Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2024 April 30

= April 30 =

Latin alphabet
Why Bulgarian has not switched to Latin alphabet like Romanian did in 1860, and why Serbian can also be written in Latin alphabet in addition to Cyrillic, but Macedonian cannot? --40bus (talk) 21:28, 30 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty sure that it's been explained before that the basic correlation is with religion: Predominantly Catholic and/or Protestant in population means a strong likelihood of being written with the Latin alphabet, while predominantly Eastern Orthodox means a strong likelihood of being written with the Greek or Cyrillic alphabets (and of course, in the 19th century and earlier, predominantly Muslim meant a strong likelihood of being written with the Arabic alphabet). A deliberate decision was made to switch Romanian from Cyrillic to Latin to affiliate Romanian with French and the other Romance languages (and also because many Romanians disliked Russia).  Bulgarian had no such reasons to shift.  Serbo-Croatian was spoken by large numbers of both Catholics and Orthodox, so basically from the beginning of its significant use as a literary language, it was written in both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets.  For complicated and specific reasons, the Latin alphabet had more use in Serbia than the Cyrillic alphabet had in Croatia.  Macedonian (which was codified a century after Serbo-Croatian) was unaffected by this... AnonMoos (talk) 23:05, 30 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Additionally, the Early Cyrillic alphabet was devised in Bulgaria in the 9th-century, so there's probably an element of national pride involved in its retention there. Alansplodge (talk) 12:00, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Sunless Sea - Original Game Soundtrack
Am i correct in assuming that the title of track 3, 4, 5, 10, 15 and 20 is Latin? Trade (talk) 22:53, 30 April 2024 (UTC)


 * "Elegiac" and "Benthic" are derived from Greek through Latin, but do not have the endings to be actual Latin words. And "Zombius" is not traditional Latin. [[Image:SFriendly.gif|20px]] -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:13, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Though it's implied in your answer, I think it's worth making explicit for OP that elegiac and benthic are English words. GalacticShoe (talk) 06:54, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Only #20, Undulata, is proper Latin. Other titles that look like Latin are dog Latin. The first word of #15, Vox, is a good Latin word, but while the term Zombius by itself could be a Latin adjective formed from a proper noun, the combination should then have been Vox Zombia, since vox is a feminine noun. --Lambiam 06:23, 1 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Out of interest, it seems likely that the term "Sunless Sea" is taken from Kubla Khan, a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1797:
 * In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
 * A stately pleasure-dome decree:
 * Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
 * Through caverns measureless to man
 * Down to a sunless sea.
 * Alansplodge (talk) 11:49, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * You are correct. Sunless Sea and its originating/companion game Fallen London are set in an alternative version of Victorian London, and thus make the occasional literary reference apt for the time. GalacticShoe (talk) 16:04, 1 May 2024 (UTC)