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Latin required....

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While we're on this theme, I just spotted a nice example of a double plural in a post by one of our members:
'Unable to use their arms to alleviate the slowly increasing pain being inflicted upon their pudendas...' ;)
 
While we're on this theme, I just spotted a nice example of a double plural in a post by one of our members:
'Unable to use their arms to alleviate the slowly increasing pain being inflicted upon their pudendas...' ;)
One lip - pudentum, two lips - pudenta, lips of several females pundendas?:confused:
 
One lip - pudentum, two lips - pudenta, lips of several females pundendas?:confused:
it's a gerundive of course, of the deponent verb pudor 'I am ashamed',
so pudendum is 'the thing I'm ashamed of',
pudenda 'the things I'm ashamed of'
But I'm not ...
 
Many here may know that Classical Latin had no word for “Yes.” The most common used was vero, truly. Latin teachers have often resorted to teaching schoolchildren, ita vero, (thus truly) when they were asked how to say yes. Some claim est - it is, but there is no evidence of Latin speakers using this in the pure sense of yes.

In vulgar Latin (my 9th Grade teacher had a marvelous term to explain vulgar Latin, “Not what Cicero would write in a carefully crafted bit of oration, but an exclamation to be uttered by a guy sweeping the horseshit off the Appian Way”), there were several work arounds: sic – thus or so – gave rise to si in Italian and Spanish; hoc ille- "this is that” – was popular in Gallic regions. Through a series of sound changes it became French oui. In southern France, it retained the hard “c” to become oc. That in turn supplied the name for the dialect, Languedoc (lenga d'òc ("language of òc") or Occitan.

The first literary reference I have found to this set of terms is from the Italian poet, Dante in his De vulgari eloquentia (On eloquence in the vulgar (vernacular) c. 1302), he wrote in Latin, "nam alii oc, alii si, alii vero dicunt oil" ("for some say òc, others sì, yet others say oïl").

The English word “yes” comes from Old English, gise or gese – so be it, from proto-Germanic, sijai, from proto-indo-european, si, a form of the ultimate root, es, to be. This in turn evolved into the Latin verb “to be” sum – I am, es -you are, est – he she or it is.

So, by a convoluted path, we see that es in Latin most closely resembled in its origin yes in English. They sound the same, but are only distant cousins, not parent child, nor used the same way.
 
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The English word “yes” comes from Old English, gise or gese – so be it, from proto-Germanic, sijai, from proto-indo-european, si, a form of the ultimate root, es, to be. This in turn evolved into the Latin verb “to be” sum – I am, es -you are, est – he she or it is.

Well, the usual word in Old and Middle English was 'yea' (OE ge, but pronounced 'yea'),
related to 'ja' and similar words in the Continental Germanic languages.
'Yes' apparently comes from an emphatic, 'ge sie', 'yea, let it be so', 'sie' being, as you say,
from proto-Germanic, sijai and so ultimately related to sic and its derivative si,
all going back to the es forms of (one of) the verbs 'to be' in Indo-European.
 
That was the excuse that Caesar used when he struck out on a date...And nowadays, various rich and important men (Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Presidents, certain royals, etc,) believe that English has no word for No...
Or at least that women don't know how to use it properly.
In an interview some years ago, Gail Collins of the New York Times once asked Donald Trump if in his "adventures" he had ever been the proximate cause of an abortion. "Interesting question. Next question." (That interview has colored Trump's relation to the paper in may ways.)
 
Hmmm how would one say something like

it never is too late to get into more trouble than you're already in

as a kind of "family motto" phrase in Latin?
Well, it's hardly a pithy motto in English, never mind Latin - but the phrase Malis mala succedunt conveys much the same cruel truth, well-known to us girls who fall into the hands of the Crucifiers - there's always worse on the way!
 
Google translator returns :

Nunquam Sero factum est, et in tempore tribulationis, quam tu iam amplius

But that misses some punch a family motto requires.
Yes, and that Googletranslates back to 'Never too late happened in the trials, which are already more' :rolleyes:
I think a literal translation would be something like Numquam in angustia nimis est sero abire etiam in peius -
'Never, (when you're) in a tight spot is it too late to get into an even worse one!'
 
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Well, it's hardly a pithy motto in English, never mind Latin
thanks, it's of course not entirely serious ... obviously it would be a house of ill fate and low repute that had such a saying on its coat of arms ... so it can be a bit dorky ;)
the phrase Malis mala succedunt conveys much the same cruel truth,
that loses the connotation of "digging deeper" though, or in more proverbial terms maybe "there is no misfortune that cannot be aggravated by the work of fools" ... and in fact it might also be directed at the enemies of the house and so sound quite intimidating, the motto of a lineage of dark lords, not of blundering incompetents ;)

that Googletranslates back to
Well for some languages and phrases the translation stays stable when you flip-translate back and forth but especially with Latin it quickly degenerates to gibberish...
 
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