Back in the Before Times, we’d go to a blog, read the post, read the comments, add a comment, and (usually) encounter interesting people who engaged us in interesting conversation. That probably feels like a fairytale to a lot of you, but it still happens here, because I think I’ve used a combination of no-fuck-giving and the banhammer to push away most of the idiots who would waste our time being dicks and just trying to disrupt our ability to communicate with each other.
Still, I imagine that a substantial percentage of you don’t have the time or interest to read what other people have to say, so it is for all of you that I am sharing this conversation I had over the weekend. I think you’ll dig it as much as I did.
In the comments to my post nebulat ergo cogito, Stephanie said
This is really beautifully written and I sincerely enjoyed reading it.
Nitpick/ question : If your title is “Fog therefore I think” then there’s a typo in your latin. There shouldn’t be a “t” on the end of “nebulat” because nouns in the in the nominative singular don’t change their endings. If you wanted it to be “I fog therefore I think” as a play on cogito (I think) ergo (therefore) sum (I am) I’d recommend adding an “ego” which is latin for “I” because nebula won’t function as a verb. Or for “fog is therefore I think” I might try “nebula est ergo cogito” Unless your title is meant to be something else and I missed it?Latin grammar nazi 😀
I replied
So I love that, of all the kinds of grammar Nazis you can be, you’re a Latin one, because that’s really freaking cool! I had a friend who could read and write Latin, and it was always fun to make him do it at parties.
The title is taken from a quote by Umberto Eco, and because I don’t speak Latin, or read it, or even understand it, I just copied it from him. 🙂
She said
I love Umberto Eco! My favourite is the Island of the Day Before, although I’ve never read something he wrote that I disliked. I deeply wish my Italian was strong enough to read him in his original language, because I think it must be beautiful, but I can barely order coffee. Anyway, excellent choice in source material 🙂
Umberto Eco was also a poet and medievalist, whereas my Latin language training was classical (think medieval English versus modern), so there could be some difference there. He was also far more skilled a Latinist than I will ever be.Basically, latin grammar uses different endings on the end of words in place of things like pronouns and prepositions, or to indicate if the verb is subject or object, plural or singular, etc. And Latin nouns never take a “t” ending so far as I know.
Given that I know the source is a poet, I’d say he added the ending to make nebula function as a verb in the 3rd person singular (he/she/it).
If that’s the case then the translation is roughly:
It fogs, therefore I think.
However, “ergo” may be static in meaning as “therefore” but “cogito” can mean: think; consider, reflect on, ponder; imagine, picture; intend, or look forward to; and “nebula” can mean: mist, fog; cloud (dust/smoke/confusion/error); thin film, veneer; or obscurity.
So there’s a lot of play with the translation, and we’ll never be able to say with 100% certainty what that translation should have been. As a writer and lifelong teacher, I’m sure Umberto Eco wouldn’t mind if you played with his words.
If you ever come across any more latin phrases and want a rough idea of their meaning this stuff might help you a little bit:
http://archives.nd.edu/words.html
http://www.dummies.com/languages/latin/declining-a-latin-noun/
Oh! that reminds me. Did you know that there’s a rule in English grammar that says it’s incorrect to split the infinitive? This is because in Latin the infinitive is a single word, so it’s physically impossible to split it and a long time ago, the original grammar Nazis decided that English grammar should adhere to the same rules as Latin. Of course that makes no sense at all, you can split the infinitive in English quite easily and its meaning is perfectly clear. The most famous example of the split infinitive? “To boldly go.”
Thus ends Latin to English translation 101.
I said
This is fascinating, Stephanie! Thank you for taking the time to share all of this stuff with me!
And she said
You’re more than welcome.
Latin is basically a math puzzle for the literary minded, so you’d probably really enjoy studying it since you enjoying programming and such. Have you ever thought about going back to school? A lot of people study things like languages and history and come away feeling like it’s just a bunch of names and dates and words to memorize, but if you have the right kind of mind for it, you’ll see that what it really is, is the study of the framework of our world. Once you learn to see the scaffolding that holds everything up, you get good at working with the shell that’s built up around it, and you realize that the anthropological idea that all history is fiction is literally true. If you spend enough time with languages then you start to see that writing is only a series of symbols which function as a kind of telepathy allowing you to read the thoughts of other people, whether it’s been hours or millennia since those thoughts were given form. Although It’s kind of weird when time loses its scope and the tragedies of 200 CE become just as immediate as something that happened yesterday.
I know you think of yourself as a creative type, but academia is creative, that’s why it produces so many people like Tolkien and CS Lewis and Umberto Eco. It also gives you a lot of free time to spend on other pursuits. Plus your performance ability would have made you an amazing professor, like really fantastic.
Things to think about in case you get bored.
Anne and I watched ARRIVAL this weekend, and that film deserves an entire post of its own, but something Stephanie said harmonically resonated with some dialog from the film. Amy Adams plays a linguistics professor, who is teaching her class about the origin of Portuguese:
So I was already thinking about how language and art are ways to express thoughts and emotions and all of those things that make us individuals. When I read Stephanie’s most recent comment this morning, it landed on me in a profound and meaningful way. Part of me wants to tell you precisely what that is, right now, but a different part of me, who I guess is in charge right now, would rather leave that thread out there for you to pull on in the hopes that you’ll share what, if anything, is makes you feel and think about … because I think that one of the biggest reasons we are staring into the Abyss right now is that we’ve started talking at each other, instead of talking to each other.
Every once in a great while there in the threads that link our pyche back through time ia a vibration. Thank you for posting!
Very interesting conversation. I also find it funny how far back grammar nazis go. “a long time ago, the original grammar Nazis decided that English grammar should adhere to the same rules as Latin.”
However, you ended your post by saying, “one of the biggest reasons we are staring into the Abyss right now is that we’ve started talking at each other, instead of talking to each other”. You are missing one very important detail. And I think it is the most important detail and influences if we are talking “to” or talking “at” each other. The person on the receiving end needs to be listening. If nobody is listening because they think the person talking is just an idiot, and everybody thinks those on the opposing end are idiots, then all we will be doing is talking at each other.
This statement from the start of your blog struck me as an example of not being willing to listen to, and really considering opposing view points. Even if most of what the person is saying is rubbish, there is still a good chance of establishing a better understanding. Without this, we can never hope to mend the divide, better ourselves and move society forward.
“I think I’ve used a combination of no-fuck-giving and the banhammer to push away most of the idiots who would waste our time being dicks”
Wow, I love that conversation. While I never studied linguistics, I absolutely love words and word-play, and am fascinated by etymology.
Anyway, as I was reading these posts I had this thought, that Umberto was trying to say ” It’s foggy, therefore I muse” – you know, like when the weather sucks we all tend to let our minds wander towards more profound issues, like what is the meaning of our life and such.
I just wanted to leave this idea here.
PS: I like this thing you’re doing, with more posts, even though I don’t visit you daily. And you’re right, it’s rare that I take the time to read post comments, even though sometimes they are quite interesting.
I studied Latin in High School and College, which was awesome and I loved it. The down side, though, is that you realize there is an AWFUL LOT of terrible faux-Latin out there, especially in sci-fi, fantasy, and RPGs. Instead of complaining about it, though, I usually just make the following offer:
To any author, game designer, etc., if you don’t know Latin I will gladly volunteer my services to help with your Latin translations! I’m not an expert, but I have studied it and I can at least get you something that’s grammatically accurate and says what you want it to say.
Same goes for you, Wil. If you ever need Latin help (or just want to learn some more about it), just let me know!
I did see the first half of the conversation and it was interesting. I usually skim the comments and read several of them. It’s all part of the participation. I LOVED arrival and wanted to rewatch it the second it went off. I love how language is tied to history and art is tied in with it all. I agree with others who have said they appreciate Wil’s response and how it started a conversation. It is so easy to be dismissive and it’s like he is constantly and consistently making an effort to never be dismissive here. It’s why we all feel connected.
You’re a nice guy, Wil. Thanks for always being kind.
In 2017 I’ve tried harder not to talk “at” people and try to be fully present when someone is talking to me. For instance, if my husband or my kids are talking to me, I put down my phone, my book, or I close the computer. All attention at one thing at a time. It’s hard. The phone can be a bad habit, but I try to keep it at bay. Small breaks. During nap. After bedtime. However, I’ve just started watching Game of Thrones and I’m afraid that has been…. addictive. At least it keeps me away from the internet.
I saw something recently as advice to treat your spouse better. It was the simple idea that you treat your spouse as a houseguest. Ask if they want a drink of water when you get one for yourself, tell them where you are going when you leave the room… simple considerations often lost when you spend so much time with someone.
I never studied much linguistics formally, but my wife did, and I picked up a lot from helping her with her study along with just hanging around various clever people at times. I really enjoy learning about it, though, because it’s an incredibly rich intersection of the arts and the sciences (or at the very least, the “physical” and “social” sciences).
On the one hand, you can study stuff like phonetics and syntax which involves careful measurement and consideration of the fundamental rules that let you put together a sentence, and then on the other you can see how a language is a by-product of culture, and history, and geography, and how it demonstrates the difference between the peasants and the ruling class, or between the farmers and the city-dwellers. Then you can look at how the way you think influences the way you speak, and how the way you speak influences the way you think. And how there is a correspondence between a word and a thing or an idea, but also a disconnect, and suddenly you’re in the realm of philosophy and asking to what extent the word “cow” is related to a particular bovine animal standing in a field.
It’s crazy, and it’s amazing, and it appeals so much to my personal desire to not just know that something works, but to understand how and why it works, and also to understand why it sometimes doesn’t work the way you expect it to. As a (not particularly good) speaker of Japanese, thinking about the language in terms of some of the different linguistic approaches helped me understand the language a bit better, and I realised that I discovered aspects of the language that native speakers never really thought about. Which then has helped me think about aspects of English that we mostly take for granted.
So anyway, I guess the point is, yeah this is fascinating and it’s wonderful that we can discuss these kinds of things on this here interblag.
Darn it, I’m a little behind in my RSS feeds right now. I just came across both this post and the previous one. I had had a similar thought as Stephanie did, which made this post even more enjoyable to read than it already was. Lingua Latina vivit!