Dead language or no, I like Latin. I wanted to come up with some cool latin pohrases (don’t ask me why please) and I was wondering if Dopers, being a sart Latin-capable bunch, would 'elp me.
Book of Armageddon/Ragnarok: I was thinking this should be “Liber Megiddo”, since i don’t recall the Greco-Romans having a final Gotterdamerung. And it sounds cool.
Book of the Damned: Can’t find a good word for “Damned”
Book of the Unseen: Ditto, except replace “Damned” with “Unseen”. And I just wrote more than if I hadn’t said that whole spiel didnt I?
I’m sure it’s not 100% authentic and accurate, but I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of Lingua Latina Occasionibus Omnibus (Latin for All Occasions) by Henry Beard. It won’t give you lofty mottos and such, but you’ll learn more useful phrases like “Screw you and the horse you rode in on”.
While you’re at it, why not check out the latest single from Mixoloto Equitis?
Magnae clunes mihi placent,
nec possum de hac re mentiri
ut quatiant illas clunes sanas!
And it’s sequel…
Amo se.
Volo amas me.
Quandocumque miserabilis
Volo tu super me.
Exploro se.
Volo reperias me.
Dedisco se.
Volo commemeras me.
Nolo quisquam sed tu.
Cum cogito ad tu tango se.
Nolo quisquam sed tu.
O ne, o ne, o ne…
12hazel: I learned Latin some time ago and it’s certainly faded, but isn’t the second declension genitive plural ending -orum rather than -ibus? Nouns in -ibus are dative/ablative plural – I think the declensions would have been a lot harder to learn if the dative and ablative hadn’t been the same so often (especially in plurals).
Yes, “of the damned” is damnatorum, or damnatarum if they’re women.
The difficulty with the other one is that the primary meaning of invisus is “hated”, so Liber invisorum would usually be translated as “The Book of the Despised” ( say). You could try Liber non visorum.
Damnatorum and invisorum. Of course. It came to me yesterday, so I had to go back & dig up this thread, to make sure the record was set straight. Thank you for doing it.
Jabba, my Cassell’s has “unseen, invisible” as the primary meaning for invisus. :eek:
12hazel: Certainly, invisus is the obvious word to guess for “unseen, invisible.” It was the first thing I looked up. My dictionary, though, doesn’t list it as a possible meaning at all. The problem is that classical literature has much more use for hatred than invisibility as a topic of discussion. Off hand, I can’t think of any sources where you could look to see if invisus is used in this way. If Cassell’s has it, though, it surely can’t be too far wrong. It does has the attraction that you could call it Liber Invisorum and go for an erudite Latin pun, intending shades of both “Book of the Despised” and “Book of the Unseen.” smiling bandit must be the judge of that.
Incidentally, isn’t it wonderful what a bump can do for a thread?
Jabba, my dictionary does list unseen (well, “ungesehen” actually ) as a primary meaning for invisus and cites Vergil (but no individual work unfortunately.)
invisus[sup]2[/sup] ~a ~um a [in-[sup]2[/sup] + pple. of video] unseen.
Examples given: from Cato de agri cultura 1.41.2; Cicero de haruspicum responso 57; Florus(?) Epitome bellorum omnium annorum DCC 2.30; Apuleius Metamorphoses 5.3.
No Virgil, so that’s still a mystery. But the citations for the second definition (unseen) are much fewer. Oh, the fine distinction, apparently, is that invisus[sup]1[/sup] is the participle of invideo, but as noted above invisus[sup]2[/sup] is in + the participle of video.
*The Oxford Latin Dictionary, the most recent and thorough of unabridged Classical Latin dictionaries.
