who don't know the game would probably have trouble guessing at the particularly pertinent meanings of chopper, closer, heat, ERA (not the Equal Rights Amendment!), and two-hopper, or of even less arcane terms, like a ground-rule double, the infield-fly rule, and the bullpen. IacobusAmor 18:49, 26 Octobris 2007 (UTC)