Re: Erudite Romans :)

(warning -- some sexual content, hopefully not too rude)


Pretty much true.  By the way, the Romans had an amazingly wide and
thorough sexual vocabulary -- I am fortunate enough to possess an 1849
edition of the _Glossarium Eroticum Linguae Latinae_, which includes
every Latin word that the author could find used in an even vaguely
erotic sense, with a definition -- in Latin, of course; one can't talk
of such things in English (or rather French; it was a Paris edition).

I suppose unique sexual terms could be a conlinguo-cultural issue...
I remember that one of the wondrously feminist things about Laadan is
that it has an active-voice verb for a female's activity in sexual
intercourse (very approximately translated to English as "to engulf")

I think I've mentioned before that the Romans have a verb "irrumare"
without an exact counterpart in English; certainly not a one-word
verb.

It's a good example of where differences between lexicons can show up
-- you may be able to say something in two different languages, but if
you can say it directly with an active verb in one, and if you have to
say it in a roundabout way with a passive verb or a relative clause in
another, you've got a real difference on your hands.


-------------------------------------------------
             edheil@postmark.net
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Barry Garcia wrote:

> edheil@postmark.net writes:
> >
> >The side effect is that naughty Romans merely sound erudite. :)
>
> Boy, those romans could have the foulest mouths and sound clincal to my
> ears :).
>
> Anyway, I read somewhere that all of the polite terms for bodily functions
> and parts either come from Middle French or Latin, and all the rude words
> are of Anglo-Saxon origin. True? Yes? No?
>
>
> _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
>
> 'The beginning calls for courage; the end demands care'