A Latin Wiki! “Ave! Vicipædia (sive Wikipedia) cooperandi opus est ut creatur Libera Encyclopaedia. Omnes ad participandum invitati sunt. Nunque sunt 2453 articuli.” (I note with a sigh that the only actual article so far under Linguistica is on Noam Chomsky. At least it’s nice and short.) The list of
Nationes mundi is lots of fun, and leads to questions like “Why do they Latinize Djibouti (as Dzibutum) but not Burkina Faso, particularly when Burcina would be such a fine Latinate form? (Via Avva, who links to its short but useful Sententia section in the course of his discussion of the phrase in vino veritas and Blok’s distortion of it.)
VICIPÆDIA LATINA.
June 9, 2004 by 12 Comments
There was no Blok’s distortion of the phrase; read comment by r_l, his analysis it pretty clear. Inversion, pure and simple.
Глухие тайны мне поручены,
Мне чье-то солнце вручено,
И все души моей излучины
Пронзило терпкое вино.
…
В моей душе лежит сокровище,
И ключ поручен только мне!
Ты право, пьяное чудовище!
Я знаю: истина в вине.
Blok is playing with common idiom here, using the phrase to mean what he wants it to mean [aren’t we all?]
That is a very rear case when Vail is wrong.
Interesting, although my schoolboy Latin led me to click the link marked “Wikipedia in cunctis linguis” with rather more enthusiasm than the page merited!
where’s the Caesar pun?
I have a tangential question: what is it about Noam Chomsky that you don’t like? He is generally well-received in the linguistics community, isn’t he? I’m very curious to know.
Ticking C –
this might help, or then again it might not. Paging Dr Chomsky at LanguageHat, Paging Dr Chomsky, Thank You.
Thank you for the link! I was very curious because in the linguistic course I’m taking right now, Chomsky is deified like you wouldn’t believe.
Yes, he was deified when I was in grad school too, which pissed me off like you wouldn’t believe.
I’d like to ask the Latinwikists whether they considered reverse-deriving Honduras to a form reflecting the Latin root fond- (Latin /f/ > Spanish /h>0/).
As you may have guessed, I’m a pretty frequent contributor to the Vicipædia… or at least I was the other month. At the moment school work has been (mostly) keeping me away, but I’m hoping to get back to it this summer.
Since this IS a Wiki we’re talking about here, the range of the latinitas varies quite intensely. There are some people who post, yet obviously don’t know any Latin at all. Back when I was devoting time to this project, I spent the majority of it correcting other people’s work.
Even when you’re dealing with the greatest minds of Modern Latin, you are not going to be able to expect much consistency in neologisms. In a wiki, you may as well throw all hope of it out the window. As to the specific example of Burkina, this is a common problem in Neo-Latin, because a huge percentage of people interested in it are Italian, and insist on Italic/Ecclesiastical pronunciation, which would screw up Burcina (and some Germans use “Erasmian” which can also be prblematic). In my opinion, the best way to handle this is to use <ch>, at least when dealing with a language with no phonemic aspiration, but many authorities will keep the <k>.
Too bad there’s hardly anything in the Sanskrit and Yiddish wikis.
Oh, right, I forgot about the link problems. The URLs in question are:
http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usor:Iustinus
http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auctores_Neolatini
I note with a sigh that the only actual article so far under Linguistica is on Noam Chomsky. At least it’s nice and short.
I note with a sigh that it’s now very long indeed.
Why do they Latinize Djibouti (as Dzibutum) but not Burkina Faso, particularly when Burcina would be such a fine Latinate form?
Now Gibutum (Respublica Gibutensis) and Burcina Faso respectively. Omnia mutantur!
I see they can’t decide what to call “Niger”; I must say Nigritania strikes me as infelicitous. They should stick with their Nigerium (like Togum.)
The article on Gana is not bad, though a bit outdated. Sorry to see that the list of Ghanaian Guricae linguae unaccountably omits Cusalica, though. Emendassem, dignus si fuissem; eheu …