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Re: Dog Latin

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Saturday, January 24, 2004, 20:09
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). ========================================================================= =====
> 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 =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com (home) raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk (work) =============================================== "A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language." J.G. Hamann, 1760

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John Cowan <cowan@...>