10.18.08

It’s all Greek to TheRestuvUs

Posted in English origins, Latin sources at 10:09 am by Bill Brohaugh

One of my persistent rants in Everything You Know About English Is Wrong is that “We don’t speak Latin” (with an implied dammit! at the end). This particular grumblus is directed at persnickitors who fume that data must take a plural verb, who imply that the debauched tendency to incorrectly split (oops) an infinitive will bring Zeusian wrath because Latin doesn’t split infinitives, or who demand that Latin baseball players must shout “Vos es caecus, ump!” after called strike 3, because they’re, well, Latin. OK, maybe not the last one.

On the other hand, maybe we are about to be speaking a bit more Latin, if for no other reason than to be able to carp whiningly about having no bread at the promised American bread and circuses. Columnist Maureen Dowd is sufficiently convinced that the U.S. is on one of the many roads that don’t lead to Rome but instead to Roman collapse that she has written a column half in English and half in Latin. (By the way, a translation appears here.) Bless her heart, Dowd doesn’t once misuse the word data.

I mention this because I find Dowd’s column to be a fascinating exercise in multi-lingualistic cross-connotation Latinesium vox yaddayaddus blahblahblattus . . .

Well, I really mention it because I love the column’s title: “Are We Rome? Tu Betchus!” (With, I suspect, an implied dammitus! at the end.)

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