OK you Latin buffs…

I have a chance for you to put your knowledge to use instead of beating each other over the head about who did or did not conjugate the verb to go.

No2 daughter is after a latin translation of the following:

“Movement, health, performance, balance and therapy”

Lets see what you hed-ju-kated beggars can do with that.

As an aside, I learned today that there is no provision in latin for ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Go figure.

47 thoughts on “OK you Latin buffs…”

  2. Well, there are the two phrases in Latin “ita vero” and “minime vero” for “yes” and “no”, but I agree they’re not as snappy.

  3. I seem to remember (and I’m sure Christina will correct me if I’m wrong) that Welsh doesn’t have ‘no’. Doesn’t seem to give them a problem. Hey, come to that, Mandarin is a bit deficient in the yes/no department, isn’t it Bravo/Christopher?

  5. Best I can think of for “and therapy” (which is basically Greek) is “et sanationem”, “and healing” or possibly “et curandis”, “and curing”

  8. For ‘therapy’, may I suggest recuperatio, meaning, according to my Latin dictionary, a getting back, recovery, regaining?

    OZ

  10. FEEG, OZ: Therapy is more treatment than cure or recovery. How about “tractatus”

    I don’t like sanitas either it sounds like something one puts down the toilet, how about Salus

    Motus
    Salus
    Effectus
    Stabilitas
    et Tractatus

    Ferret, we can do it in Welsh next.

  11. I am ashamed to admit that after 5years of Latin they threw me out as ineducable in the subject!
    Rather weird genetics considering all of my siblings are science orientated and were absolutely hopeless at languages and my mother knew more of them than you could shake a stick at.
    Perhaps the trouble was that we could always bribe her to do our language homework with offers of cooking, gardening, mending etc, domestic arts that were a closed book to her.

    Bearsy you are quite right it can get seriously convoluted saying no in Welsh,
    Dyw,Dyw is used a lot to agree in Carmarthen, basically God, God, somewhat ironically and ‘go on tell us more!’ Sort of faux shock horror but get on with it!
    Trouble is there are so many dialecticals and local ironies built in, what is used in one valley is likely to get you into real trouble in the next!
    Ach y fi (disgusting) is commonly used as a vehement no, especially when one chooses to be easily disgusted!!
    You have to remember that the Welsh really do like their dramas! Most things are overstated not understated as in England. But I can only speak for Carmarthenshire.

  12. Motus, salutis effectus, et trutina dolor.

    Which Google translates back to

    Motion, health effects, and pain scales

    So there you have it.

  13. Bearsy: In Mandarin yes is roughly “to be” and no is “nothing”.
    Japanese has a clear yes and no, はい and　いいえ (hai/iie) but they
    are not as commonly used as one would think as the Japanese simply
    prefer a muddle over a clear answer.

  15. Christopher – sorry, can’t agree. Surely yes is generally signified by a restatement of the question verb, and no is indicated by bù preceding the question verb (except for those verbs which take méi)? 🙄

  17. Just arrived in the forum! Try ‘remedium’ for therapy. ‘Sanitas’ seems good for health, despite its modern connotations.

  18. You’re both right. Generally, an affirmative answer to a question is given by positive statement of the question verb:

    ‘go-not-go?’ or ‘go + question particle?’ – Go – or Not go.
    ‘buy not buy?’ or ‘buy + question particle?- Buy, or Not buy.

    These examples can also include future tense, though past is a little different – there are a few ways to answer, though ‘have not,’ or ‘is not,’ are probably most common.

    The use of ‘to be’ as ‘yes’ and even the negative particle (不, bu,) as ‘no’ is more common in the South – influence of Cantonese – based dialects where it is much more common than in Mandarin.

  22. Whereas aspirated ‘t’ existed in Latin, and was written ‘th’, there was no ‘th’ sound of the type that occurs in ‘therapy’, I believe. OK in Greek, of course. 😦

  27. Ferret :

    FEEG! Je suis bloody impressed. :)

    Don’t be. I was forced to do Latin for O-level by our old fossil of a headmaster, who thought you still needed it to get into Oxbridge, although you did not. As I was always determined to go to a proper Uni i.e. London, I would rather have done biology! 😦

    Bearsy :

    To elevate the tone a little, perhaps curandisque would be more senator-like? :-)

    Yes, I suppose curandisque is a bit more literary! 🙂

  30. Mr Bear: well, I have always made it clear that my Japanese, while quite poor, is vastly superior to my Mandarin which I’ve only picked up a little of from my Taiwanese pop music favourites. Were I to learn a Chinese language it would be Taiwanese, not Mandarin. It’s most widely spoken in southern Taiwan where I prefer travelling. On mainland China I always have a friend translate everything for me so it’s irrelevant what I speak there.

  33. Janus :

    FEEG, ‘…a proper Uni i.e. London’! I suppose you prefer Championship football too?

    Do you mean Championship SOCCER. Really, they don’t even use the correct shaped ball! 🙂

    Ans yes, I did a lot of recruitment during my career and it was my, and other recruiters’ experience, that while Oxbridge candidates were often (not always) very clever, they seldom had much connection with the real world. 😦

  34. FEEG

    that while Oxbridge candidates were often (not always) very clever, they seldom had much connection with the real world.

    Interesting comment – I also went to London (LSE). Some few years later, I was ‘involved’ with Oxford Uni… they hadn’t caught up with the idea that a woman from another University had anything of value to contribute… 🙂

  36. Janus :

    I always like a good solid generalisation, innit? :-)

    A large proportion of the current Members of the House of Commons are ex-Oxbridge. Nuff said 🙂

  37. How the internet leads you astray.

    Following Sheona’s comment, #23, I looked up the origins of the word ‘gymnasium’. (Several South African schools use the word in their name, as in Paarl Gimnasium! The more erudite amongst you will have already known that it is derived from the Greek word for naked. A place where young men exercised in the nude. (Very homo-erotic!)

    From there I was linked to other words for naked which took me to the legend of Lady Godiva. Although an interesting story with which most people are familiar, it is almost certainly untrue. Lady Godiva who appears to have lived in the mid 11th century, before the Norman Conquest, (a woman of that name is mentioned in the Domesday Book) was wealthy in her own right and would have been responsible for setting the taxes of Coventry that she is alleged to have pleaded with her husband to reduce. This is supposed to be because Salic Law did not apply to Saxon society.

    A chief tenet of ‘Salic Law’ is ‘Agnatic succession’ including agnatic primogeniture, or “patrilineal primogeniture”. Of course primogeniture is a whole new barrel of laughs which includes a modern anomalie that of Uterine Primogeniture. Until recently, it could be safely assumed that a child born of a woman was in fact her genetic offspring. With IVF that is no longer the case and so a new term has emerged, Ovarian Primogeniture. “It is unknown whether in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, and egg donation will jeopardize inheritance rights in the future. One solution is for the genetic parents to “adopt” the child to ensure that they are legally recognized as parents.”

    We all know that women have XX sex chromosomes and men XY, but did you know that there is slightly more genetic information in the X than in the Y? Thus, Males inherit slightly more from their mothers than their fathers.

    “No rule-based form of primogeniture preserves X chromosome DNA in a line over many generations. Because (1) the X chromosome that a child (of either gender) inherits from its mother may come from either of the mother’s parents, but not both, (2) the X chromosome that a daughter inherits from her father may come from either of the father’s mother’s parents, but not both, and (3) sons do not inherit X chromosomes from their fathers at all, any great-grandchild of the founder of a line may lack X chromosome DNA from that founder. ”

    And all because Ferret’s daughter needed help with her homework!

  38. Sipu, how very dare you! Every son of Coventry knows Lady G. was for real and Peeping Tom was a witness!

  39. Four-eyed English Genius :

    Janus :

    I always like a good solid generalisation, innit? :-)

    A large proportion of the current Members of the House of Commons are ex-Oxbridge. Nuff said :-)

    London logic:

    Some Oxbridge people are MPs
    All MPs are toe-rags
    Therefore all Oxbridge people are toe-rags

  40. Since the gymnasium in Ancient Greece was supposed to foster all the qualities that Ferret’s daughter listed, I thought it appropriate. The beautiful, naked young men were just normal for that society – no lycra! When you look at some of our modern athletes in their lycra, they might as well be naked. In Germany a Gymnasium is a grammar school now.

  42. Sipu, what a lovely ramble of investigation. Of particular interest to me was this:

    “Thus, Males inherit slightly more from their mothers than their fathers.”

    What about the daughters?

  44. Pseu :

    Sipu, what a lovely ramble of investigation. Of particular interest to me was this:

    “Thus, Males inherit slightly more from their mothers than their fathers.”

    What about the daughters?

    Hi Pseu, because females inherit 2 X chromosomes they inherit an equal amount of genetic information from father and mother.

    Imagine a ‘patriarch’ starts a dynasty. He passes his Y chromosome to his sons and his X to his daughters. Sons will continue passing on the Y chromosome to all subsequent male descendants. But a girl has two X chromosomes one of which gets passed onto her daughters as well as her sons. So, a granddaughter of the patriarch has 50% chance of having 2 X chromosomes, neither of which come from the patriarch himself. i.e one could be inherited from the patriarch’s wife and the other through the granddaughter’s paternal line, either her father or her mother. So female descendants can lose the link to their paternal founder, very quickly., whereas male descendants hang on to it forever. Comprendez? Well, at least that’s how I think it works, though probably not explained very well. And that is why son’s are so important! – he said provocatively.

  45. It’s your grocer’s apostrophe that may be provocative in your last sentence, Sipu. I’m running for cover!

  46. I was going to (try to) ignore it, Sheona, but since you mentioned it I shall have to award Sipu ten demerits! 😦

  47. I am sure you spotted the, ‘he said provocatively’ that ends the sentence. Perhaps I should have written, ‘he wrote provocatively’.

    No,? You are not falling for it? Ok, mea culpa. I admit this ‘groce error’ and am humiliated. I was very tired after a long lunch.

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