Post drifts valet observatio

[bobward]

What was that fancy phrase about who guards the guardians?


Initially a bunch of thread drift posts moved from this thread (https://www.pprune.org/military-aviation/655047-another-walt-chief-constable.html), this may become a repository for future TDs rather than the obligatory Mod Delete action 🤔👍

Senior Pilot

(ps "Thread drifts worth keeping" for those challenged by the Thread Title)

[Donkey497]

Bob, I think you are looking for "Quis Custodiet Custodies?"

Or "Who gets custody of the Custard?"

[Ninthace]

Isn't there an ipsos in the middle somewhere? And you have a superfluous i
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes

[622]

Isn't there an ipsos in the middle somewhere? And you have a superfluous i
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes

...Now write it out 100 times, or I'll cut your b*lls off! :E
(Credit to the Monty Python team!)

[artee]

...Now write it out 100 times, or I'll cut your b*lls off! :E
(Credit to the Monty Python team!)
Now write it out 100 times, or I'll cut your testiculorum off, please.

[Donkey497]

Ninth & 622 - Give me a break it's about 45 years since I did Latin! (pulls another arrow out of messenger bag....)

It's only thanks to Terry Pratchett [long may his name be praised] that I remembered that much.

[622]

Ninth & 622 - Give me a break it's about 45 years since I did Latin! (pulls another arrow out of messenger bag....)

It's only thanks to Terry Pratchett [long may his name be praised] that I remembered that much.

:E ..Never studied Latin myself ....but have watched the Life of Brian...

[BEagle]

'Romanes eunt domus' is a brilliant sketch and SO reminiscent of the hell of Latin lessons at school!

Tuesdays at prep school were dreaded - we had a double Latin lesson between break and luncheon!

[Ninthace]

Ninth & 622 - Give me a break it's about 45 years since I did Latin! (pulls another arrow out of messenger bag....)

It's only thanks to Terry Pratchett [long may his name be praised] that I remembered that much.
Longer since I studied it, got the O-level in '65! Took 2 attempts.

[Mogwi]

Gave up Latin after one year and took woodwork instead. Probably more useful overall. I did invent a motto for my Chipmunk course but cannot guarantee the endings after 55 years!

Semper in excretam pedes ponamus.

Salve!

Mog

[cavuman1]

I endured three years of Latin in two years: Forms I and II, advanced course. Though I abhorred it at the time, I must admit that it improved my vocabulary as well as my ability to assimilate Romance languages.

O Sibili, si ergo!
Fortibuses in ero.
Nobili, demis trux -
Sewatis enim? Cowsendux!

Semper ubi sub ubi....

- Ed, the Sesquipedalian

[Ninthace]

Ah Dog Latin - I have used this version of that:

Der dago
Forte lorez inaro
Demaint lorez demis trux
Fula cowz enzan dux

I offer:

Caesar ad sum jam forti
Brutus et erat
Caesar sic in omnibus
Brutus sic in at

[Expatrick]

Going back to the first half of the thread title, and Latin. I give you - Boris Johnson,

Wasted so many hours at school learning "Caesar made a strategem to defeat the Gauls."

I learnt more reading Asterix the Gaul!

[langleybaston]

When nausea supervened, the master enlivened matters with:

ABCD fish ?
MNO fish
OSABD fish
OKICD fish!

Then I was sent to attack German, much easier, much more useful.

[cynicalint]

Misspelled Fish Langley!
Should be GHOTI!
rouGH
wOmen
acTIon.

[Wetstart Dryrun]

Tuesdays at prep school were dreaded - we had a double Latin lesson between break and luncheon!


Hoi polloi, ( sorry for the Greek ) never got luncheon.....

...well, maybe spam on a good day.

[212man]

Hoi polloi, ( sorry for the Greek ) never got luncheon.....

...well, maybe spam on a good day.
You probably called it dinner…..😂

[Donkey497]

FWIW - Twas 45+ year since I were forcibly Latinised in my final year at Middle School (The great Scottish 3 tier edification experiment) where those few of us selected as being "The Bright Ones" in the year were herded off to an hour of Latin three times a week while the rest of the class, I assume those regarded by the staff as irredeemable knuckledraggers got to go to such useless activities as Home Ec.,i.e. cooking for survival, Sex Ed. (We were left to work that out on our own. Never been sure if that was a good thing or not) and R.E..

Out of the roughly 10 that this indignity was inflicted on, I think only one went on to use it in later life and that didn't work out too well. Not quite a Walt in his own right, but....

He used it to get into Cambridge for an otherwise wholly impractical degree, then joined the Foreign Office and was posted abroad, but left under somewhat of a cloud some years later after waking up naked in a Cairo slum without phone, wallet, the diplomatic pouch he was carrying with a large amount of cash & some very sensitive papers, nor any sign of the rent boy he'd picked up three nights before on his way home from work. And this was back in the day when any possibility of non-standard orientation was actively frowned upon. Nobody is really sure what he's doing now, but it was strongly rumoured that he was was working for a US bank and was a highly paid Middle East adviser....... It Figures.....

[cynicalint]

Centurion enters a tavernum and asks for a martinus. The keeper says "do you mean Martini?" Centurion says - "Listen Palus, If I wanted a double, I'd have asked for one!"

(Massive thread drift - sorry!)

[artee]

Hoi polloi, ( sorry for the Greek ) never got luncheon.....

...well, maybe spam on a good day.
Luncheon meat, obv.

[SLXOwft]

Ave Mog! In Python centurion mode : pedes nostros in stercore semper not 'always in a thing separated out let's put feet' semper always, in meaning into is motion towards so takes the accusative so excrēta is neuter plural of the perfect passive particliple of the third conjugation verb excerno to separate out. pedes nom. or acc. plural of pes - foot or nom. sing of pedes (3rd Decl) = infantryman, pōnāmus first-person plural present active subjunctive of the third conjugation verm pōnō (place, lay, put) so = let us place.

However, a motto for your coat of arms sparatus semel in cauda sed risit. or perhaps more accurately confodietur in cauda semel sed risit

Yes, I am having a boring morning - a bit like some of the exercises on my subsidiary Latin course at Uni. As it feels that was so long ago that I must have been in Roman Britannia, I make no claims of complete accuracy.

[Lonewolf_50]

Semper Gumbi was the motto of one of my helicopter detachments.
(Always Flexible) (If you don't recall Gumby from TV, maybe that's an American thing)

As a riff on Carpe Diem there was a guy I knew whose motto was Carpe Noctum.
His wife's "Carpe Scrotum" riposte during a squadron party got a burst of laughter from the whole room...

[judyjudy]

Illegitimi non carborundum

[Expatrick]

Vidi, vici, veni.
Posted despite spell checks best efforts to stop me!

​​​​​​

[Ninthace]

I rather like Terry Prachetts's
Carpe Jugulum

[Ninthace]

New motto for the RAF?
Per Ardua Ad Nauseam

[Gargleblaster]

In vino veritas, in p...s caritas.

[albatross]

Hoverum non Moven….
Long line work.

[Ascend Charlie]

Mottoes for various pilots' courses:

Orbes vestri non nectitis.
Don't get your b**** in a knot.

Non circum coimus
We don't f*** around

[Hydromet]

Bibere plus urina. Motto of Cairns Hash House Harriers.

[Old-Duffer]

In Loco Parentis - Mum and Dad are coming by train

[ACW342]

Effetuens irrumator Es


A342

[212man]

I think this thread's title is somewhat of a misnomer!

[BEagle]

I recall that occasionally we had to read out Latin prose passages, which often began with rather meaningless expressions such as His verbis dictis autem (And having said these words). But the one which always made silly schoolboys giggle was Ob has causas (For these reasons) - because we would pronounce causas as "Cow's arse", much to the annoyance of the Latin master.

Ah the joys of Kennedy's Revised Latin Primer......NOT!

[Shackman]

7 Sqn Motto - Per Diem, Per Noctum, Per Haps

[Ninthace]

I often wonder if my early exposure to Caesar's Gallic Wars - Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres and all that - fostered my interest in the military. It was either that or running round the playground with my arms outstretched firing cannon shells out my thumbs, one of the two certainly.

[stevef]

Just read this on the Internet:
Latin can improve your English vocabulary. Deepen your communication skills. Enhance critical thinking. Give you a new perspective on language.
Sounds like encyclopaedia salesmen patter to me. Has anyone who was force-fed Latin at school actually found any benefit in it? Even Kiswahili must be more useful to learn with an estimated 200 million first & second language speakers, rather than the odd Catholic priest mystifying his congregation with something that hasn't been widely spoken for over 1500 years. :confused:

IV, as the Roman golfer shouted.

[Expatrick]

Just read this on the Internet:
Latin can improve your English vocabulary. Deepen your communication skills. Enhance critical thinking. Give you a new perspective on language.
Sounds like encyclopaedia salesmen patter to me. Has anyone who was force-fed Latin at school actually found any benefit in it? Even Kiswahili must be more useful to learn with an estimated 200 million first & second language speakers, rather than the odd Catholic priest mystifying his congregation with something that hasn't been widely spoken for over 1500 years. :confused:

IV, as the Roman golfer shouted.

And the answer to your question is a resounding NO!

What does annoy me is the time wasted, time I could have spent on other more useful subjects, including modern languages.

[SLXOwft]

But the one which always made silly schoolboys giggle was Ob has causas (For these reasons) - because we would pronounce causas as "Cow's arse", much to the annoyance of the Latin master.

In the way of small boys we were given in exchanging insults such as homonuncule!, stulte! and mendax! when being force-fed Latin

ACW - Effutuens ..., mind you these days the DEI police would probably have had your boss up on a charge, unless he had first-hand evidence:eek:.

And in answer to stevef: yes, it was a useful framework on which to base the study of MFLs especially those which are Latin dialects and pidgins, and gave an understanding of scientific terms. Having to parse Caesar, Virgil, and Lactantius developed the ability to identify and extract the pertinent facts and true meaning from long winded, jargon rich documents.

[langleybaston]

What I want to know.

How does anybody know how to speak Latin?

We had [I had briefly] two masters who pronounced the weird words differently.

And some Met. folk say strartus and some straytus.

[albatross]

“Latin allows we lawyers, judges etc. to keep you in a constant state of confusion until the cell door slams shut behind you!”. (. a lawyer told me that.)

[Ninthace]

Just read this on the Internet:
Latin can improve your English vocabulary. Deepen your communication skills. Enhance critical thinking. Give you a new perspective on language.
Sounds like encyclopaedia salesmen patter to me. Has anyone who was force-fed Latin at school actually found any benefit in it? Even Kiswahili must be more useful to learn with an estimated 200 million first & second language speakers, rather than the odd Catholic priest mystifying his congregation with something that hasn't been widely spoken for over 1500 years. :confused:

IV, as the Roman golfer shouted.
Absolutely YES. I went on to do other languages and the foundation of grammar and syntax was invaluable, even with non Latin based languages such as German, To this day, I often fall back on Latin when reading a menu in a European language I do not speak.

I also reckon there were transferrable skills when I started to program as again there is a grammar and a syntax,

[Ninthace]

What I want to know.

How does anybody know how to speak Latin?

We had [I had briefly] two masters who pronounced the weird words differently.

And some Met. folk say strartus and some straytus.
Hard to say, it has been spoken continuously since Roman times but whether one of Jule's finest would recognise it, who can say? Then again, we know that the pronunciation and structure of English has changed over the centuries - ever heard Shakespeare as he would have heard it?

[dogle]

Ninthace - was it not ‘Gallia omnia divisia est in partes tres’ - much more difficult to translate grammatically under my very demanding Latin master [who was ex-RAF, “five horrid years” in India in WW II - we became great friends when he retired] - but of course Caesar did not have the benefit of Kennedy’s wisdom back then ... and I agree as to the later benefits of the tortures we endured at school, I still reach for my precious Gepp and Haig Latin dictionary now and then when I want to fix a meaning exactly.

Beags - thanks for your mention of ‘causas’ .. the proud motto of Sheffield University is “Rerum cognoscere causas” ... which is of course open to the most widespead abuse ... but my favorite translation remains as “to go and see her old man”.

Reverend mods, top marks for preserving these wildly offtopic remarks here - I had no idea how erudite was the community of my former fellow aviators - they are fun, and a bit of fun is most welcome now - thank you.

[but please please let us not get on to Chaucher! ]

[Oh, and hat-tip to albatross also for that very astute comment today]

[Lonewolf_50]

How does anybody know how to speak Latin?
Yes. Some people do. You can see this in the movie "The Passion of the Christ" which was done in the original languages with sub titles. (Mostly Aramaic and Latin, but I think some Hebrew was also spoken).
To be honest, the Latin sounded a lot like Italian to me.
Allegedly, among the Romance languages, Romanian is the closest to Latin of any of them, but how far it drifted I can't say.

[Sue Vêtements]

Longer since I studied it, got the O-level in '65! Took 2 attempts.

Bloody hell ... it was still new then!

[Barksdale Boy]

I don't speak Italian, but my degree is in classics. So when I go there I speak Latin with a world-war-two-film Italian accent. They love it. Use ut and the subjunctive and they swoon.

[Ninthace]

Ninthace - was it not ‘Gallia omnia divisia est in partes tres’

No, not in my version but if you don’t believe me
Caesar’s Gallic Wars (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0002)

[Ninthace]

Bloody hell ... it was still new then!
In my Defence, I was only 14 when I did my O-levels and mum had just had a fling with a centurion from the IXth Legion. Well he said it was the IXth. She said he was a proper gent, always took his caligae off in bed.

[Expatrick]

What I want to know.

How does anybody know how to speak Latin?

We had [I had briefly] two masters who pronounced the weird words differently.

And some Met. folk say strartus and some straytus.

Depending on their status or status!

My Father & step Mother had Italian friends who would drive to London every summer in their ancient Beetle. My stepmother spoke fluent Italian and the women would chatter away merrily but my Father and the husband would converse in Latin.

[Ascend Charlie]

Maybe go to Latin America?

[Barksdale Boy]

No, not in my version but if you don’t believe me
Caesar’s Gallic Wars (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0002)
Divisia?

[Ninthace]

Divisia?
Not in my #36
Non possum esse reus aliorum errorum

or words to that effect :ok:

[BEagle]

Oh Lord - 'ut and the subjunctive'! One of the real horrors of Latin. Along with gerunds and gerundives, ablative absolutes, 'A, ab, absque, coram, de palam, cum, and ex or e...' and other grammatical tortures inflicted on me at prep school whilst I was covertly reading 'The Airfix Magazine'....

[Expatrick]

Oh Lord - 'ut and the subjunctive'! One of the real horrors of Latin. Along with gerunds and gerundives, ablative absolutes, 'A, ab, absque, coram, de palam, cum, and ex or e...' and other grammatical tortures inflicted on me at prep school whilst I was covertly reading 'The Airfix Magazine'....

Bit of a swot then, most of us were making marble runs in our desks!

[India Four Two]

When I was introduced to Latin, mensa (table) was used to teach the endings for nouns of the first declension, which I remember to this day!

I found the vocative case mysterious. How often did Romans want to talk to a table?

[Ninthace]

Sometimes, when I have been teaching, it has felt like I was talking to a room full of tables.

[D120A]

At this point it would be respectful to remember the fate of the young lady who married a Latin scholar. When she asked him to Conjugate, he Declined.

[Ninthace]

How did she construe that?

[Mogwi]

Sometimes, when I have been teaching, it has felt like I was talking to a room full of tables.

What does an occasional table do when it is not being a table? Sorry for drift squared!

Mog

[Mal Drop]

I don't speak Italian, but my degree is in classics. So when I go there I speak Latin with a world-war-two-film Italian accent. They love it. Use ut and the subjunctive and they swoon.
I've got an MA in Classics, but as a Hellenist, I don't get to flex my linguistic ὁδός-cred as much as I'd like at the local kebab van.

[langleybaston]

What does an occasional table do when it is not being a table? Sorry for drift squared!

Mog

Times-

[Ninthace]

Some join the police as cons-

[langleybaston]

and live in Whits

[Thud_and_Blunder]

they might even join MENSA...

[Sue Vêtements]

My French teacher once asked me to decline a noun . . .

. . . so I politely said "No thankyou, not for me"

[binbrook]

In re Caesar's Gallic Wars, i seem to remember that the winter comes early in these parts because Gaul as whole faces north. And in Troy, didn't someone or other fear Greeks bearing gifts?

[langleybaston]

Was that the Pubic Wars?

[Expatrick]

Was that the Pubic Wars?

No, they were about Hanni balls.

[Hydromet]

I've got an MA in Classics, but as a Hellenist, I don't get to flex my linguistic ὁδός-cred as much as I'd like at the local kebab van.
Reminds me of the English officer with a degree in classical Greek in Captain Corelli's Mandolin. When he attempts to converse in Greek, the English translations are all 'thee's, 'thou's and 'dost thou doest's. Unfortunately, they left it out of the movie.