Sunday, July 20, 2008

Bad comic Latin

This came through on one of the listservs:

This is some of the worst bad Latin we've seen.

"My infancy ... because ... my traveling money ... I seek ... O Romus! ... ???"

Try something like this:

ACADEMIAE ROMANAE ADSVNT MEI PVER PECVNIAQVE

UPDATE: I've touched a nerve. Something calling itself "Psy" had this to say:

um...who the hell cares...it's a comic...you know...HUMOR? Latin is called a dead language for a reason. Cause no one gives a ****.
You can guess what I've censored, and why I rejected the comment.

Psy, I like my humor to be humorous and literate when appropriate. Take a look at Monty Python's Life of Brian for a good example of Latin humor.

But this careless mess could just as well have been done with a conquistador on horseback with this nonsense slogan stitched to his pack: "mi infancia porque gastos de viajes pedo Spain universidaded." Oh, ho, ho! What merry fun we have!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I think it's comical that anyone could argue Latin is a "dead language" when PEOPLE ARE WRITING CARTOONS IN IT (or at least trying).

The so-called death of Latin in the US, I believe, is directly related to the current downward spiral in American civic participation. The philosophies learned when studying the great authors of the Classical world were the very seminal ideas upon which the US was founded. One cannot forget that without the Classics (both Latin and Greek) our forefathers would have had no basis or hope for an enlightened nation with democratic ideals.

So in short, if you think Latin is a dead language, then the terrorists win.

Here’s a more interesting comment/question: is it true that Thomas Jefferson could write Latin with one hand while simultaneously writing Greek with the other? If so, were they the same thought? If not, how did this myth come to be?

Unknown said...

It wasn't Thomas Jefferson who was known for this talent of ambidextrous classicism; it was Garfield.