On a question with a globe with this phrase asking for the 3-word translation, a contestant said “here are dragons” (not answering in the form of a question) and Alex counted him wrong for not saying “what is” but also said that they were looking for “here be dragons”
Seems to me like there is no difference in Latin between the “are” and “be”, although “be” is the more common form of the phrase in English.
Gotta complain about something I noticed wrong on TV.
Guess if he had phrased the answer in the proper Jeopardy way he would have a legit complaint against the judges if they counted it wrong.
I disagree, I think the contestant got the answer wrong for the simple fact that I knew the answer is “here be dragons” even though I forgot all my my Latin.
The maps say “be” but there is no difference in the Latin, so you can’t say that “are” is wrong. It is more right, because “be” isn’t even proper English there.
The question is specifically asking for a translation of the Latin, not for the more common English phrasing
“Be” is perfectly proper (though not colloquial) English. But I agree that it can be translated equally well either way. What was the precise phrasing of the question? Did they ask for the commonly-known or cliched translation? Or just a translation?
I don’t remember the exact wording and J-archive hasn’t updated for this episode yet and I don’t know any other way to find the precise wording.
I don’t understand how “Here be dragons” is proper English (while trying to avoid derailing the topic into what “proper English” means, but in any other context I would certainly say “be” for “sunt” is wrong) and think that “be” in this sense is only used to seem archaic (like on D&D maps)
English uses the word “there” in a phrase like “Here there be dragons” but there is no difference in Latin between that phrase and the phrase “Here be dragons”
Was it clear that they were looking for a translation of the Latin phrase into the corresponding English phrase, or a mere translation of the individual words? The word-by-word translation would be “Here are dragons,” but the phrase, as an entity, would be translated as “Here be dragons.”
The archive has it now. Here’s the “answer”: “The circa 1510 Hunt-Lenox globe bears the Latin inscription ‘hc svnt dracones’ which translates to this 3-word phrase.”
I agree with PSXer. I see no reason why “Here are dragons” shouldn’t been accepted. It did not specify a common phrase or any other language that would indicate that only an idiomatically correct translation would be accepted.
I also agree with the OP, and I hope that as someone with significant experience in translating 16th-century Latin documents into English, my words carry some weight. If “hic sunt” means “here are” in most contexts, there’s no reason it can’t and shouldn’t mean “here are” in this context.
“Here be dragons” seems little more than a lame attempt at sounding Ye Olde Englishe, anyway. Most contemporary writers would have used “There are dragons here.”
In Double Jeopardy if you don’t phrase your answer in the form of a question, it is counted as incorrect. (They let you get away with it in the Jeopardy round.)
So if he had phrased it as a question, the judges may have looked at his answer and decided it was acceptable. Occasionally they will change someone’s score (for better or worse) after a second look from the judges.
I usually avoid the official Jeopardy forums most of the time, but when something interesting like this happens I go there to check out what people are saying. Something about the forum there just annoys me. They seem to take the game way too seriously (and I would like to think of myself as a dedicated fan of the game, but I got nothing on these guys). With this topic I was really more interested in Latin and English rather than the actual Jeopardy game.
Well, from what little I read, it seems they suspect that “Here are dragons” would have been accepted by the judges (though not Alex) if in the form of a question, and in fact find it weird that no one else buzzed in and just said it in question form.
Maybe none of the other contestants realized that Alex hadn’t accepted his response because of the phrasing, and thought “here are dragons” was what was being counted wrong.