I saw someone having this amusing, if mangled and, as far as I can judge, grammatically incorrect latin saying on their web page. The intended meaning was “Here jumps the glory of the world”, but as far as I can understand after some brief online research, saltus isn’t even a verb. So, latinate dopers, how could this be phrased “correctly”?
“Sic transit gloria mundi” = “thus passes the glory of the world” is the real quote. I don’t know about the version they’re trying to quote. Sorry!
Saltus isn’t, but saltare is; the present indicative being “saltat.”
Hence, “sic saltat gloria mundi.” Why anyone would say this, I can’t imagine. The verb means more “to leap,” and includes connotations of dancing, as in the old saying “nemo saltat sobrius,” – “no one dances sober.”
“nemo enim fere saltat sobrius nisi forte insanit”
I looked in Cassell’s Latin Dictionary, which gives only one verb for ‘jump’ in the plain sense: salire.
Saltare, being the frequentative form derived from this verb, would mean ‘hop’, ‘jump up & down’, ‘dance’.
A single, non-repeated act of jumping would have to be expressed by salire. The 3rd person singular present indicative of this would be salit (? correct me if I’m wrong).
If it’s a basketball court, players jump frequently, so maybe saltare would be more appropriate.
Other words found under this entry:
exsultare gaudio ‘to jump for joy’
insilire ‘to jump in’
transilire ‘to jump over’
exsilire ‘to jump up or out’
Notice the vowel shifts in the root for the derived forms. Umlaut wouldn’t explain this, I wonder what the reason for it is.
Saltus is the past participle of salire and as a noun means ‘a jump’.
So “Hic saltat gloria mundi” would be correct latin?
Avarie537, I know the correct sayings. ‘Sic transit’ from way back (Gloria Mundi is Rex Mundi’s sister you know), and ‘Hic Rhodos, hic saltus’ from eariler today when I tried to figure out what the mangled version ment.
Does it matter to the verb whether it’s Hic, or Sic?
Hic salit is my suggestion, depending on how you want to tweak the verbal aspect.
Hic means ‘here’ or ‘this’. Sic means ‘in this manner’, ‘thusly’.
Thanks. I’ll pass this information on to the person with the quote on her page, just in case she’s not figured out already that I’m a weirdo. 
In context of the webpage, could this be an attempted pun on the original Sic transit gloria mundi? If so, I’d offer Sic transilit gloria mundi as a translation, though transilire more literally means “to jump across/over”, and more abstractly “to neglect” (i.e. “skip over”). And this doesn’t explain using hic=“here” instead of “sic”=“so”. Just a thought.
Any chance the author was attempting a play on “jumping the shark”?
One more nitpicky suggestion. It’s often the case that the verb to be is left out of Latin sentences. So it could also mean “this leap is the glory of the world.”
About the vowel changes with the compound -‘salire’/‘saltare’ verbs: Sometimes the first few letters, and often the first vowel, of a word get mixed up or changed or deleted: the aforementioned ‘salire’ compounds, and
iacio, iacere, ieci, iactus – to throw
in+iacere=inicio, inicere, inieci, iniectus – to throw into, to insert (which itself comes from serio, serire, but that’s another story)
trans+iacere=traicio, traicere, traieci, traiectus – to throw across
ob+iacere=obicio, obicere, obieci, objectus – to throw away
Notice that the compounds all cut out the ‘a’ from ‘iacere’ initially, and replace the ‘a’ with an ‘e’ at the end: inject, traject(ory), object, and so on. Also note that ‘trans’ loses more of itself, especially proportionately, than ‘iacere’ does.
In regards to the Hic/Sic matter: it makes no difference to the verb form or meaning, but ‘hic’ means ‘here’ or ‘this’, and ‘sic’ means ‘thus’. (‘Hic’ with a horizontal line (also known as a macron) over the ‘i’ means ‘here’, but few if any actual texts include macrons)
It’s an attempted pun, yes. But the ‘hic’ is easily explained. As I mentioned before, the two first words are just copied and pasted from “Hic Rhodos, hic saltus”.
Being unfamiliar with this phrase, I did a little googoling and found it is a modified Latin translation of a punchline in Aesop’s fable The Braggart. A star athlete brags he made an unbeatably long jump at a competition in Rhodes and has witnesses to prove it. A bystander–tired of the constant chatter–told him he didn’t need witnesses: “Here’s Rhodes, jump here!” (i.e. talk is cheap, you can simply show us here and now).
The correct Latin is Hic Rhodos, hic salta (note the imperative form of “leap”). The philosopher Hegel used it in the preface to his Philosophy of Right, mis-translated the original Greek as Hic Rhodus, hic saltus, the proceeded to (deliberately) mis-translate that into German as “Here is the rose, dance here!” Needless to say, it’s been mangled ever since…
That was literally true when Nijinsky danced Fokine’s choreography Le Spectre de la Rose.
[hijack]
Does Festivitas ante sapientia mean ‘Fun before wisdom’?
Not quite; I think this should be Festivitas ante sapientiam
See what I get for not speaking Latin? 
Thanks.