Evocative Images of Lost Toronto

[RichA]

Good digital cameras (DSLRs) passed the best film (35mm) at the 6 megapixel mark

For me, I mean. For those of you who get film photography and the craft of it, I sincerely salute (and faintly envy) you. But for me, it's CCD, CMOS, and the 'Shop.

That was 8 years ago. There are still some attributes film has, like black and white still being evocative and large format film showing the most detail in images, but even that is about to change. Nikon just released a 36 megapixel DSLR!
You can also buy used DSLR's for about $200 now from places like Henry's Outlet Store in Mississauga.

 

[Goldie]

St. Patrick's Hall?

It appears that St.Lawrence Hall was once known as St. Patrick's Hall - see attached photo.

Is this widely known?
Or is it simply the name of the east wing of St. Lawrence Hall?

 

[FAC33]

Very much the case (I should point out that the idea that the words are superfluous is a subjective value judgement, of course). In the instance of French, it's a reticence of right-branching languages, which Latin-descended languages typically are, to form compound words directly, relying more often instead on prepositions to relate the words. There's some logic to this, as explained to me by a woman from Spain who said, "If a glass table is a table made of glass, what, then, is a coffee table...?" The brevity English and other Germanic languages tend to gain in this way comes at the risk of ambiguity.

The interesting thing for me in all of this is that written classical Latin itself is remarkably spare. The fact that verbs are declined mean that subject pronouns are mostly lacking, and the case structure for nouns cuts down somewhat on prepositions (the ablative absolute allows you to say in a word or two what takes a whole clause in most languages, for example), with the word ending indicating the word's function in the sentence. Latin also forms compound verbs from prepositions--for instance, eo is "I go" while "abeo" means "I go away".

On a tangent, there is strong speculation that everyday Roman speech had already diverged significantly from written Latin and towards what we would consider proto-Romance languages well before the decline of Rome itself.

 

[DSC]

It appears that St.Lawrence Hall was once known as St. Patrick's Hall - see attached photo.

Is this widely known?
Or is it simply the name of the east wing of St. Lawrence Hall?

No, St Patrick's Hall was a room (Hall) on 3rd floor of the larger building we know as St Lawrence Hall. Initially the whole building was known as the St Lawrence Building and it had two "Halls" in it - St Lawrence and St Patrick.

The City are apparently about to repair St Patrick's Hall. The City website has this:

"St. Patrick's Hall was destroyed during the St. Lawrence Hall's renovation in 1967 when the East wing of the building collapsed. It is now the site of what is called the East Room and Training Room.
The East Room is currently very plain and not in keeping with the grandeur of the lounges and the Great Hall. Rebuilding St. Patrick's Hall would bring back to life an important part of the building's history and what it represented to the City of Toronto."

There's an interesting piece on St Lawrence Hall in the Sketches of Toronto book you drew our attention to yesterday.

 

[Lone Primate]

The interesting thing for me in all of this is that written classical Latin itself is remarkably spare.

I'm inclined to agree. In terms of leaving space on the page (or carved monument), Latin manages an unparalleled brevity for any language spelled out phonetically. But this, too, comes at a cost: the learning and retention of the case structure that makes it possible. English has largely abandoned inflection, with some obvious exceptions, and depends heavily on word order to convey meaning. One of the strengths of English, which I think has aided in its adoption, is that so long as you conform to basic rules of word order, you can relate ideas without necessarily requiring the connection words that grease the wheels. More important still, I think, is the fluidity of English words to be utilized on the fly as nouns and verbs, and easily put into service as adjectives and adverbs. I don't know too many languages that would allow, much less celebrate, an ad hoc construction like "but me no buts", where a conjunction is suddenly a verb and a noun. I think it adds a dynamism to our language that makes people want to use it, especially on the internet.

 

[DTowner]

Very much the case (I should point out that the idea that the words are superfluous is a subjective value judgement, of course). In the instance of French, it's a reticence of right-branching languages, which Latin-descended languages typically are, to form compound words directly, relying more often instead on prepositions to relate the words. There's some logic to this, as explained to me by a woman from Spain who said, "If a glass table is a table made of glass, what, then, is a coffee table...?" The brevity English and other Germanic languages tend to gain in this way comes at the risk of ambiguity.

German, for its part, tends to suffer from the opposite sin, one common to other left-branching languages... a Lego-like snapping together of elements into unwieldy (to English eyes) compound words, exacerbated by a reluctance (at least till fairly recently) to adopt concise foreign terms. English has traditionally been much more amenable than German to incorporating precise foreign words for new concepts. English has walked a fine compromise between these two traditions; a practice that has resulted in, as we've observed, a higher degree of brevity, as well as garnering it an unusually large vocabulary with a wide variety of synonyms and near-synonyms with subtle shades of meaning. Not that I want to pat English-speakers on the back for any of this; none of it was by design. It's just how the language evolved culturally.

Excellent post. I do, however, disagree with the (commonly held belief) that language evolves. Language doesn't 'evolve', it 'changes'. There's a difference.

 

[Lone Primate]

That was 8 years ago. There are still some attributes film has, like black and white still being evocative and large format film showing the most detail in images, but even that is about to change. Nikon just released a 36 megapixel DSLR!
You can also buy used DSLR's for about $200 now from places like Henry's Outlet Store in Mississauga.

Oh, well, that's encouraging... my Rebel XT is 8 megapixel, so I guess I was "there" (or "thereabouts"; the 350D doesn't have a 1:1 35mm sensor) even back then. I've thought a number of times about upgrading my DSLR, because I still find the XT gives me some singularly evocative work... but there's no getting around it: it's a pain in the ass. I have to plan to use it and bring it with me, I have to decide what lens to use (and even if I lug them all, I still have to swap them on the fly), and it's unwieldy. Meanwhile, I typically carry a couple of P&Ss in my fanny pack (yes, I'm a genuine nerd for whom utility trumps fashion) and I can shoot anything, anytime. There's less art and prestige to it, but I wouldn't have a tenth of the stuff I do have... and I certainly wouldn't have had the fun! And it's arguable that by now, I'm getting images effectively as good with an S100 and a Digic V processor as I get with the XT and its Digic II.

 

[Lone Primate]

Excellent post. I do, however, disagree with the (commonly held belief) that language evolves. Language doesn't 'evolve', it 'changes'. There's a difference.

I think it's commonly held because it's a distinction without a difference. One of the definitions promulgated by the NED (a.k.a. OED) is "To generate, develop, or modify by natural processes or gradual alteration", which is a very good description of the process of language development. Certainly it's what I mean when I say "it's just how the language evolved culturally": that is to say, a natural, gradual process of modification and development.

 

[Edward Skira]

It appears that St.Lawrence Hall was once known as St. Patrick's Hall

St Patrick's was the Irish side of the building. They entered from the south side of the building. The rest was for the Protestants. They used the main King Street entrance.

 

[Lone Primate]

St Patrick's was the Irish side of the building. They entered from the south side of the building. The rest was for the Protestants. They used the main King Street entrance.

I wonder what the Irish Protestants did.

 

[J T CUNNINGHAM]

"I wonder what the Irish Protestants did."
QUOTE Lone Primate.

They were "OK', but not in the New York/New Amsterdam sense.


Regards,
J T

 

[the lemur]

There's some logic to this, as explained to me by a woman from Spain who said, "If a glass table is a table made of glass, what, then, is a coffee table...?" The brevity English and other Germanic languages tend to gain in this way comes at the risk of ambiguity.

German, for its part, tends to suffer from the opposite sin, one common to other left-branching languages... a Lego-like snapping together of elements into unwieldy (to English eyes) compound words, exacerbated by a reluctance (at least till fairly recently) to adopt concise foreign terms. English has traditionally been much more amenable than German to incorporating precise foreign words for new concepts. English has walked a fine compromise between these two traditions; a practice that has resulted in, as we've observed, a higher degree of brevity, as well as garnering it an unusually large vocabulary with a wide variety of synonyms and near-synonyms with subtle shades of meaning. Not that I want to pat English-speakers on the back for any of this; none of it was by design. It's just how the language evolved culturally.

To be fair, Spanish can be just as ambiguous. One way of rendering 'coffee table' is 'mesa de café', which, if you were wilfully blind to context, could also be a table made of coffee. You can play that kind of games in pretty much any language.

As for German, yes, it is fond of compounds, but rarely of more than two words, contrary to popular (English-speaking) belief. And I don't know about its reluctance to adopt precise foreign words: German financial terminology is full of Italian borrowings and its scientific terminology is loaded with Latin and Greek terms. By contrast, its western neighbour, Dutch, went through a phase of literally translating those terms, so that words equivalent to 'quantity', 'centrifugal' and 'verb' were rendered as essentially 'howmuchness', 'middle-point-fleeing' and 'work-word', respectively.

 

[the lemur]

I'd say it was pretty accurate to use 'evolve' as a neutral descriptor, since we're looking at how elements of language gain and lose functions over time in response to its environment.

 

[the lemur]

I suspect that it was difficult to maintain the standards of written Latin in speech in the various corners of the empire, which is why modern Romance languages draw on what seems to have been the Latin slang of the day and grammatical features of Latin are preserved selectively here and there (the ability to drop pronouns in Spanish, for example).

 

[Lone Primate]

To be fair, Spanish can be just as ambiguous. One way of rendering 'coffee table' is 'mesa de café', which, if you were wilfully blind to context, could also be a table made of coffee. You can play that kind of games in pretty much any language.

I'd say so, but my Spanish friend's point was that the words in Spanish are used such as to avoid such ambiguity. I believe her translation was "mesa para café", table for coffee, which has an undeniably very low degree of ambiguity. Mind you, it puts us back to my original observation... it seems to take a lot more words to do this in other languages, where somehow we seem to get by without in English.

I gather the Dutch are having their own crisis. The insertion of a space between the elements of a compound "word", such as is far more typical in English, has become so prevalent in recent years it's been termed "the English disease".