In bibliophage’s current Staff Report on Latin roots, he includes a list of several modern additions to the Latin language. But some of them seem decidedly odd. For instance, English “Automobile” is from a combination of a Greek root with a Latin one. So what do we do to make it into a Latin word? Why, change it to two Greek roots, of course! The Latin equivalent to “autocineta” should be something more like “ipsemobila”, using the Latin roots for “self” (ipse, compare Greek auto) and “motion” (mobile, as opposed to kinetic). And even the validly Latin words certainly aren’t how a modern ancient Roman would refer to the concepts in question: They’re almost all too cumbersome. Referring to a “* pellicula cinematographica obscena*”, for instance, would be roughly analgous to a modern English speaker referring to a “pornographic motion picture”. I don’t know what the Latin equivalent would be for, say, “porn flick”, which is how such a presentation would actually be described in modern language. On the other hand, I must say that polybolum for machine gun is inspired: Literally, it’s something like “many projectiles”, which is a pretty apt description of the device, and it rolls off the tongue quite nicely.
On another note, I’m surprised that bib didn’t mention “heliocoptera”. By tradition, the Pope blesses any vehicle he travels in beforehand, and the prayer to do so is, of course, in Latin. Well, the first time the Pontiff ever flew in a chopper, he was halfway through the prayer before he realized that there was no Latin word for such a contraption. So he just called it a “heliocoptera” and went on with the prayer, and who was going to tell him he was wrong?
Yeah, I was struck by how many of the multi-word coinages in Egger’s dictionary were likely to prove unworkable in everyday speech. I expect that if there were a large enough community of Latin speakers, they would eventually settle on words that flow better. For “porn flick”, I might be so bold as to propose obscaenae from obscenae scaenae (obscene scenes).
As for forming new words from Greek rather than Latin roots, Egger says in the dictionary’s prooemium (preface) that Latin roots are “less apt than Greek” for forming new words in Latin. He doesn’t really explain why he thinks so, but there are plenty of words in Classical Latin that were formed from Greek roots, so it’s nothing new.
I had a word for helicopter (helicopterum) in an early draft of the report, but I didn’t know the story about the Pope. Was that John Paul II, or an earlier Pope?
Most vehicles seem to be female, so it’s not unreasonable to suppose that helis are, too. I’m going to have to find a cite for the Pope story; I’m not sure which one it was. And bib? Did you have a context for “heliocopterum”, or was it just another word to throw into the mix?
One of my Latin teachers, by the way, noted that “heliocoptera” should probably have been “seliocoptera”, since the Romans usually converted “h” to “s” in Greek-rooted words (compare hex, sex (six), hemi, semi (half), helios, sol (sun)).
I was interested in finding the Latin word for helicopter because when Egger’s dictionary frist came out in the early 1990s, one of the fluff news reports about it stressed the odd fact that Latin has a word for helicopter. But over the years I had forgotten what the word was. When rewriting the report, I found that I had nothing really interesting to say about helicopters, so I deleted it.
A lot of words that start with s- in Latin have cognates in Greek that start with an h sound (rough breathing), but that’s due their common descent from PIE. Words that Latin borrowed directly from the Greek usually turned the rough breathing into an h: harmonia, hecatombe, hippodromos, horoscopos, hyperbole
There’s actually a few different “Latinese” folks making up words for modern usage. Christian Helfer and Caelestis Eichenseer are two authors who have produced dictionaries with daily-use coinages, rather than the Vatican’s more formal and exact style.
All I want to say on this topic (sort of) is thanks for the “When come back…” thing. Almost made me spit my coffee on the monitor. Seeing it in an “official staff report” makes it much funnier than it would ever be on the boards…
Well, I’m glad it’s appreciated. Maybe Ed was right after all. My concern was that non-regulars wouldn’t get it and even regulars might be scratching their heads about it in a year or so.
On balance I’m glad it was in there. I saw it (or something like it) coming from the very first acronymization of “PIE” though. I liked the long buildup to get to it though. Very classy.
Sorry, no PIE for you. “Pontifex” was originally a title for the Roman high priest, whose duties did, indeed, include the overseeing of construction of ceremonial bridges. When Christianity became the offical religion of Rome, the title just sort of transferred.
Meanwhile, the word “pope” itself comes from roots for “father”. No bridges involved, there.
Yes, there are several unofficial authorities who have published neo-Latin dictionaries. To name a few (in addition to Egger) there’s a French one put out by the Fundatio Melissa (whose URL I seem to have misplaced), a German one put out by the Societas Latina Saravipontana ( http://www.uni-saarland.de/fak5/stockmann/voxlatina/ ), and David Morgan of Furman University (inter al.) is working on a very promising English one (I am seriously considering writing him to suggest that he add saltatio bogudis).
Each of these dictionaries really represents a different source of Modern Latin. The various sources mostly get along, but tend to have different philosophies about how to coin words. The Vatican dictionary is notorious for using longwinded paraphrases in order to avoid inventing words out of wholecloth. This is a bit cumbersome, but really if you want to use such a term you only need to use the full form when you’re speaking without context. For example, you only need to say pellicula cinematographica if you want to make sure that people know you mean a cinematographic film, as opposed to, say, film for your camera or an animal skin (which is what the word meant in Classical Latin). In most cases that actually come up, however, you’ll be understood if you just say pellicula. Pellicula obscaena doesn’t sound nearly so cumbersome… and you might even be able to get away with just obscaena in certain contexts.
Baseball is also always a problem because a huge percentage of neo-Latin materials come from Europe, where they don’t really give a flamingo’s tongue about America’s National Passtime. In fact, the German dictionary rather carelessly rendered the game as pila bassa, which only makes sense if you think the name refers to a base (as in “o thou base cur!”) ball.
Quidquid id est, o Caecili, bene (ut soles) respondisti. You might want to know about the scads of groovy Latin websites availible, or better yet the plethora of children’s books that have been published in Latin translation… but I’m out of time.
For some reason I am incapable of editing that post I just made. This is frustrating, as I addressed the last paragraph to Cecil, and I now realize that he did not himself write this answer. For o Caecili please read o Bibliophage… and while you’re at it, please correct any other orthographic, grammitical, and stylistic errors I might have made
Seeing it in an “official staff report” makes it much funnier than it would ever be on the boards…