that fancy latin writin'

[rick stoehrer]

my second language is a poor version of spanish and latin plumb eludes me. Can anyone please type out the below phoenetically?

This apparently was Peary's motto and it's a humdinger but I have little idea HOW to say it....

Invenium vium aut faciam / Find a way or make one.

my guess is...

in-ven-ee-yum vie-yum ot fak-ee-yum?

Whar's one of them thar fancy kolej pr'fessers when yer be needin' one?

[Bob C]

Hi Rick,

Almost perfect!

In-ven-ee-um vee-um ot fak-ee-am

The last am has a very broad a, like ahhhhhm.

You're using "classical" pronunciation, in which the C is always hard. For example, in Caesar, the Cae is pronounced like the Kai in

Kaiser and the sar sounding like the sar in Tsar (both titles derived from Caesar).

Congratulations!

Bob

(five years of Latin at Boston Latin School)

[rick stoehrer]

Hi Rick,

Almost perfect!

In-ven-ee-um vee-um ot fak-ee-am

The last am has a very broad a, like ahhhhhm.

You're using "classical" pronunciation, in which the C is always hard. For example, in Caesar, the Cae is pronounced like the Kai in

Kaiser and the sar sounding like the sar in Tsar (both titles derived from Caesar).

Congratulations!

Bob

(five years of Latin at Boston Latin School)

Thanks Bob.

[Pintail]

Stoehrer-san, at very least get the bloody quote right, will you?

Inveniam viam aut faciam.

As for pronunciation: who is to say, since every Roman imperator or pleb that I (or any of us) might have known in a former life is loooooong dead? No one knows about it, so at best it is a guess (educated or not).

[rick stoehrer]

christopher

that one with your span of years and maturity would call it a long dead language speaks volumes to it's antiquity. as a child growing up and speaking atlantean as you must have, i would defer to your greater experience with language.

as for the quote - you are correct it's "viam" as opposed to "vium". thank goodness you've corrected me, we wouldn't want anyone endangering themselves with misinformation or running around saying the wrong thing in latin. think of all the latins they would offend.

once again, your perfect dicktion (gosh, did i spell that right?) has saved us all.

http://www.pearyeagleisland.org/default.htm.

[brambor]

once again, your perfect dicktion (gosh, did i spell that right?) .

http://www.pearyeagleisland.org/default.htm.

nope

[Rob Hazard]

After all this lah-dee-dah, I do hope you'll have the quotation lettered in white along one side of your Explorer, balanced on the other side, of course, with the J M Synge quotation about a man who is not afraid of the sea...

[PeterB]

After all this lah-dee-dah, I do hope you'll have the quotation lettered in white along one side of your Explorer, balanced on the other side, of course, with the J M Synge quotation about a man who is not afraid of the sea...

saepe in errore versans, numquam animi pendens

("often in error, never in doubt")

[rick stoehrer]

saepe in errore versans, numquam animi pendens

("often in error, never in doubt")

well as long as it's quote-a-pa-looza....

life shrinks or expands in proportion to ones courage/nin. always liked that one.

[JohnHuth]

Sounds about right. I might say "out" for "aut", but it's anyone's guess. There's the dilemma of "j" pronounced as "i" and "c" - as in "Veni Vedi Vici"

There are modern standards set by the Catholic church, as ecclesiastic latin has certain conventions, but what that means translated back to ancient Rome is anybody's guess.

Along those lines, I'm trying to translate some latin passages from the voyages of Saint Brendan from a 900 AD manuscript. There's a passage where the construction of his boat is described. Medieval latin has many idiomatic differences from classical latin and this is driving me crazy!

For that matter, I'm also trying to translate some bits of Old Norse. I'm at the intersection between sailing lore and Old Norse scholars. One group doesn't understand the other and I'm straddling the two communities. Mariners, it seems, were too preoccupied with voyaging to write down anything, so it was left to some lowly scribe to write down the oral tradition from what presumably were tales filtered through a game of telephone over 200 years. Not an easy task!

[prudenceb]

All this erudition...

it's a little frightening!

[Bob C]

I learned "Church Latin" as a kid but that to me was more like Latin with an Italian (or Boston!) accent and "soft" Cs.

I know things like "Hic Iacet" were later rendered as "Hic Jacet" but I remember learning to pronounce it like a Yacket rather than a Jacket. I learned to pronounce Veni, Vidi, Vici like When ee, weed ee, week ee.

We did read a little bit of midieval Latin my sophomore year and I agree, it was a tough slog even compared to Cicero. Good luck!

(Aside: Have you read Tim Severin and Samuel Eliot Morison on St Brendan's voyage? Severin's curragh is on display in Clare at a museum not too far from Shannon. Very cool.)

My AP Latin teacher (Constantine Pappas Jameson) was quite a a character -- an early pioneer of live television and a member of Actor's Equity -- who never lost sight of the fact that poetry in Latin and the Aeneid in particular was meant to be heard -- so he taught us how to scan Latin poetry and had us recite often. I think reciting the Aeneid (and other poetry in Latin) over the centuries is what kept the correct pronunciation alive -- the poetry doesn't work if the words are mispronounced.

Mr. Jameson was very disappointed when I chose Physics over his Classical Greek class the following year.

Bob

[Gcosloy]

And then there was the person who wondered why so much text was spent on car stuff, and now we have the Latin lovers. If this keeps up I'm going to start a post on opera; its the only thing I know something about. Let's see didn't Orpheus take a boat down the Styx river to rescue Eurydice from Hades in Gluck's masterpiece? The rescue ultimately failed when she failed to keep her head down, literally.

[Bob C]

Ahem.

John is translating the midieval Latin text on how St Brendan built his skin-on-frame for the voyage from Ireland to North America. I provided two references on the voyage that John may have already found, one is on Severin's recreation of the voyage, including his team's construction of a curragh from St Brendan's description, using traditional Irish construction methods, and the other on Morison's historical treatment based on sailing the route described and comparing landmarks to the descriptions in St Brendan's narrative. At least one of them also includes a translation of St Brendan's text, which might be useful to John as the variations in translations may offer different perspectives on the voyage.

[Paul Sylvester]

"in veno veritas"? Make sense or myth?

[rick stoehrer]

And then there was the person who wondered why so much text was spent on car stuff, and now we have the Latin lovers. If this keeps up I'm going to start a post on opera; its the only thing I know something about. Let's see didn't Orpheus take a boat down the Styx river to rescue Eurydice from Hades in Gluck's masterpiece? The rescue ultimately failed when she failed to keep her head down, literally.

come on...bob's post is relevant to the thread...don't bust his chops.

while i found the thread hijacked for a particular brand of auto kinda obnoxious (nothing like a used car salesman telling you why his cars rock and yours sucks) and thought that it should have been in the commercial forum (if anywhere on a kayaking message board), i had the choice to just not read it. that's fine. anything auto related that's less entertaining than "car talk" with click and clack, the tappet brothers (registered TM of dewey, cheatum and howe) i don't have much time for or interest in anyways.

if you're going to talk opera though could you put it on a separate thread and mark it clearly so i know to not even look at it?

thanks!

[JohnHuth]

Threads tend to get hijacked. I'll look up the work by Severin. I did manage to find a compendium of translations of the Brendan stories and compared the curragh building techniques.

Obligatory qajaq reference - the construction of curraghs and Greenland qajaqs have a lot of similarities - skin sewn on frame, and waterproofing by smearing it with oil or rendered fat.

[brambor]

When I was in middle school I did some 'fancy booklearnin' of Latin . . . of which I remember nothing

[Deb Millar]

When I was in middle school I did some 'fancy booklearnin' of Latin . . . of which I remember nothing

Three years of Latin in high school and I don't remember a word. Why I didn't take French or German I don't know, but I figure I'd still find either language a bit more useful now, especially if I went KAYAKING in either France or Germany. (keeping it on topic, here .)

Deb M.