Monday, January 07, 2019

So you want to show off your Latin

     Eugene Ehrlich. Amo, Amas, Amat and More (1985) A dictionary of Latin words and phrases in more or less common use. By the 1980s, Latin was removed from almost all high school curricula, even as an elective, but many people still used Latin tags and phrases. This book will help anyone who reads works from the 1980s and earlier.
     Ehrlich divagates often, adding wry and not so wry comments to his explanations. Such as this one:
     sit non doctissima coniunx
     A Roman formula for a happy marriage.
     One of Martial’s epigrams, Literally “may my wife not be very learned”, revealing more than we would like to know about one Roman’s attitude towards women.

    To which I would add, many men would agree with Martial. I don’t: I prefer sit doctissima coniunx.
      Ehrlich uses the English/American convention of Latin pronunciation. I learned a different one in Austria, but (as he points out) we don’t really know how Latin was pronounced. Nor, I think, do we know how the dialects varied. Pleasant introduction by William F. Buckley, Jr.  A well done reference book. ****

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