Re: Dog Latin

On Friday, January 23, 2004, at 04:00 PM, jcowan@REUTERSHEALTH.COM wrote:

> Peter Bleackley scripsit:
>
>> Let's have a round of Dog Latin maxims. I'll open the bidding with
>>
>> res sanguinius non laborat.
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    :)

>         Ego credo ut vita pauperum est simpliciter atrox, simpliciter
>         sanguinarius atrox, in Liverpoolio.
>                 --James Joyce, _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_
_sanguinarius_ is one of the real Latin words for "bloody" (the other is
_sanguineus_

Is JJ also disregarding adjectival agreement, i.e. the masc. _sanguinarius_
'disagreeing' with the feminine 'vita'?  Or is _sanguinarius_ the
comparative
adverb, thus making the sentence perfectly grammatical and non-barbarous?
Or maybe JJ realized it could be understood either way.
(_ut_.........._est_ of course is a medievalism; Classical Latin would
have the
accusative and infinitive construction; and _Liverpoolio_ is ghastly).
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> On Friday, January 23, 2004, at 05:57 PM, Andreas Johansson wrote:
[snip]

> Incred-copulandus-ibilis.
>
> (that might be closer to non-Latin than neo-Latin!)
Well, the early poet Ennius was allegedly guilty of a similar
tmesis:
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.

But _copulandus_ is, methinks, a bit tame for what, I assume, is
meant to be the English equivalent. _copulare_ is simply "to connect
together", "to join together" and doesn't normally have a sexual
connotation.

The gerundive is surely a bit literary for Dog Latin! But the abl.
of the gerund was often used in Late Latin in preference to classical
present participle.  How's about:

incred-futuendo-bilis  ?


Ray
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