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Theme 276 - Wildcard Round 11 - (closed 10pm Sun 18th Oct)
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message 51:
by
theDuke
(new)
Oct 20, 2020 11:14PM
I like the lesser used and somewhat old fashioned term Octopodes myself. I never use the term 'Octopi', as it's grammatically incorrect.
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Gordon wrote: "I think it's a stab at "Hello, sailor"."Salve Regina" (which you will know from its many classical settings, Lez) is "Hail, holy queen". Nothing to do with saving.
As Latin teachers used to joke..."
Technically, plurals ending in 'ia' are simpler than 'iums'. Quicker to write and quicker to say. The one that gets me is the plural of genus being genera - where did that 'r' come from?
You're also right about octopi - doesn't exist. It's arisen to due to the misconception that the plurals of all words ending in 'us' must end in 'i', but it's only those of latin origin that this applies to.
Nerd alert: I studied Latin for 6 years at secondary school and loved every minute. I found it reassuring that, as a dead language, it was not subject to changes. No shades of grey - it was either right or wrong. I loved The Aeneid and re-read it recently. During Lockdown 2.0 I treated myself to a copy of Latin For Today: First Year Course (1933) by Gray & Jenkins. It may have cost me £25 but it has been worth every penny. It's not how I first learned Latin but I think it's an amazing teaching method 87 years on. It doesn't start by trying to make you learn conjugations, declensions or vocabulary. It jumps in the deep end saying "you are going to learn to read and understand Latin". So there are pictures with Latin descriptions and you are exhorted to make your best fist of understanding them by thinking what English words may be derived from the Latin ones. The grammar parts are all in the appendices and can be easily referred to. I'm making my way through it slowly and am quite proud of my progress all these years on.
Fishy_Jim wrote: "Technically, plurals ending in 'ia' are simpler than 'iums'..."Yes, but they only apply in the nominative case (when the noun is the subject of the verb). As soon as the noun is in a different case (accusative = direct object, dative = indirect object, etc.), neither -ium nor -ia is correct. Much easier to treat them as English words rather than Latin ones.
I have an unending battle with colleagues who keep referring to people as "alumni", regardless of gender or number.
Gordon wrote: "I have an unending battle with colleagues who keep referring to people as "alumni", regardless of gender or number.."Surely the correct term in those instances would be "aluminium"?
Gordon wrote: "Fishy_Jim wrote: "Technically, plurals ending in 'ia' are simpler than 'iums'..."Yes, but they only apply in the nominative case (when the noun is the subject of the verb). As soon as the noun is..."
...and I bet they say 'alumnye' not, 'alumknee'
Pointless comment/waffle time. Nothing to do with plurals or Latin but it is word related.Had a lovely conversation with my Mum yesterday evening about how the word "glum" should definitely have a "b" on the end. Glumb. It was very glumb yesterday evening which prompted said conversation. We both like & use the words "gloomth" & "coolth" too. Fascinating eh?
Helen The Melon wrote: "Pointless comment/waffle time. Nothing to do with plurals or Latin but it is word related.Had a lovely conversation with my Mum yesterday evening about how the word "glum" should definitely have ..."
That's just dum!
Fascinating fact (not):My hobby of keeping tropical fish means I encounter latin quite a lot in scientific names and so I am aware that species named after men end with 'i' and those named after women end in 'ae'. However, species named after men whose names end with 'w' or 'we' have these replaced with 'vi', so a fish named after a man called Rachow is called rachovii and another named after a man called Dowe is called dovii. What's that about?!
It's the dative case, Jim. The 'i' means 'of' or 'of the'. Don't ask me to explain, my 'O' levels were in 1956!
There was no W (or J or U) in the Latin alphabet.
"There was no W (or J or U) in the Latin alphabet."what a load of ank!
Or, after a dentist has finished doing a filling.....you say....'ank u! :)
I new about the 'i', it was the 'vi' bit that was odd. I realise that there is no W, J or U in Latin, but you wouldn't have thought that would apply to names foreign to the language like people's names.And while we're at it, since there are no Js in Latin or modern Italian, where do they get Juventus from, eh? And why call a team Genoa FC when the city is called Genova in Italian? WHY!?
Fishy_Jim wrote: "I new about the 'i', it was the 'vi' bit that was odd. I realise that there is no W, J or U in Latin, but you wouldn't have thought that would apply to names foreign to the language.And while we'r..."
Don't they pronounce it 'Yooventus'?
what happens when you're sitting at a yooventus match, eating your piece 'n' yam, and you get caught short? do you then go for a yobby?
Fishy_Jim wrote: "I new about the 'i', it was the 'vi' bit that was odd. I realise that there is no W, J or U in Latin, but you wouldn't have thought that would apply to names foreign to the language like people's n..."W was introduced for sounds in germanic languages which had no equivalent in classical latin, so I understand.
as for Juventus, it comes from the latin 'iuventus' meaning youth.
I went to look at an article on History Today. Turns out it's a subscription site as indicated by this cartoon:
