Monty:
Sorry, I should have said that English is a member of the Germanic subgroup of the Indo-European language family. Thanks for the catch.
Kimstu
E Plurbus… AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH…
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Yer pal,
Satan
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TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
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What has that got to do with the price of soccer balls in Argentina? The thrust of my OP was aimed at the desire of some to master a language that an astonishingly small fraction of the world’s population use or even understand, and to then use this language in the presence of that same populace. I don’t deny that a great many English words are derived from Latin, but that in no way answers the question. The goal of communication is to be clear, concise & resonably brief. I personally don’t see how Latin accomplishes this. Then again, that may be because I don’t read or speak it- that’s why this topic was born.
Yes, I do. Do you realize that your subtle snobbiness (your words) may be wasted on a great many people in your audience? De facto is an example of a Latin phrase that has been assimilated into English. Others are per se, et cetera and non sequitur. These are words you can use to communicate with the vast majority of literate English-speaking people who have no real knowledge of Latin.
I am not questioning the occasional use of these assimilated Latin phrases, I am wondering about the predilection of some to say, quite out of the blue, something like “Mater tua criceta fuit, et pater tuo redoluit bacarum sambucus” (Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries) and then sit back with their arms crossed, chuckling at the sublimity of their wit. Upon hearing such a phrase, only one thing comes to mind: If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with…
And Satan, that’s a fine mess you’ve made all over my nice, neat little thread here. 
Manual sig line #8
Nothing to add to the general discusion just to say “COOL Nice Touch”
So, opus; what you’re really saying is that you’d rather see your own snobbery than someone else’s?
[hijack]
I think latin offically died when my Great Uncle, Father Leon, passed away three years back. He was a priest ( duh) and for many years taught at a seminary.
Here’s the point to the story:
At his 50th anniversary for being a priest, a table full of preists ( a flock of fathers?)next to ours were giggling and chortling over something. These were men in their fifties on up in age, so all who could hear them were wondering what was going on. Those who wanted, could stand up and say a congratulations or thanks for being a great guy or what ever to Fr. Leon during an “open mic” portion of the dinner.
One of the fathers at the table next to us stood up and told the room how he knew Fr. Leon ( He was his student thirty plus years ago.)and said he was the toughest teacher he’d ever had. He then recalled a rather vigorous argument he had in his seminary days with Fr. Leon about “what in the heck is Latin good for?” to which he received the reply " It is the language of the ages" answer.
This father then, without warning, spewed out a couple of sentances in latin. Fr. Leon, who had been retired for quite some time ( 20 years, at least) did not miss a beat and shot back what must have been one wallop of an answer in latin. The room just burst into applause. When it subsided, Fr. Leon then corrected the father’s latin ( think of the Monty Python Life of Brian Centurian & Brian Romans Go Home sketch.) and said, " You got a D in Latin, if I recall correctly, Fr. Schmoe."
The fathers just burst out laughing and as the brave latin failing father sat down, his fellow non baseball playing padres held out their hands which were promptly greased with dollar bills. “He’s probably forgotten everything else , but just to irritate you, he wouldn’t forget latin.”
(FTR, until about the last year, Fr. Leon was as sharp as a tack and irritated just about everyone who ever came in contact with him with his ’ because I said so’ manner.)
[/hijack]
Have a nice day.
Well I’m certainly not coming back for more of the same from you Monty - too good by half.
Simple enquiry though ,although the Greek bible is closer timewise to the original writings I was always under the impression that it was still not the original language ,just contemporary.
Engineers ,medics ,scientists all come under fire occasionally for the use of jargon when it is out of context.
For centuries in England it was the ability to speak French ,along with the classics that marked you up .
I have found that when I am faced with a $20 word or a Latin quote in the situations that Opus describes that simply asking someone to explain what they mean is useful.If they can explain themself in a more comprehensible way I might ask why they did not say it that way at first .
Sometimes I learn things too - heaven forbid.
Opus said:
I think you are wrong here. The goal of many types of communication may well fit this, but I say lauguage is much more complex than this. We use words to tell people so much more than the bare meaning–our views on life, our affiliation, our values. We pick our words as we pick our clothes–paying attention not just to what is cheapest and will keep us warmest, but to what signals they will send to those around us. For instance, when I pick my words so as to be “clear, concise & resonably brief” I am doing so in order to portray a certain type of personality–someone who is efficient and serious. When the guys come over on Saterdays I pick my words to be funny–both to make people laugh, and to show off my wit, because in that situation efficency and seriousness are not nearly as valuble as witty humor. When I am talking to my doctor I choose more technical medical terms not to be “consise” but so the doctor will know that I am fairly well educated about my body and medicene and that she can explain things to me accordingly, not in baby-talk.
One important, critically important, role of lauguage is to define a group–shiboleths (see, we have a word for everything, although I probably mangled the spelling on that one). Teenagers use the hipest slang to identfy themselves as part of the group “hip teenager”. Lawyers use lawyer terminology to identify themselves as lawyers, and serious scholors use Latin to identify themselves as serious scholors. People speak Klingon to identfy themselves as, wel, the type of people that would learn Klingon. And, of course, people who are none of these things use the lingo because they admire a certain group and wish to be affiliated with it.
There is a net radio station that does the news in classical latin. But its in Finland, I think.
Mind you, these people do have difficulty distinguishing themselves from those who converted a bachelor of arts to an MA by attending the appropriate number of dinners.
Thanks.
Actually, if you’re just referring to the original language of the Christian scriptures, then there’s really no such thing as THE Greek Bible.
A quick rundown would be:
The Jewish Bible consists of 39 Books written in Hebrew with some sections written in Aramaic.
The Christian Bible consists of the Jewish Bible and the New Testament written in Greek.
The RC Bible, of course, has some additional books and secitons of books added to both Testaments, some of which were written in Greek. (The Orthodox Bible bearing some resemblance to the RC Bible should be included here.)
These additions are called the Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical Books, depending on if you select the Protestant or the Catholic terminology.
Now since the encyclopedia (MS Encarta) lists the probable date for the translation of the Bible into Latin as 1456, I’d have to say that the RC church had been using a non-Latin version for a few hundred years.
We’re not discussing jargon here; but merely the use of foreign phrases. (See below.)
Close, but not exactly. For quite some time, there existed in England the general population who spoke English and the nobility who, being French, spoke French. As French is a descendant of Latin (French being a Romance language), the nobility tended to speak their language amongst themselves. And after the nobility’s interaction with the general population increased, the use of French words and terms, to include Latin phrases, increased in the English language.
As has been mentioned, communication consists of more than just the words uttered. The choice of a Latin, French, or German word or phrase, juxtaposed with the environment (setting, audience, subject, etc.) can convey more meaning than uttering the common term or translation.
Hope this helped, then.
P.S. I corrected the punctuation in the posting I quoted since the space comes AFTER the comma and period. I also corrected the capitilization and some of the spelling. Feel free to correct my S&G, if needed, if you quote me.
Hey that sounds good to me, but where did I imply this? Can we all just use some common level of snobbery so everybody can play?
Manda Jo’s point about wanting to spice up your language is well taken, but there’s a difference between using a little cinnamon on your toast and sprinkling some bread crumbs on a bowl full of cinnamon. Also, I now see the point that language is not just a utility, but can sometimes be [treated by some as] an art form even though it has much less general appeal than what we traditionally think of as art.
That’s a good idea, but I think it’s just a kinder way of faulting the speaker for saying something in a laguage that he should have known wasn’t likely to be understood.
If you happen to find yourself in a setting where you’re addressing a bus load of French tourists or a platoon of German soldiers, the speaker makes a wise decision when electing to speak mostly or entirely in French or German. Only in very few situations (such as Shirley’s anecdote) would Latin be useful and appreciated.
Suppose you are with two close friends and having a jolly good conversation, when suddenly one says to the other “illegitimis non carborundum”. Then they share a little chuckle and look at you. I sometimes feel that such phrases are specifically aimed at hitting us blind-side, making sure that we are helpless to respond (and unsure as to whether or not a response is even expected).
Monty said:
And I’ll have to say that it is wrong. The Vulgate, which is not just a translation of the bible into Latin but the translation of the bible into Latin was translated by St. Jerome in the fifth century. ( Technically, Jerome translated the Old Testament and the four gospels–I am not sure who translated the rest). Regardless, the point is that by the fifth century there was an widely accepted standard Latin bible. This, along with Augustine’s Latin work uniting neo-platonism with Christian thought paved the way for the development of a distictly Western theology–something that was impossible before these two men because the majority of scholors in the West had little Greek.
It is worth noting that this translation was called the “Vulgate” because it was a translation into the “vulgar” (commen) tongue of the west–Latin.
My source, BTW, for the information about Jerome is The Perinial Dictionary of World Religions Harper: San Francisco, 1989. They cite A.E. Clarke and J.N.D. Kelly.
opus, what you need is Amo, Amas, Amat and More; How to Use Latin to Your Own Advantage and to the Astonishment of Others by Eugene Ehrlich (intro by William (not Bill) F. Buckley, Jr.
Handy translations (listed Latin - English, indexed the other way around) of the most common (and quite a few not so common) Latin phrases.
-ellis
Soooo, Latin is being used chiefly by those wishing to astonish & take advantage of me. I knew it was all part of some devious plan…
Seriously though- is that a book or was it supposed to be a hyperlink to a web site?
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Opus said:
But that is not what I meant. Every speech act involves a choice of nuance and innuendo. It is like accents–all English has some sort of “accent”; there is no “normal” speech that the other accents are variations on. Let me illustrate: If you have made a mistake you can say many things: “I messed up.”; “I was at fault.”; “The fault is mine”; “I fucked up”; “Mea culpa.” and so on. Either none of these are “spiced up” or all of them are, because while each has the same literal meaning each conveys slightly different information about a) Your relationship to the person you are speaking to b) how serious you think the mistake was c) How educated you are e) How educated you think he person you are speaking to is f) How much you value formality and so on and so on. Lauguage–ordinary language that we all use–is incredibly layered and complex. The amazing thing is that we are all instinctivly capable of doing it. However, the more words you know, the more flexibility you have, and the more capable you are of expressing nuance–even though when it comes down to individual cases we all do this more or less instintivly.
Opus:
Are you trying to piss me off? (Notice how you react to that differently than to: "Are you makeing me angry on purpose?). I would say that word play is the most commen “art” form because it is somethiung that we all do all the time. You do not speak to your boss with the same vocabulary that you use with your wife. You do not speak to your wife the same way in the car as you do while you are having sex in your bed. Do you watch television? Humor in the mass media is heavily based on wordplay–the joke is in what is not said, or inadvertently said, or misunderstood. A witty person is one who can turn another’s words around or say just the right thing at just the right time. It is the most general of “art forms” because we all participate–look how every poster on this board has a unique “voice” that others come to recognize. Some people use slang as a way to create thier voice, others use technical terms, still others use Latin. Some write in short, declaritive sentences, others in fragments, still others in complex structures. Some use smilies, some don’t. Why did you choose your handle?
Opus:
No, the point isto make it clear that there is a group present and that you are not in it. Is this a rude, immature thing to do? Of course. It serves the same purpose as any in-joke does within a group. That does not invalidate learning Latin anymore than someone who chronically namedrops some celeberty he has a slight association with invalidates that celeberty’s husband’s choice to marry her. I hope you can see the difference, thopugh, between the kind of behavior you are describing and gratuitous Latin use among people who do all have some familiarity with the language. Like an in-joke, it is a way of affirming that everyone is on the same page and cotributes to a feeling of belonging.
Opus:
And only the very few people who are likely to be in those situatoins really learn the language anymore-mainly historians and people going on to careers where Latin terminology in still in use (lawyers, doctors, philosophers). There are also people who just fucking love the language and the literature written in the language, but these people tend to hang out with people who feel the same way, and thus these “very few situations” arise among them fairly often. Who are you to say that loving Latin literature is any more pointless than loving Ally McBeal or Nintendo?
http://www.premier.net/~cspedale/opus/images/opus.gif I wonder where you’re going with this.
Okay, no problem. I forgive you.
Possibly, but let’s talk about it a little.
If you insist.
Gosh- don’t be so hard on yourself!
Uh, what??
I understood the first four of your confessions, but the last was clearly a waste of your breath. Why would you say that to me if you can be 99.99% certain that I won’t understand? This is the lingering point of my OP. You can employ whatever linguistic mechanisms you like when communicating- slang, colloquialisms, profanity, idioms, puns & plays on words, and still have a reasonably good chance of being understood (along with your nuance and innuendo). But the second you shift gears into an obscure foreign language, you may as well be talking to a wall.
Forget for the moment that this has anything to do with Latin, and consider this: Bung tôi thâý nang sau bða an- tôi làm sao bây gið?
Opus:
But you see, I wouldn’t have used “Mea culpa” when addressing you, because I pick my audience. I also wouldn’t use certain slang terms when addressing my mother, because she might not be familiar with them, nor literary jargon when I am talking to people without a liberal arts background, nor technical science terms around those with no science background. Sometimes we all make mistakes about what our audience knows, but that is by no means restricted to the use of Latin. This is especially true when we are talking to people different from those we are used to–I am a liberal arts major, and I promise you in my circle common Latinisms such as “mea culpa” and “de facto” and “sic et non” are as universally understood as any hipper sounding slang.-better understood, actually. We are a pretty nerdy bunch. In mixed company I might sometimes forget that this is not true everywhere–but hell, everybody does that in some form or fashion, be it with computer jargon, or pop culture references or whatever. YOu can’t pin the blame on Latin users alone.
I guessed where your name came from, by the way. The question “Why did you choose your handle?” I meant "Why did you decide that Opus was the figure you wanted to be represented by/associated with? There are hundreds of thousands of things you could have chosen, but you picked that for a reason. It was a rhetorical question designed to make you realize that you pick your words with an instinctive understanding of the way they carry layers of meaning–I would guess that you picked Opus not merely because you like penguins, but because you wanted us to know that you are the sort of person who:
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Is old enough to have read Bloom County
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Reads comics
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Enjoys fairly sophisticated humor
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Has fairly, but not radically, liberal views
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Relates to the plight of Opus–someone who struggles to do the right thing, but has the damndest time figuring out what it is.
These go along with alot of other associations that Bloom County has for all of us who meet #1.
I think what really upsets you are these people that use Latin as a shiboleth to show that you are an outsider. I agree, they’re asses. But don’t take it out on the language. On the other hand, it dosen’t hurt to pay attention to those Latin phrases that are in pretty wide circulation–a larger vocabulary is always a good thing.
Well, I wrote a response earlier, but it was half in Latin, so I guess most of y’all couldn’t understand it (wasn’t too detailed either). My school requires that we take Latin, and every year the incoming class asks the same questions about its usefulness. To be honest with you, I agree, for the most part my time could be better spent elsewhere. But it does have uses, and I personally enjoy it and find it interesting.
Some of its uses:
- My vocabulary (English that is) improved significantly from having studied Latin (I also take Greek and Spanish, which are also helpful).
- When studying the sciences, I am more readily than many other students I believe able to comprehend some of the ideas that the Latin-rooted words have. It helps a lot with memorization, when one has an idea of what they’re actually talking about.
- Speaking of memorization, learning all those darn vocabulary words has increased my ability to memorize, and I can now do it more easily and with greater retention.
- Latin is a very logical language, and studying it helps you to understand the way all languages work, including English. It is simple yet elegant.
- You might not believe it, but reading original Latin works can be darn fun. They wrote some really good things, including but not limited to some of the funniest poems with sexual meanings that you will ever see. When translated, this just doesn’t come out, so the language can often look dry and boring.
- We Latin scholars can look educated and cool, and exclaim things like, “bonum dictu!” and know not only that does this mean “well said,” but that it’s a supine form, which is formed by taking the fourth principle part of a verb, and adding a long “u” to its stem. I guess that’s not too useful…but it’s cool to know.
- It’s never good to lose knowledge, and we need some people to carry on the knowledge of the Latin language.
- Why I personally continue studying it (only 3 years is required), is because it’s fun, and I really like reading the works of ancient authors…especially those poets
Most of the same goes for why I study ancient Greek. How many people get to read the Gospel of John in its original form, as it was meant to be? It didn’t have a big effect on me, seeing as I’m an atheist, but the Bible is one of the most influential, if not the most influential work of literature ever, and it’s really quite cool to have been able to read it without losing anything in a translation.
You can judge for yourself if these things justify taking Latin…I don’t think it should be forced on anyone, but I would be saddened if my school removed it from the curriculum (Gee, a Latin word, curriculum, 2nd declension neuter…we even pluralize it like they do…curricula).
and I didn’t mean to imply that I could be upset by something such as this. I just have to wonder why somebody would choose to speak to me in a language I don’t understand… that’s all. Latin has its place- somewhere. I just maintain that most of the time it’s misplaced.
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