Post drifts valet observatio
 

What was that fancy phrase about who guards the guardians?


Initially a bunch of thread drift posts moved from this thread, 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)

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

Or "Who gets custody of the Custard?"

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!)

Now write it out 100 times, or I'll cut your testiculorum off, please.

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...

'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!

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

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

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

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

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!

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.

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

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

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

You probably called it dinner…..😂

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.....

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!)

Luncheon meat, obv.

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 ofthe 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.

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...

Vidi, vici, veni.
​​​​​​

I rather like Terry Prachetts's
Carpe Jugulum

New motto for the RAF?
Per Ardua Ad Nauseam

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

Hoverum non Moven….
Long line work.

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

Bibere plus urina. Motto of Cairns Hash House Harriers.

In Loco Parentis - Mum and Dad are coming by train

As my old boss used to tell VSOs whose fault it was
 

Effetuens irrumator Es


A342

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.