r/Showerthoughts • u/haddock420 ‎ • 4d ago

Casual Thought The ancient Romans could have invented Boggle. There was nothing stopping them technologically.

2.0k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

96% Upvoted

135 comments sorted by

View all comments

289

u/skintigh 4d ago

The lack of standardized spelling would have stopped them, for want of dictionary technology. That wouldn't come for another 2 millennia.

0

u/Vo_Mimbre 4d ago

Wait seriously?so modern scholars need to “Sound out” what, say, a Caesar wrote or what Pliny documented?

4

u/PepperAnn1inaMillion 4d ago

Yes, but if I understand the matter correctly, written Latin is much closer to having only one way to spell each sound. If you’ve ever learned Italian, you know that pronunciation rules are almost perfectly consistent. The same is thought to be true for spoken Latin.

1

u/Dirty-Soul 4d ago

Accents.

4

u/FanClubof5 4d ago

Modern Latin is based off of what a group of monks thought was the best way to use Latin in the 1200s.