Stargate Universe 2x17 Failure of continuety

[NorwayGeek]

I'm new to the forum but I've been a long time Stargate fan =)
I just wanted to point out that in SG1: The Fifth Race O'Neill is speaking ancient and said "I need a new location" for "New" he used Nova. In latin its Novus, which is also used in SGU now. So, either the writers have disregarded this episode or we are supposed to expect the ancients to have two words for new.

[starburst]

Not really, there are numerous words in the english language with alternate spellings/pronounciations

[Keeper]

additionally, go back a couple hundred years, and you'll find english to be differently spelled - and plenty of different meanings - from what it is today. not so much that we can't understand it, but enough that we can't just pick up a book from the time and read it in the same way as we'd pick up a new book.

jack was head-suckered by something the ancients left in MW - it's indicated, by a comparison of gate tech in MW and wherever destiny is now, that they had developed a lot over that period of time. language would no doubt have altered in some ways as well.

even assuming language had stayed identical, it's not unbelievable for 'new location' to have a different word than 'New Earth' - in fact, if i remember correctly, there's a language on earth that has 38 different words for snow, one for each type of snow. in english, snow is snow, and the type is identified if needed by additional words - but not all languages adhere to the same rules as english.

[Quetzocoetl]

Perhaps the word Nova is conjugated based on the ending of the following word?
Maybe because Mundus ends in -us, Nova has to have the -us ending as well in order to grammatically make sense in Ancient.
Kinda like in Spanish, how an adjective needs to match the gender of the noun, as well as matching up with whether it's plural or singular.
Example:
casa pequena
tigres pequenos

pequena and pequenos both mean "small" but they are altered based on the word they apply to.

[thekillman]

i'd assume Mundus is male of gender so Novus (the male nominative of nova) has to be spelled that way

[NorwayGeek]

Well, I just assumed Ancient to not have gender words since the language its based on, Latin does not, as far as I know. But then again, ancient does change over time.. Just look at Myrdos/Myros/Merlin and what not.. Didnt think about the fact that ancient could have changed from the time the repository was written to the end of the ancient race.

[Keeper]

it's also fair to say that, while in real world term ancient is formed from latin, in the stargate world latin is actually a derivative of ancient.

english, as far as i remember, is derived from germanic. judging from this website: http://www.englishclub.com/english-language-history.htm there are quite a few languages that are considered part of the 'germanic family' of languages, including according to the site, celtic.

the specific chart i'm referring to is this:



as someone who had to study irish several years ago, i can say safely that it does indeed have different names in some cases for one place. an example is county dublin, as opposed to dublin city. one is Baille A Cliath, while the other is Dubh Linn (i can't remember which is which, and my spellings are woeful - i never had much interest in it tbh.)

it's one limited example from my own knowledge

[NorwayGeek]

Oh right...still, I still think it would be strange for Ancient to have gender words and Latin, based on Ancient... not to. :/ Posted a voicemail to the Gateworld podcast yesterday, will be interesting to see what Darren and David has to say

[Keeper]

i won't pretend to have any understanding of changes in grammatical rules, but i do know english and irish languages have seperate ones. as a result, at least one has to have changed - quite significantly - from the germanic roots, assuming that link is correct.



it's important to remember 3 other things of course:

1) latin, on-screen, belongs to a different culture from the ancients. a culture that never felt a need to have gender words. maybe not a satisfactory explanation, however english and irish are seperate cultures, as is german, so it can make enough sense.

2. daniel's translation of 'nova' to mean 'new' was an estimate, at a time when the ancient language was understood less on-screen and developed less by the writers. the exact meaning could be a related word, which could have - in the context - been misunderstood as new.

3. dramatic effect. nova munda doesn't have the same ring to it, nova mundus just seems a little... inconsistent - doesn't quite roll off the tounge.



of course, you're not wrong to be curious about it. just that i personally think you're reading too much into it

[thekillman]

ok what do you guys mean with "Latin doesn't have gender words"? it does have gender words, plenty of them. they just don't use, what is the english word, prefixes?


we say "an apple" but in latin it's just apple. "i eat apple" where the noun apple contains all the information needed to properly translate. including gender and time

[Keeper]

ok what do you guys mean with "Latin doesn't have gender words"? it does have gender words, plenty of them. they just don't use, what is the english word, prefixes?


we say "an apple" but in latin it's just apple. "i eat apple" where the noun apple contains all the information needed to properly translate. including gender and time

in some languages, certain words have specific genders - e.g. casa, spanish for house, is specifically a feminine word. it then modifies the spanish 'small' to be 'pequena' - whereas a masculine word would have modified it into 'pequenos.'

personally i don't know if any words in latin work like that, but if you do know of any and can give examples to the OP it might help him

[puddlejumper747]

in some languages, certain words have specific genders - e.g. casa, spanish for house, is specifically a feminine word. it then modifies the spanish 'small' to be 'pequena' - whereas a masculine word would have modified it into 'pequenos.'

personally i don't know if any words in latin work like that, but if you do know of any and can give examples to the OP it might help him

Latin words absolutely do work like that.
"Novus" is masculine, "Nova" is feminine, "Novum" is neuter.

Don't really want to teach a Latin class here, so I'll leave it at that. YES, Latin nouns are gendered; and YES, Latin adjectives (and verbs, etc.) are modified to match the gender.

[tomaso88]

everyone else cleared this up pretty well, words change over time destiny would have been ages prob 100s of thousands of years before the head sucking thing, and like others said also their are more then 1 words for certain things

[Keeper]

Latin words absolutely do work like that.
"Novus" is masculine, "Nova" is feminine, "Novum" is neuter.

Don't really want to teach a Latin class here, so I'll leave it at that. YES, Latin nouns are gendered; and YES, Latin adjectives (and verbs, etc.) are modified to match the gender.

hehe fantastic, and feel free to teach a class

clears it up great