Friday Morning Latin Lesson, Vol LXXVII

It's been a long fucking week.

Not only has it been a long fucking week, it's been a long frustrating fucking week.

I'll explain more later, but suffice it to say, my nerves are fried and I'm firing on the last one or two neurons who haven't gotten pissed and shuffled off, shouting "Screw you guys, I'm going home" as they headed out the door. Always a good time to try learning a new language, especially one as simple and uncomplex as Latin.

I guess that's what I get for working an entire full week. Oh, the tragedy and drama! *throws forearm dramatically over forehead*

Not buying it? I don't blame you.

However, I did successfully manage to use the word "vagina" in a blog posting and not lose any followers! That's a first since I moved over to Vita Brevis! Time to celebrate, omnes!

Anyway, I thought I'd offer a couple of follow-ups to Latin Lessons of days gone by.

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how the Dutch were looking good in the World Cup. And was I right or was I right? Second place out of 204 competitors is pretty goddamned good, if you ask me. Sure, I would have liked to have seen them raise the trophy at the World Cup, but I was happy for the Spanish. Enough. The Dutch fans were a lot hotter.

When I tried to find a word to describe the Dutch in Latin, I had some issues. Clearly, "Dutch" comes from a Germanic root (*ahem* Deutsch), so I had to dig around and find out what the Romans called the area of the Low Countries. The name they gave this area was Batavia, and thusly the people who lived there were called the "Batavi". Tacitus has my back here, in that he refers to an area now in the Netherlands as Insula Batavorum, or "Island of the Batavians". Today, the name remains in the area as Betuwe.

And then last week, whilst complaining about the heat, I offered up a translation for "It's hot as balls out there." Unfortunately, people who have actually, y'know, learned Latin in a classroom environment, not as a hobby, picked up that there wasn't a word in there for "balls". The phrase "Foris maxime caletur..." literally translates as "It is very hot outside". I was going for one of those "layers of meaning" translations that my wife is always talking about.

A more literal translation of "It's hot as balls out there" would be Qualis colei calent, talis tempestas calet. ("Kwah-leese coh-lay-ee cah-lunt, tah-leese tame-paste-ahss cah-late"). This compares the heat of one's balls to the weather, "Like balls are hot, the weather is hot" roughly.

If you wanted to be a lot more specific, you could say Qualis mei colei calent, talis tempestas calet!, which translates as "The weather is as hot as my balls!".

And, one more thing, caleo, calere means "to be hot", but it also means "to arouse" or "to be aroused". Use it wisely.

Finally, earlier in the week, I told you all I wanted to be perceived as Bender from Futurama. Most of you picked up on the reasons why: because Bender is fucking awesome, and because I can tell people to bite my shiny metal ass.

So, I figured I might as well figure out how to say it classically:

Morde meum nitentem metallicum fundum!
Pronounced: "More-day may-oom nee-tain-tame may-tah-lee-koom foon-doom!"


Inspirational words of wisdom in the hovertext

Obviously, metallicum would translate better as "metallic". I opted for the adjectival form of metallum, which was the Latin word for "metal" (to be filed in the "no shit" category), but is used as a noun. Therefore I sought the adjective and went from there. Subtle layers of translation, everybody.

And with that. Have a good weekend. Stay thirsty, my friends.