Militia est vita hominis super terram is brought to you by the Book of Job; loosely rendered in the vulgar tongue, it means "man's life on earth is a warfare."
I ended the post on Alice's Daughter with the quotation; hopefully the point was not too oblique -- i.e. that the most satisfying solutions to life's enigmas can't be discovered by following the convenient path, and that Heaven is won not by people who embrace the spirit of the age, but by those who overcome it.
Not that I'm a Latin scholar (though I know one), but I've developed an interest in the tongue after becoming Catholic. The little chapel I attend has its Masses in Latin, so I've incidentally picked up a few words and phrases along the way.
* Dominus vobiscum = The Lord be with you.
* Et cum spiritu tuo = And with thy spirit.
* Pater noster, qui es in caelis = Our Father, who art in Heaven, etc.
For my part, I took Russian in high school and college. It's a pretty harsh-sounding inflected language at the best of times -- for instance, to express the romantic sentiment "I love you," one must cram together a number of consonants in Slavic fashion and spit out, "Ya tebya lyou-byou." I did have a few moments of fun with Russian, though -- for example, the word for "stupid" is "gloopy," which is itself a stupid-sounding word.
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1 comment:
He he he, my mind immediately sprang to "hang on gloopy, gloopy hang on" as a variation on the song. I've just dated myself. ;-)
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