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.

Happy Sunday.

The rain was coming down steadily when I walked to my car. By the time I got in and closed the door, I was cold and wet, water dripping off my hair, down my neck and into my eyes. I turned the key, and my headlights came on. Through the raindrops on my window, the reflected taillights of the car parked in front of me looked like stained glass. The trees, shrubs, and houses up the block looked like an impressionist painting.

I wiped as much water off my head and face as I could. It was running down my back, now, and I shivered. I still didn’t regret not bringing an umbrella. It never rains in Southern California, as they sang in 1972, so when we get a brief storm, I like to experience it to the fullest.

I started the car, and pushed a button on my steering column. The impressionist painting and stained glass were wiped away, revealing the stark realism of a residential street in the hills, a small, muddy river beginning to flow down the center of it.

I pulled away from the curb and began what would be a very slow drive home, through dark and winding streets that eventually put me up onto Mulholland, where I entered fog so thick, it could have been a cloudbank. The rain continued to fall, making the puddles on the road deeper than I expected. Winding across the spine of the hills that separate Hollywood from The Valley, the fog enveloped me, reflected my headlights back to me, turning the entirety of the world outside my car into a short stretch of pavement surrounded by a nearly uniform grey blob. I turned off the radio, my only tangible connection to the rest of humanity, and imagined that I was alone in a space between worlds.

I followed the slow turns, past the occasional suggestion of a hillside, a fence, or a turnout. The rain came down harder, mixing with the fog and my headlights to create a whiteout. I slowed my car, almost to a stop, and silently waited for reality to finish buffering.