Re: Dog Latin

Ray Brown scripsit:

> My dictionary defines "dog Latin" as 'barbarous Latin', and that maxim
> certainly is certainly barbarous. In real Latin _res_ is feminine, not
> masculine, and the adjective *sanguinius doesn't exist    :)
A gender blunder and the replacement of one front vowel with another
seem pretty barbarous, but then again so does repeating the same
adverb in a sentence.  :-)

> >        Ego credo ut vita pauperum est simpliciter atrox, simpliciter
> >        sanguinarius atrox, in Liverpoolio.
> >                --James Joyce, _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_
>
> Is JJ also disregarding adjectival agreement, i.e. the masc.
> _sanguinarius_ 'disagreeing' with the feminine 'vita'?
I'd say so, yes.  The speaker is an unnamed medical student, and the
whole thing is a calque from English into dictionary forms (except
pauperum and Liverpoolio).  It's the student's sheer luck that the
sentence calls for nominative forms in all other cases.

> saxo cere-comminuit-brum.  "..shattered his brain [head] with a rock"
>
> But it was considered a monstrosity by the Romans, and never
> imitated, so not quite non-Latin, but 'doggy' enough.
I think it's a calculated effect:  the split head is represented by
the split noun.

A relative of mine uses the motto _Solvitur ambulando_.  When people
ask him what it means, he grins and replies "Salvation only in an
ambulance."

--
John Cowan                              <jcowan@...>
http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              http://www.reutershealth.com
Unified Gaelic in Cyrillic script!
        http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Celticonlang