Alea iacta est.

Fella me, ovium fututors!

Anyone care to translate that?

[Martinus]

Ok, so we agree there is a number of Latin quotes that are known. Can we now please move on

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Snapcase


I've never even heard of the first one (though likely I will kick myself when hearing the translation...)

E pluribus unum - From many - one.

Martinus -

Matrem futue.
Te non ludificor. Mater tua optimus est. Credo mihi - ego scio.


Just kidding

[Alex]

Another famous one: "Delenda Carthago est", or "Delenda est Carthago" (it makes no difference). Scipio, the African, always used that expression on his speeches against Carthago. By the way, it means "May Carthago be destroyed" or "Carthago must be destroyed" (depending on the subtlety of interpretation )

[Buck Birdseed]

To answer the original question: here's another potential trivia question. Can you see what's wrong with it?

Who uttered this famous quote: "Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays où il existe 258 variétés de fromage?"

- Churchill
- Stalin
- De Gaulle
- Mussolini

[Nemo]

Originally posted by Snapcase


I've never even heard of the first one (though likely I will kick myself when hearing the translation...),

its on US dollar bills

Naw, the most famous latin quotes would have to be Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum"

ahhh! yes. very famous indead!

(thank God my Descartes book is in english, and i didn't have to translate that book from latin like i did many other books ... *sigh* 3years and 3semester of latin sucked.)

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Snapcase
To answer the original question: here's another potential trivia question. Can you see what's wrong with it?

Who uttered this famous quote: "Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays où il existe 258 variétés de fromage?"

- Churchill
- Stalin
- De Gaulle
- Mussolini

Sure you have a point, if language really spoil the trivia.

But, ehi, it's a trivia you can cheat as you want. I play it seldom, and never check before for the right answer, where the world and his dog admit to search encyclopedia or Internet to get any answer correct

OTOH, Who declared in 1963: "Ich bin ein Berliner"?

- John F. Kennedy
- Charles De Gaulle
- Albert Einstein
- Sid Meier

I mean, sometime the original quote doesn't do any bad to the question, does it?

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Alexnm
Another famous one: "Delenda Carthago est", or "Delenda est Carthago" (it makes no difference). Scipio, the African, always used that expression on his speeches against Carthago. By the way, it means "May Carthago be destroyed" or "Carthago must be destroyed" (depending on the subtlety of interpretation )

My scholastic memories are more on the line of Catone (probably translated as "Cato the censor" in english) asking for "Cartago delenda est" in Roman Senate.

BTW, I'm italian, but I never studied latin, if not some quotes in history lessons.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith
OTOH, Who declared in 1963: "Ich bin ein Berliner"?

- John F. Kennedy
- Charles De Gaulle
- Albert Einstein
- Sid Meier

Translation: "I am a jelly doughnut". Seriously.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Translation: "I am a jelly doughnut". Seriously.

"I'm a Berliner" is the translation of wanted spoke AFAIK and many site mentioned it.

The explanation of KrazyHorse joke can be read here.

[shade]

Hello ppl I read some real BS here,geez,let's start venting out the pseudo:

"Et tu, Brute?"

this one should be 'Tu quoque fili mi' (You also my son.(Caesar had Brutus adopted so he could be his successor))said by Caesar when he got stabbed by Brutus,BUT CAESAR WILL RATHER HAVE SAID THAT IN GREEK THAN IN LATIN ,but it is known in Latin.

next:

Originally posted by Alexnm
Another famous one: "Delenda Carthago est", or "Delenda est Carthago" (it makes no difference).By the way, it means "May Carthago be destroyed"

euh NOOooo what you say means:Carthage IS destroyed
this comes from CATO CENSOR(censor is some political job for those who don't know).He always ended his speech at the senate withCETERI CENSEO,CARTHAGINEM ESSE DELENDAM :"and furthermore it is my opinion that Carthage should be destroyed."(what the Romans did at the end of the second Punic war.)

Originally posted by MarkG
1)Who cares about Latin
2) hmmm cause then the answer would be too obvious?

1)I do.
2)sorry don't know anymore what the other answers were,so what they can easily give multiple Roman leaders everyone should know:
1)Caesar
2)Augustus
3)Nero
4)Octavianus (=3 )
5)Claudius

ADG:hmm here in Belgium history lessons cover quite a bit,it was only in my 6th year(age 17-18) we got WWI and WWII and modern day history.(but we only had it 2 hours a week )

Dainbramaged:

im in first year Latin and i dont know what it means...

this probably means still 5 to go,but you'll have a better chance seeing it in history.(to easy to translate)

Vini vidi vici(written by Caesar to show how little difficulty he had had to conquer some part of Gaul):seeing this one I just think of something.If you really want to kill someone who studied Latin use this quote but pronounce it with the v's(instead of w).

Mister Pleasant:

Matrem futue.Te non ludificor. Mater tua optimus est. Credo mihi - ego scio.

hmm some homemade Latin,let's see what I can make of it.
(it has been a while,so the first two,i don't know there seems to be missing something,could be a translation glitch but probably my memory)the last part:Your mother is the best.Believe me(using an inversion :Waaw)- I know(and you really want to point it's YOU who knows it).

Next one on stage is Decartes(French philosopher):Cogito ergo sum
=I think therefor I am.(maybe this looks familiar)

OTOH, Who declared in 1963: "Ich bin ein Berliner"?

-John F. Kennedy: this came back in the media last weeks when the German prime minister(just a guess) said something like 'I am a NY'er' to show his sympathy for WTC.
(btw could have been A.Einstein:he was German)

I hope no-one's ego got crushed along the way(if so,I'm truly sorry)
Vene,me in Tartare sequi.
Shade

[JellyDonut]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Translation: "I am a jelly doughnut". Seriously.

Are you saying there's something comical about JellyDonuts? BTW, that urban legend ( http://urbanlegends.about.com/librar.../aa021700a.htm ) is where I got my name...

[KrazyHorse]

Awww...I really wanted that to be true.

Plus the 3 months of German that I took led me to believe that the statement minus the "ein" was the only proper way. We didn't get much time to discuss metaphorical phrases.

[JellyDonut]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Awww...I really wanted that to be true.

Plus the 3 months of German that I took led me to believe that the statement minus the "ein" was the only proper way. We didn't get much time to discuss metaphorical phrases.

We Germans put all sorts of weird nuances in our language just to confuse you foreigners!

Originally posted by shade
Mister Pleasant:
hmm some homemade Latin,let's see what I can make of it.
(it has been a while,so the first two,i don't know there seems to be missing something,could be a translation glitch but probably my memory)the last part:Your mother is the best.Believe me(using an inversion :Waaw)- I know(and you really want to point it's YOU who knows it).

Not bad at all! No, nothing homemade (a little rusty on proper style for these things, but I think an ancient Roman (later periods)would have understood me). I had a professor who knew latin, including some of the more "colorful" words.

[JellyDonut]

Originally posted by Mister Pleasant
I had a professor who knew latin, including some of the more "colorful" words.

Excuse me for being a little OT.

From The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson, p. 215:
"...[C]ertain things have not changed in 1,500 years, most notably a preoccupation with the size of the male member, for which the Romans provided many names, among them tool, dagger, sickle, tiller, stake, sword, and (a little oddly perhaps) worm. Even more oddly, the two most common Roman slang words for the penis were both feminine, while the most common word for the female genitalia was masculine."

[Chowlett]

Originally posted by JellyDonut


We Germans put all sorts of weird nuances in our language just to confuse you foreigners!

What I can't get over is that, after 3 years of discussions, you decided that it makes sense to have words with 3 consecutive n's in them, and yet couldn't decide how yacht and yak (or jacht and jak) ahould be spelt.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Martinus
But people! This is probably the most famous Latin quote! Every Civer should know it!

I believe that veni, vidi, vici is more famous.

[shade]

Not bad at all! No, nothing homemade (a little rusty on proper style for these things, but I think an ancient Roman (later periods)would have understood me). I had a professor who knew latin, including some of the more "colorful" words.

hmm,I had 6 years Latin so the translating part still goes quite well(and most colorfull words are skipped , but you always learn some)I have a fainth idea of the futue and ludificor but not certain enough to do a decent translation(most probably the verbtenses are wrong,not like ther is much choice:12 active and 12 passive tenses,and some other junk)

btw homemade=you translate from your own language to latin???(noo??)

Jellydonut:what about these :Fear is masculin in latin and vengeance feminin(and in most voc-lists they are put right next to oneanother=>could this be the work of some dangerous feminists who are trying to tell something???)


Umbra sub Sole sum.
Shade

[JellyDonut]

Originally posted by Chowlett
What I can't get over is that, after 3 years of discussions, you decided that it makes sense to have words with 3 consecutive n's in them, and yet couldn't decide how yacht and yak (or jacht and jak) ahould be spelt.

I don't see what's wrong with three 'n's. For arguments sake, say you had a nougat made out of Finns, and you wanted to call it Finn Nougat, but as one word. You would call it Finnnougat, and not Finnougat, because people would think Finnougat is made out of fins, not Finns. Okay, bad example, but it was the best I could come up with.

And I like Jacht and Jak. 'Y' is most certainly a vowel and not a consonant

hmm,I had 6 years Latin so the translating part still goes quite well(and most colorfull words are skipped , but you always learn some)I have a fainth idea of the futue and ludificor but not certain enough to do a decent translation(most probably the verbtenses are wrong,not like ther is much choice:12 active and 12 passive tenses,and some other junk)

btw homemade=you translate from your own language to latin???(noo??)

Hmm, by that definition most medieval and renassance Latin is homemade. (Had to learn a lot of medieval Latin because of an interest in medieval philosophy as an undergrad - too bad I no longer care.) You could tell who was French, Irish, English, German, etc. by looking at grammatical structure.

ludificor, ludificari = (one of those odd passive only verbs in 1st person present passive singular, 1st conjugation) ludi=game or joke, fic (from facere) = to make. To make a joke or light of.

futueo, futuere =very, exceedingly vulgar way of saying "to have sex (with a woman usually)". Close to the English f-word (but more potent). I think a corruption of the Latin verb survives in French. As for futueor, think "mater futueor".

Fello, fellare = if you can't get this one, think fellatio . . .

Ovis = sheep

I could be wrong about these being classical though. These verbs might be medieval forms. In whihc case, my apologies.

[JellyDonut]

Originally posted by Mister Pleasant
futueo, futuere =very, exceedingly vulgar way of saying "to have sex (with a woman usually)". Close to the English f-word (but more potent). I think a corruption of the Latin verb survives in French. As for futueor, think "mater futueor".

From what I've read, this word is one of the possible etymologies for the English word "f*ck", alongside French "foutre" (which is the corruption you mentioned) and German "ficken". To me, at least, the last seems the most plausible.

[Simpleton]

I personally don't care. There are lots of great quotes in English which I'd rather worry about such as:
1) he shoots he scooooores --> Foster Hewitt CBC hockey play announcer.
2) How's it goin eh? --> Bob and Doug Mackenzie (Canadian Icons)
3) If you don't give us the secrets of "The Cannon" we will destroy you!! --> insert Russians, Mongols, Zulus from Civ2

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Snapcase


I've never even heard of the first one (though likely I will kick myself when hearing the translation...), and the second one was made up by Shakespeare. Naw, the most famous latin quotes would have to be Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" and Caesar's "Veni, Vidi, Vici". And, as any reader of the Asterix series of comics will tell you, Alea iacta est, which can be used in a million humorous situations mocking the romans.

E pluribus unum - out of many, one. The motto of the United States, found on American currency
. Thats why youve never heard of it.


Not to be confused with Novo ordo seclorum, a new order in the world, on the Great Seal of the United States.

Dei Benedicte America!!!!!!!!!(pardon my grammar)


LOTM



LOTM

[Alex]

shade:

you are right. I always confound Scipio and Cato (maybe because their names, in Portuguese, sound similarly - Cipião and Catão). In fact, Cato was the opposite of the Scipio family:

He was noted for his conservative and anti-Hellenic policies, in opposition to the phil-Hellenic ideals of the Scipio family.
-Encyclopaedia Britannica

On the other hand,

His embassy to Carthage (probably 153) convinced him that the revived prosperity of Rome's old enemy constituted a new threat. Cato constantly repeated his admonition “Carthage must be destroyed” (“Delenda est Carthago”), and he lived to see war declared on Carthage in 149.
-Encyclopaedia Britannica

Of course I'd rather stand with you, after all 6 years Latin constitute an act of courage nowadays.

I hope no-one's ego got crushed along the way(if so,I'm truly sorry)

Nah, you forced me to revive my knowledge about the subject, so I have to thank you, in fact.

[shade]

after all 6 years Latin constitute an act of courage nowadays

I don't know,seems not that strange to me,but hey most ppl think I'm nuts studying Physics at university so...
(we started with 40 in the first year and ended with 16 in the 6th year(and there were 50 students in the 6th year))

Ok we're really getting OT now.better stop this thread here.
thx for all responses(I got back in touch with humanity )

Shade

[Sarxis]

"I am a Jelly Doughnut"

Learn something new everyday..

But I thought the most popular Latin quote was "quid pro quo Clarice..."

[shade]

"Quid pro quo ..."is a legal thing.The exact translation is horrible,but a free one is :'nothing for free'don't know why you ask Clarice.(this is an example of medieval latin)

I think it's of the same fame as 'Veni,vidi,vici'.

Maybe some recognize this cfr. or e.g. or i.e. or q.e.d. all are latin and used very much in many languages.
(the last one you'll mostly find in math-constructs.)

Shade

[Buck Birdseed]

In swedish they're all translated. However, there are many latin words or phrases if not exactly quotes that survive in most languages, e.g. Deus ex Machina.