Disputatio:Scacci

Scacci fuit pagina mensis Aprilis 2007.

LATINITAS

• +1 (inspecta1) --Alex1011 18:38, 2 Martii 2007 (UTC)

names of pieces

• rex sounds good
• regina... hmm in most romance languages the cognate of the dama (or domina?) word is dominant, and i would favour it in latin. in older chess, it was a vizier.
• afaik the rooks were never called elephants. it was the bishops who used to be called elephants in some earlier (and modern) variants of chess, especially asian. the rooks were originally supposed to be carts actually. the anology to a tower, which developed later in romance lanugages has something to do with the double meaning of an italian word, i think. so turres sounds right.
• the term bishop is purely anglo-saxon and should not be used to base the latin word. in many languages, it's a messenger or runner. in french, it's a fool or jester. and as stated earlier, it was an elephant in early variants.
• the knight is usually called simply horse in many languages. in other languages, it's the horseman, a knight or rider or similar.
• the pawns are just pawns (unique word for chess pawns), or soldiers or footsoldiers in most languages

that's just my take on things thru my international experience. of course the latin texts about chess may tell a different history of the piece names unique to the latin language.

Also, i dont know why, but scachi sounds somehow more accurate to me than scacci. i am no expert in latin, so maybe it's just an uneducated personal preference or whim.

--142.166.97.61 09:47 sep 24, 2004 (UTC) (Sonjaaa from EN Wikipedia)

Cf. also [1] which lists re¯x, re¯gi¯na, turris, eques, cursor, pedes for the pieces with interesting stuff about the sources of the names in different languages.

(BTW, that page also says "A Latin manuscript preserved in the Einsiedeln Monastery in Switzerland (997 AD) contains the first recorded mention of the chess queen (regina)." It doesn't name it but that's Versus de Scachis.) —Myces Tiberinus 13:55 sep 24, 2004 (UTC)

Sonjaaa- all the terms I quoted are attested, though perhaps I'm being anglocentric in the order I list them. I maybe should make my sources clearer. As for regina vs dama, part of the point of my arrangement was to start with classicizing Latin words in bold, and the medieval technical terms in italics. I should probably make that clearer too. Iustinus 00:00 sep 25, 2004 (UTC)

If I may rekindle this old discussion: I would also like to see the sources for episcopus, cursor and turris, none of which occur in the medieval Latin texts quoted in the article, nor in any other Latin text I have been able to find with Google. Without sources Episcopus (scacci) should be moved to Alfinus which is well attested, and Turris (scacci) to Rochus, which is well attested too. --Fabullus 12:51, 11 Septembris 2008 (UTC)

I think the pieces themselves have changed over time and also were different in different countries. The current terms are the appropriate ones for the chess pieces actually displayed in the article. The episcopus piece is indeed a bishop not a fool. The turris is indeed a tower. For attestations Morgan gives

.game castle or rook (in chess) / turris [Capellanus]; rochus+ (Helf.)
.game bishop (chess) / alfînus+ [Latham]; cursor [Capellanus]; episcopus cornûtus [Latham] (HELF.)
.game bishop (chess) satelles, signifer (Lev.)

The variety of attestations reflects different cultures and the actual appearance of the pieces in those cultures before the modern standardization. In this case, the articles are about modern international chess whose pieces and their represenations are standardized. Thus the bishop is actually a bishiop and the rook is actually a tower. Although many languages such as english preserve archaic names for those pieces, and preserving archaic names would arguably be appropriate for us, given that the pieces have received many attested latin names through the ages, we might as well pick out the one that actually does describe the modern appearance. The article already lists all the attested names, including archaic and modern, so I don't think a change is necessary.--Rafaelgarcia 13:52, 11 Septembris 2008 (UTC)

Fabullus: for the "Pure Latin" names I mostly went with the forms in Carruther's Aliciae per Speculum Transitus (though I did so from memory). --Iustinus 05:06, 16 Septembris 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree with you, Fabulle, all the names here should have cites, but I also agree with Rafael that the names represented are appropriate to the modern standard of international chess. Would you still promote a change if the names listed were all attested?--Ioscius ^(disp) 05:43, 16 Septembris 2008 (UTC)

I share Sonjaaa's concern (four years ago!) that the Latin names have been chosen from an anglophone perspective. (Juntinus' 'source' rather confirms this suspicion). 'Turris' appears international enough, although I would still like to see a source, but 'episcopus' is only used in English and, if I am not mistaken, Portuguese. 'Cursor' would be agreeable to speakers of many more languages, including my own, but again I would like to see a source. Don't worry, I am not going to do anything with the page; I only indicate my wish, which you, chess fanatics, may be in a better position to fulfill than myself! --Fabullus 06:04, 16 Septembris 2008 (UTC)

When I first wrote this article, waaay back when, I had a very good idea of which names were attested in which sources. Unfortunately in that era sourcing was not so common, and the <ref> command hadn't even been implemented, so I never wrote it down. Naturally now I've forgotten all this information, and wish I'd somehow recorded it in the first place! --Iustinus 17:15, 17 Septembris 2008 (UTC)

IN ENGLISH: International wiki chess aid

Hi everybody in the World interesting in chess and wikipedia.

This is an international chess aid new for making chess boards.

1. English speakers wikipedist had been made a template for displaying chess boards easily at [2]. This template uses images from english wikipedia. They are using it in a lot of articles.
2. The images used by this template had been copied to wikimedia.COMMONS and put it in an appropiated category: [3]
3. Then, now the template can be used in a local new template without any change (only you meaby change the template`s name and obviosly you should change the template invocation) .
4. Spanish speakers wikipedist already start to used it at [4] an others articles.
5. The template explanation is in its talk page.
6. If you want to change the image(s) is not very difficult, you only should add them to commons and change their names in the template (with out changing the already existance images, of course).
7. A large disccuss about the template, like flexibility, special applications (like board with arrows), choose board appearence, and much others questions are in the english talk (discussion) of the template.

We hope you enjoy this colaborative work an make more and more chess articles in every wikipedia(s) you work.

Thanks.

(If there are mistakes, I am sorry, my english is not my natural language)

14th June 2005 aprox. 22:00 hrs GMT User gengiskanhg from english and spanish wikipedias.

three things

I propose, but not adamantly, moving this page to scacchi, or at least scachi. It comes into Italian with a ch, the second c being an addition, and the ch more accurately relefcts, phonologically, the Persian whence the latin word came. Should I translate en passant? How should I translate castling? I plan on adding history, and a few diagrams.--Ioshus Rocchio 07:59, 21 Ianuarii 2006 (UTC)

1. In Latin it is spelled all four ways: scacci, scacchi, scaci, and scachi [Added: actually it's also spelled with an h on the first c]. I can't recall how I settled on the spelling I did, but I'm thinking it was by googling the genitive plural (or some other case unlikely to represent romance forms) to see what had the highest frequency. In any case, I think this is one of those cases where if all the spellings are considered acceptable, and there's no overwhelming reason to change it, it may as well stay where it is.
2. Look at the Loci section. There is a TON of stuff on Chess that was written in Latin. If you want to know the names of special moves, look there. If you can't find them, I would request that you not add them for now. I'm quite sure I've seen references to castling in those sources, though I don't recall the terms used. In one modern lexicon I saw adrochare, which is a pretty good coinage, I would say. So why don't we use that. I don't recall seeing references to en passant which is, afterall, a relatively recent invention. Still it's not THAT recent (it's been around about half as long as Chess has been in Europe), so maybe we can find something. The litteral translation would be something like in praetereundo.
3. I wrote the original article. I may not be perfect, but I do generally know what I'm doing, so please be careful when making corrections. For instance:
   • Scaccorum est ludus tabularis: I phrased it this way for a reason. Names of games in Latin are typically the name of the game piece in the plural. But formally one usually says Scaccorum ludus "the game of chess pieces." So what I was going for is Scaccorum [ludus] est ludus tabularis--in Latin one normally avoids repeating unneccessary words; one ludus can stand for two.
   • Equus means "horse." The knight is normally called Eques "horseman, knight." Be careful! These are two different words.

--Iustinus 19:20, 21 Ianuarii 2006 (UTC)

1. • You blindly replaced scacci with scachi, even in the sentence "Nomen quod est "scacci" diversis orthographiis scribitur, praesertim scāchi, scacchi et scāci", where it especially doesn't make sense to do so. Please be careful. --Iustinus 19:49, 21

Ianuarii 2006 (UTC)

What does this mean? "Pugnare simul defendere necesse est, et motibus omnibus militibus uti efficienter"? I take it to mean "It is necessary to attack and defend at the same time, and make efficient use of the moves of all the pieces", but I am not certain. --Iustinus 21:39, 21 Ianuarii 2006 (UTC)

diagram

I have copied the template {{scaccarium}}, Iustine, so we can make diagrams. Some marvelous individual copied everything we need into commons.--Ioshus ^(disp) 22:11, 20 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

Here's an example of code:

{{scaccarium|=
| tright
| 
|= 

8 |  |  |kd|rd|  |  |  |  |=
7 |  |  |kl|  |  |  |  |  |=
6 |  |  |  |  |xx|xx|xx|  |=
5 |  |  |  |  |xx|kl|xx|  |=
4 |  |kl|  |  |xx|xx|xx|  |=
3 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |=
2 |  |  |kl|  |  |  |  |  |=
1 |  |  |  |  |  |rl|kl|  |=
   a  b  c  d  e  f  g  h  

| Motus regis

(Then just close out the formula with 2 }s.)

which gives:

Motus regis

--Ioshus ^(disp) 22:17, 20 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

White has too many kings, methinks. =:o IacobusAmor 04:32, 21 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

What now, Iaobe?!--Ioshus ^(disp) 06:28, 21 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

Agedum, Iacobe, haven't you ever heard of "pawn promotion"? ;) --Iustinus 07:01, 21 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

Ah! Ah! Regibus me interimitis! IacobusAmor 14:16, 21 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the worst part isn't the multiple kings, it's the black king and white king up on top, that are putting each other in check. That is... very difficult to accomplish ;) --Iustinus 17:22, 21 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

notation

Do we have records of chess notation in latin? I have introduced the english system (which even the russians use), so that we can have a clear consensus on notation of future diagrams. I'mm willing to be flexible, but right now my instinct says go with international standard.--Ioshus ^(disp) 18:48, 21 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

None that I know of, so you're probably right. But is there a reason you removed the italics from the "special" names of the pieces? --Iustinus 20:19, 21 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

No good reason, other than that I was copy/pasting by hand and by mouse and lost track of where to put what.--Ioshus ^(disp) 20:21, 21 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

But now that you mention it, in terms of significance, what was the difference between the italics and the parentheses?--Ioshus ^(disp) 20:24, 21 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

The ones in parentheses were names that although they are real, classical Latin words, do not correspond with the usual, modern terminology. In some cases it's a judgement call, e.g. a rook could be considered either a tower or an elephant, but to my mind the basic form of a rook is a tower, and furthermore Carruthers, our most modern source, uses Turris. --Iustinus 20:31, 21 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

It looks like you also cut out the word fercia entirely (which makes me worry some more names might have been dropped, but I haven't checked closely yet). About fercia we may want to add some more details, because it has an interesting history. Basically, in the original shatranj, the equivalent of the Queen was called Fers, which means "vizier." The word was borrowed in Medieval Latin as fercia or ferzia, but as you know, the image of the Queen quickly replaced that of Vizier. The word fercia did continue for a while though, especially as a term for a Pawn promoted to Queen: some medieval sources explicitly say that this is to avoid the polygamist image of having multiple queens! --Iustinus 20:38, 21 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

Aha, it even says that, immediately above... Right...--Ioshus ^(disp) 23:34, 21 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

Wait... what? --Iustinus 01:49, 22 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

Nothing, just I asked what the difference was between parentheses and italics, but I didn't realize it said exactly what the parentheses and italics were for immediately above the names for the pieces...

As for all this, you want to handle the history part? You have better sources and a better general knowledge already (that's cool by the way about the polygamy situation!), in my estimation, but I have plenty of modern sources on theory.

Plus we need to decide what to do with the "fontes latini" as they are so called. We should certainly footnote ones that mention the specific names of the pieces. So for instance, if any of those fontes use amazon in them, amazon in the names for the queen should have a <ref> style link to that font. But the other part of me wants to distinguish between those, and fontes for history and theory. What do you think?--Ioshus ^(disp) 14:04, 22 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

Ok, bad example, since none of those fontes say amazon in them, but you get the point...--Ioshus ^(disp) 14:13, 22 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately my knowledge of this stuff has faded since I wrote this article. I wish it were still fresh in my mind, because I had a lot of cool stuff. But you are right, we really should footnote attestations. In many cases when I quoted a source, I deliberately chose a section that listed names of pieces, so at least some of the work is already done. BTW, another interesting thing about the fercia: originally the queen could only move one square diagonally, and it took pieces by hopping over them. Sound familliar? This is exactly how a checker moves! This is why checkers is called ludus damarum or dominarum, and apparently in English it was even sometimes called "The game of Ferzes"! --Iustinus 05:16, 23 Decembris 2006 (UTC)

"In latin, verbs usually come last in the sentence"

That statement has the trick of being simultaneously (1) true and (2) st00pid. Cave tiro! IacobusAmor 02:15, 7 Aprilis 2007 (UTC)

miles hostiles

"Miles hostiles" videtur error : miles est in singulari, hostiles in plurali. Scribamus "milites hostiles ? --Marc mage 09:05, 26 Aprilis 2007 (UTC)

regem hostilem ad incitas redigatur

in via passiva , debet scribi "rex hostilis ad incitas redigatur" vel in via agendi " regem hostilem ad incitas redigat" --Marc mage 09:20, 26 Aprilis 2007 (UTC)

Aut forsitan "Ut regem hostilem ad incitas motilitas redigatur uti" --Roch01A 04:41, 4 Decembris 2008 (UTC)

Question

The title is Scacci, but the article begins "Scaccorum est ludus tabularis artis, ingenii, et stratagematis." Why? ("Of the chesses, there's a table game of art, skill, and strategy"?) IacobusAmor 17:47, 3 Maii 2008 (UTC)

Scaccus is the name of "the king" in chess, "scacci" therefore means "kings" and "ludus scaccorum" means "the game of kings". Since one does indeed expect the page to begin with the lemma the same as the page title, I changed it to read "scacci sive ludus scaccorum est ludus..." meaning "Kings or the game of kings is a table game of art, creativity and strategy."--Rafaelgarcia 19:59, 3 Maii 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the pieces themselves are called scacchi. And a lot of games in Latin are titled with the genitive plural of the pieces, cf ludus damarum ludus alearum, etc. --Ioscius ^(disp) 18:45, 4 Decembris 2008 (UTC)

Ludi historia

"Chess has existed in various forms for thousands of years. The earliest ancestor of the present game is thought to be the ancient Hindu game of Chaturanga, which dates to around 2,500 B.C. It was a game of battle strategy with pieces representing kings, elephants, chariots[,] and infantry."—Wall Street Journal, 5 May 2008, p. W4. But en: says: "Chess originated in India, where its early form in the 6th century was chaturanga, which translates as 'four divisions of the military'—infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariots, represented respectively by pawn, knight, bishop, and rook." So which is it? 1400 years ago (en)? or 4500 years ago (WSJ)? And who will add a history section to our article? IacobusAmor 17:47, 3 Maii 2008 (UTC)

If it helps with the numbers any, according to en: Sanskrit (from which the word 'chaturanga' derives) is only attested back to 1500 BC; 2500 BC is apparently earlier than the earliest recorded Indo-European writings, and before anything "Hindu" existed. 2500 BC appears to be the era of the Indus Valley Civilization, and it looks like we don't even know what language they spoke. I don't know if *archaeological* remnants of chess from that era exist, but without a linguistic description (or several detailed diagrams...) even any such might be of any board game. —Mucius Tever 10:40, 4 Maii 2008 (UTC)

Aficionados may want to know about Middleton's play en:A Game at Chess. IacobusAmor 21:05, 3 Maii 2008 (UTC)

Ablative of means

"Adrochatio in partibus regis a 0-0, reginae a 0-0-0 notatur." I think that here the "a" is wrong. Because the "0-0" is not something which is noting. Rather the player is noting "with 0-0".--Rafaelgarcia 01:43, 27 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Forte, at sentio vocabulum "cum" addendum esse ad adverbium modi (v. g."magna cum laude") potius quam ad signum quoddam. --Roch01A 03:55, 27 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)

Usus "cum" autem hic est inusitatus Latine, nisi inter duo vocabula casu ablativo. Casus ablativus sufficit ad instrumentum indicandum. --Rafaelgarcia 04:04, 27 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)