"Let each man pass his days in that wherein his skill is greatest" Propertius Sextus
TiwazTyrsfist wrote:
Within the US, the right to fair use for the purpose of parody still holds up in the courts.
While true, were you the one that Coke came after with a fist full of lawyers, would you be able to afford to defend yourself in court? Or would you opt to just take down the image?
C'est le Gomazio à crête mordorée, dont le cri annonce le soir...
darthnice wrote:
While true, were you the one that Coke came after with a fist full of lawyers, would you be able to afford to defend yourself in court? Or would you opt to just take down the image?
Well, since the BGG admins approved this pic, I guess they know better than me. At worst, I suppose it'll just be removed from BGG (like a lot of files have been after the recent request from UK company that thou shalt not name). Furthermore I'm french, so obviously I drink wine 24/7, hence I can have the global wine lobby to back me up ...
drewdane wrote:
Thank you Weird Al
Thanks for the reminder, some great tracks come to my mind ("Eat it", "You know I'm fat", "Can you hit that bong", etc), I really have to dig in my collection & play them !
While true, were you the one that Coke came after with a fist full of lawyers, would you be able to afford to defend yourself in court?
He wouldn't have to. One call to the American Civil Liberties Union would unleash an equally potent fistful of lawyers -- publicly funded and free to the victim of the unjust lawsuit -- and an accompanying media firestorm. Coke's not that dumb.
Within the US, the right to fair use for the purpose of parody still holds up in the courts.
While true, were you the one that Coke came after with a fist full of lawyers, would you be able to afford to defend yourself in court? Or would you opt to just take down the image?
If that was me, I would take down the image, when that happens.
Appears to me that there are two ways of saying it 'right'.
"Ahg/rih/coh/lah" when pronounced phonetically as English speakers would fluently say it and "Uh/grick/uh/luh" pronounced phonetically as Latin based language speakers would fluently say.
Wow. You eurogamers sure can come of as sounding pretty snobby sometimes.
Language is a fluid thing, confined only by pretense.
Appears to me that there are two ways of saying it 'right'.
"Ahg/rih/coh/lah" when pronounced phonetically as English speakers would fluently say it and "Uh/grick/uh/luh" pronounced phonetically as Latin based language speakers would fluently say.
Wow. You eurogamers sure can come of as sounding pretty snobby sometimes.
Language is a fluid thing, confined only by pretense.
You say tomato "tow/mate/owe" we say tomato "tow/mar/toe",
Actually, the word cannot be pronounced as Agri Cola. I agree that language is a living, fluid thing and that people shouldn't try to muzzle it too much but if everybody pronounced words as they wished, it would be difficult if not impossible to guess what people are saying. For example, if you divided the word "example" into "ex" and "ample" and then pronounced it as "ex Ample" (probably referring to your ex gf's bosom or something ) it would sound odd and some people wouldn't get what you're saying. It might achieve a comic effect but it would definitely hinder normal communication. Thus "agricola" is pronounced as a single word with the stress placed on the second syllable and not as two words stressed like "Coca Cola". And before you accuse me of being a haughty Euro, I'm planning on adding a Space Hulk badge to the ones I currently have just as soon as I earn enough GG.
Another spoof you might consider is
McDominion (someone with artistic skill could make the logo)
Well, since the BGG admins approved this pic, I guess they know better than me.
Actually BGG admins have nothing to do with approving the images. those are GeekModders who can care less about copyright or trademark. While I agree this is a Parody and is somewhat protected by the courts I for one would delete the image in a nanosecond if the Coke Legal team set their sights on me cause I can't afford the kind of lawyers that you would need.
Well, since the BGG admins approved this pic, I guess they know better than me.
Actually BGG admins have nothing to do with approving the images. those are GeekModders who can care less about copyright or trademark. While I agree this is a Parody and is somewhat protected by the courts I for one would delete the image in a nanosecond if the Coke Legal team set their sights on me cause I can't afford the kind of lawyers that you would need.
yeah go ahead and promote the bad pronunciation of this title ... now nobody is going to say it right
What? That's the wrong way to pronounce it? Well that explains all the snickering at the game night, I thought it was just because my lederhosen weren't properly colour coordinated with my suspenders.
Actually, it's a Latin word. Has nothing to do with Cola as in the soft drink. Interesting tidbit from the History of Geology, a German man with the Latinized name Georgius Agricola is known as the "Father of Mineralogy". When I first heard of Agricola the (farmer) game, I asked, it that game about minerals?
Doesn't this hurt any laws or copyrights? The idea is cool, but I'd be very cautious with something like this...
Oh, The Triple C knows better than to complain about parody. Agricola would be renamed Agripepsi in an instant, and that would be the end of that PR war.
It can be if no one has any idea exactly how the words should be pronounced.
In Latin we have two cases. Classical from before around 300 A.D and Ecclesiastical from around 300-400A.D.
Classical Latin pronunciation is an educated guess at the best of times.
Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation is made fluid by the fact that it has been spoken for the last 1500 years, by a small populace.
The noun 'Agricola' predates the Ecclesiastical usage by a few hundred years. This firmly plants it in the "How the hell are we supposed to know how to properly speak this word?" category of language. And that doesn't even begin to touch on the further confusing realm of accents...
I am not advocating one way of saying it over another. Quite the contrary, I am advocating people saying it however they damned well please, and not worrying about people pontificating the 'proper' way to say it.
This is how I pronounce agricola: "Tactical Farmer".
My apologies to Roolz for going off topic. Heres a as penance. I will not further remark on ignorant people thinking they know the 'correct' way to pronounce words that likely haven't been properly pronounced in nearly two millenia.
I disagree. As much as languages are fluid, the primary purpose is communication. If I decided that I wanted to pronounce it "flippyflop", it's not going to help me to discuss the game with someone else - we'll spend the first 20 minutes working out if we are discussing the same game. In fact, I pronounced this the wrong way initally, and was corrected when I was trying to explain the game to a non-gamer, and they suddenly said "O, it's about farming? Do you mean Agricola, from the latin?". Would have assisted thier comprehension from the start had I pronounced it correctly. It actually started quite a conversation about latin pronounciation, that was very interesting and can be very helpful for modern linguistics. We should be careful here though - as it seems to be internationally held that English speakers are the worst at latin pronunciation
Also, your concept of "educated guesses" is flawed .. by that logic, something we are only 99.99% sure of, should be discarded?
I don't want to go down in this too deep (i've got technician schools, so i don't know nothing about latin), but why you tell it is a latin word when we (italians) use it everyday? I mean: if a live language have such word, why you have to search it in a dead language? Just courious about this
-edit- Ok, i lost the fact that Agricola has meaning also as a latin word. So the game title can means Farmer if we take "Agricola" as latin, or it can means Farm if we take "(Azienda) Agricola" as italian.
I think now that it has more sense in Latin, as "Azienda Agricola" is somewhat more toward industry, mechanized, organized farming.
I .. don't know! I'm sitting here mouthing different pronunciations, and I think I used to pronounce it with 5 as an extra 'i' would appear as the penultimate syllable. Arggg, I'm going to have to check this one and practice .. but rest assured .. the 2nd syllable will be 'la', not 'loo' Better stop mouthing it actually, people here at work are looking at me strangly. They shouldn't be, I've given them enough work to do.
I will not further remark on ignorant people thinking they know the 'correct' way to pronounce words that likely haven't been properly pronounced in nearly two millenia.
See the problem with educated guesses? You don't know if we are ignorant, yet that didn't stop you from saying it. And for calling people ignorant i'll have to take the educated out of the equation.
Also, people may not speak latin, but they do speak latin languages: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French... all of these have this word, and we know how to pronounce it correctly.
Furthermore, guess what, even the English dictionary has this word. Not referring to farming directly, but to the Roman guy from whom the word was derived.
Modern Language Association (MLA): "agricola." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 15 Jan. 2010. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/agricola .
Click the litte speaker to hear it pronounced... The 2nd entrance is the one from the American Heritage Dictionary.
Well now that i've presented evidence, i can say, without guessing: "Who's the ignorant now, sir?"
...why you tell it is a latin word when we (italians) use it everyday? I mean: if a live language have such word, why you have to search it in a dead language? Just courious about this
-edit- Ok, i lost the fact that Agricola has meaning also as a latin word. So the game title can means Farmer if we take "Agricola" as latin, or it can means Farm if we take "(Azienda) Agricola" as italian.
I think now that it has more sense in Latin, as "Azienda Agricola" is somewhat more toward industry, mechanized, organized farming.
I have learned something new, thanks to all
Getting back to the usage of the word in the game title, and considering all the artwork (box cover, card illustrations), the targeted time period appears to be medieval or before -- simple peasants working the land with their hand tools and livestock. Based on this, it is entirely appropriate to refer to the Latin word and meaning as "farmer", rather than more modern languages and meanings.
Also, one more point about pronunciation of Latin -- I sing in a community chorale and we do a lot of classical choral masterworks with the text in Latin. Many of these are masses or requiems composed by great composers with well-known names, where they take the Catholic liturgy and set it to their music. Verdi's Requiem is an example. The director takes great pains to have us all sing the Latin "correctly" or at least the same way by each singer. He would have us pronounce agricola as "ah-gree-ko-lah" (not "grik", which is less musical). The letter "i" is pronounced as "ee" as in Greek (or even Geek!). I don't know if this is "right", but it is consistent and how Latin texts are handled in the classical music world.
Hot: Panic Station, Kingdom Builder, A Few Acres of Snow
Thinking over my next move :)
Wow, that's a spicy discussion you have here! I'm not giving thump up to this picture for the same reason Tiago wrote: although it's fun, it advertises bad pronunciation.
My personal opinion on the topic is: we are a community of boardgame lovers, designers, game sellers, etc. If we pronouce it right, everybody will! So why advertising the drink wich is neither we love, nor design, nor sell?! Also, Latin language is ot dead! Come on, latin name having game is number 1!!! Long live Scott!!!
I got a question for all you language freaks and geeks then...
If you don't say it AGRI-cola like Coca cola, but instead say it aGRIcola as one word, I'm guessing you also say AGRI-culture as uhGRIculture which is just plain wrong.
But the bottom line is, it doesn't matter how it's "properly" said, THE JOKE IS STILL FUNNY!
Nope .. I'd try to pronounce English words with English pronounciation, and Latin words with Latin pronounciation.
And you're right the joke is funny .. but sometimes in different ways. I laughed when i first saw it, but because it was parodying an incorrect assumption that I myself had made until someone corrected me.
If you don't say it AGRI-cola like Coca cola, but instead say it aGRIcola as one word, I'm guessing you also say AGRI-culture as uhGRIculture which is just plain wrong.
Why would we do that? They're two separate words. Cf. humiliate v. humiliation.
Furthermore, one is Latin, the other English. Different stress rules. Cf. sēpāro v. separate
Based on this, the correct pronunciation is roughly halfway between the two spoken of in this thread. But then this is the Italian pronunciation.
And if you change the language in the drop-down, you'll get a different pronunciation. None of those available languages are Latin, which would yield the correct pronunciation. Russian, Spanish, and French are all pretty close - at least as far as the stress goes. The Italian is actually closer to the Latin than you think it is; the computer-generated aspect of it hides where the actual stress is.
(Though it's somewhat telling how ad hoc the speech generator is, since, for example, Russian stress is by and large unpredictable. Were 'agricola' an actual Russian word, it could theoretically be pronounced agricola, agricola, agricola, or agricola.)
"Ahg/rih/coh/lah" when pronounced phonetically as English speakers would fluently say it
The expected pronunciation treating it as an English word is only valid if the word is English.
It's not.
In the context of the game title, the word is clearly Latin. There may be legitimate arguments about how correctly to pronounce the word in Latin, but "I speak English, so pronouncing it like it's English is correct for me" isn't one of them.
Something like aGREEKola, not AGriCOLa. MuniKIPium, not MYUniSIPium or MUniCHEEPium.
Of course, we should be pronouncing "Caesar" as "Kaiser, and "et cetera" as "et ketera" but you have to pick your battles.
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
I'm not saying that you're not entitled to your opinion. I'm just saying that you're wrong.
Fabs wrote:
I .. don't know! I'm sitting here mouthing different pronunciations, and I think I used to pronounce it with 5 as an extra 'i' would appear as the penultimate syllable. Arggg, I'm going to have to check this one and practice .. but rest assured .. the 2nd syllable will be 'la', not 'loo' Better stop mouthing it actually, people here at work are looking at me strangly. They shouldn't be, I've given them enough work to do.
I was referring to a-LOOM-in-um vs. al-you-MIN-ee-um. Seeing the British flag over your avatar, I assumed you would use the latter.
Classical Latin pronunciation is an educated guess at the best of times.
False. There is a plethora of information on the pronunciation of Latin. Roman grammarians often gave descriptions of Latin phonetics. Granted, they were not the locationally precise descriptions we use in modern phonetics, but they are exact enough that we know that, e.g., a long I had a coloration of the IPA [ i ]. In addition to the ancient grammarians, there has been a great deal of modern study both in the realm of comparative phonetics, studies of Latin poetry, and other indirect indications of phonetic value. To say that it is 'an educated guess at the best of times' is simply ignorance of the field.
I disagree. As much as languages are fluid, the primary purpose is communication. If I decided that I wanted to pronounce it "flippyflop", it's not going to help me to discuss the game with someone else - we'll spend the first 20 minutes working out if we are discussing the same game.
I'm going to pronounce it "flippyflop" from now on.
I'm going to pronounce it "flippyflop" from now on.
I might go with "Tactical Farmer" as someone mentioned above. This conversation is the kind of thing that leaves a bad taste in the mouth of non-gamers, casual-gamers, and beginning gamers. Correcting someone on grammar and pronunciation is never a welcoming act.
For the vast majority of people to whom I've introduced the game, the word "Agricola" exists only as a brand-name of a board game. The Latin doesn't come into it at all.
EDIT: By the way, I like your nifty Agri-Cola sign. Good stuff.
C'est le Gomazio à crête mordorée, dont le cri annonce le soir...
LordHellfury wrote:
My apologies to Roolz for going off topic.
No problem. I'm actually amazed by how many thumbs this silly pic has ; and how it has triggered an interesting discussion that allowed me to learn stuff about Latin, so thanks !
Edit : am I mistaking or is that "game-cola-latin" stuff a good example of "geekness" ?
This conversation is the kind of thing that leaves a bad taste in the mouth of non-gamers, casual-gamers, and beginning gamers. Correcting someone on grammar and pronunciation is never a welcoming act.
Interupting to correct, or solely correcting without acknowledging what is being said is rude. But correcting is always welcome with me .. just because I'm ignorant today, does not mean I want to be ignorant tomorrow. But there is a right and a wrong way. People who always get on thier high horse about being corrected need to learn the universe doesn't revolve round them. They need to learn to admit when they are wrong. And they often are. We all are. I know I was, and I've found this thread very interesting. And a very funny pic
This logo isn't being sold or published. No laws have been broken.
That might not be entirely correct. He looks to be claiming his new logo is a registered trademark. Without that bit, he could just say its a parody which probably is protected. With it, he's basically claiming someone has registered that as a new mark.
I don't know the details of trade mark stuff, so I'm just throwing out some random thoughts. And I dislike how restrictive IP stuff has become lately.
(Since I live near Washington DC, there are many folks from around the world living and working here. When I interact with clerks and cashiers in the stores, I enjoy looking at their name tags and, if apparently foreign, asking "Is your name pronounced ..." and I pronounce it with Spanish vowels, rather English vowels. It's usually correct, and I get a smile of gratitude for having it gotten it right. )
LordHellfury wrote:
In Latin we have two cases. Classical from before around 300 A.D and Ecclesiastical from around 300-400A.D.
Indeed. In this case the issue is the consonants, not the vowels. In my choir singing I've had to get used to using Italian consonants, rather than Latin ones. (Except for phrases used in modern songs, like "Semper peratus" in the Coast Guard anthem, where we give it the complete American English pronunciation that its speakers would be used to!)
At any rate, I love the image, both for the parody, and for the extra symmetry it has between the G and the L!
, hence I can have the global wine lobby to back me up 
...
as penance. I will not further remark on ignorant people thinking they know the 'correct' way to pronounce words that likely haven't been properly pronounced in nearly two millenia.
; and how it has triggered an interesting discussion that allowed me to learn stuff about Latin, so thanks !
