A friend of mine asked me this on my own blog today, and I thought I'd check with you, professor, about it...
She said:
"Illegitimi non carborundum" is supposedly something like "Don't let the bastards grind you down", but since I don't speak Latinish, I wouldn't know. :P
So is that what that means? Told her I'd double-check with you.
~Rachael
9 comments:
Ha! Not this again!
I cannot tell you how many people have come to me asking if this phrase is correct, or even if it is Latin. And, of course it is not (how could my beloved Romans come up with something crass like that?!! They have infinitely more subtle ways to abuse....) Here is the link to wikipedia, the bible of pop culture research! See y' all tomorrow,
EM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegitimi_non_carborundum
LOL! Sorry about that, professor... and thank you. I wasn't sure so I had to ask. I'll definitely let my friend know...
nonononono, I don't mind it at all that you ask, it just offends me personally when people aspire to the grandeur and the authority of the Latin language without having put in the hard work that you all put every semester to understand it. If there is *anyone* who has the right to dog-Latin it's you guys, not the marines (no offense to the marines, but they took 'semper fidelis'---and now this??!!!)
In arms,
EM.
nonono I don't have any problem with you asking the question---what bothers me is peeps who aspire to the beauty and grandeur and authority of Latin w/o taking the time to understand it like you all do every semester. I mean, if there is anyone who is entitled to dog Latin, it's you guys after all you hard work, not the marines! (with all due respect to the marines: Guys, please, first you took "semper fidelis" now you come up with this?!!!)
In arms at 7. 20 am,
EM
Ha, I just published the draft too
---I think the marines are already punishing me!
Later,
EM.
LOL! That's okay...
I understand perfectly what you mean... Just yesterday, I was trying to correct an acquaintance of mine who was trying to put together phrases she made up in Latin simply by looking up the words in an English-to-Latin dictionary... Nothing declined, nothing conjugated... ::shudders:: I think I made her brain shut down with "well, no, that should be in the genitive and that should be in the ablative plural..." etc. LOL!
I'm still trying to figure out what Dean was saying in that last attempted exorcism (the one I posted video for)... It sounds like "Spiritus immunde/immundi..." then something gibberish - I can't even begin to guess what it is though phonetically it sounds like "undelara/ungalara"... and then "persona tote/personae totae/persona toti" not sure... His enunciation is horrible! But they have a Latin prof from UBC as a consultant, so I would think that it had to have been something before his pronunciation butchered it... I just can't seem to figure out what... LOL!
This is what I do in my spare time... I'd say it was sad if it weren't so much fun!
I finally got the video clips to work and listened to Dean's Latin, which is, as you guessed, barely Latin at all. "Spiritus Immundus" is a legit phrase meaning "unclean spirit", that is the devil, and I think I have heard it in the context of exorcisms before. But he would need to use the vocative "Spiritus Immunde" which he is not (I think he uses the gentive). Ungalara is not a word at all, but I assume it would stand for "get out", or the like. As for "tota persona" yes it means "whole person" but he would need some ablative there, like "e tota persona" (come out of this entire body?). Either way, his effort is appreciated even though he didn't pay attention to Latin class!
This whole conversation reminds me of the original, the one and only Exorcist, which literally drove people nuts when it came out in the seventies (I still hear that music sometimes...so eerie, such a premonition...) Anyhoo, I make it my duty to remind people that the only priest who actually defeats the devil is Greek, the absolutely gorgeous father Damian Karas.
Greeks rule baby!
LOL! Yeah... thanks for listening, glad you enjoyed it. I didn't think "ungalara" or any possible variation was a real word, but that's certainly what he's saying sounds like, and that's what people were guessing he was saying on a French message board about the show... But they know French and a few know English... none of them claimed to actually know Latin, so...
It's possible that he was meaning to say the vocative "spiritus immunde" but like I said, his Latin pronunciation is always kind of atrocious... Sam's is a bit better... because he did pay attention in class. The second embedded video in this post ( http://mylatinexperience.blogspot.com/2007/03/posting-more-crazy-tv-stuff-cause-i-can.html ) has Dean reading an exorcism ritual when he doesn't lose the book... which I also tried to figure out and translate for the Superwiki (http://supernatural.oscillating.net/index.php?title=Exorcism#Exorcisms_in_Supernatural_episodes); it's what I did to try to keep up on Latin over the summer. I need to go back and double-check my attempted translations again now that we've gone through Latin 3 and have had more grammar because I remember that there were quite a few uses of "ut" in the other rituals and I probably didn't translate those clauses correctly...
LOL! I've never seen The Exorcist actually... just never managed to catch it on tv or anywhere else. Although, Linda Blair did guest star in an episode of Supernatural last season and Dean did make a joke about her looking familiar and that he wanted some pea soup at the end. LOL! I think I'll see if I can find some of her scenes...
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