quote:Original post by Tacit
Original post by ahw
The Latin they use in a LOT of writings (mostly english writings), is what you call pig latin
I'm quite sure you don't mean pig latin. Pig latin is a ridiculous kind of made up langauge where you take english words, break them down into their components, change the order, and add meaningless prefixes and suffixes to them.
Ah, bollocks, I wasnt sure anymore, yeah I remember that "pig latin". It must have been something else.
I was more thinking of something like adding "-us" ending or "-ix" ending to create latin sounding names.
One of our most famous comic character (I think it was translated in more than 30 languages including Latin, go figure…), called Asterix, is famous for all the funny names given to the characters. They all basically are play on words, in this mock up latin sort of thing.
"Asterix" for "asterisk", his best friend "Obelix" for "obelisk", their dog "idefix" which phonetically means "fixed idea", and I wont even go into the complicated one (the most hilarious actually), like "abraracourcix" ("shortened arms "?). Same with the romans, and most other races they encounter… quite hilarious really.
Anyway, I hope it's a bit clearer.
Think of the Monty Python "Bigus Dickus" and you get the idea !
(the scene with the grammar lesson is probably the most hilarious of the whole movie, 'cause it's actually correct Latin ! I am sure you would appreciate it Sunandshadow
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quote:
And a bit of trivia for you Latin buffs. To the medieval mind, the right side was better than the left, and left-handed people were of questionable repute. In medieval Latin, right is 'dexter' (from which we get dexterity), and the left is 'sinister'.
That comes from the old tradition of the 'auspices' (sorry I am not sure of the translation here) which were guys that read the outcome of a battle depending on the way birds would fly. Left "sinister" was bad omen, right "dexter" was good omen.
Ever after the connotation stuck IIRC. But my dictionary says that the bad omen was for the Greeks, while the Romans associated the flight of birds to te left as a good omen… mmmh… Anyway, the word "sinister" in Latin designated either "left", or something like "awkward", "unfortunate".
In italian (and spanish I believe), "sinistro" is for "left" (I dunno about the othe meaning), but in French "sinistre" is used either to describe a bad omen when looking at something, or to describe a place that has been damaged, or the accident itself… tradition die hard
The sense of left side has totally dissapeared, while on the other hand, the word "left" itself has taken the double meaning of something either on the "left", or something "awkward", just like the word "sinister" had a double meaning in Latin.
And of course in French, if you wake up and put your left foot on the ground first, it's bad omen, too; when someone seems to be having a bad day, you ask him/her if they woke up on the left foot… LOL
Similarly "dexter" has kept its double meaning of "right" and "dexterous" (we say "droite" et "adroit"), and the double meaning has even stayed in English, "to the right", "I am right", "righteous"… I wonder why you lost the double meaning on "left", though ? the English are most certainly less superstitious than my ancestors ?
Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !
[edited by - ahw on July 26, 2002 5:51:56 PM]
-----------------------------Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !