Latin is cool

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Anonymous

Guest

Hi there,

My name is Noel and I have a (hopefully) simple question. :)

I'd like to translate the sentence "Latin is cool" into Latin for my young nephew. Can anyone help?

It'd be great to have an equivalent Latin phrase!

Also, if I wanted to keep the word "cool" in the phrase, how would I decline it?

Thanks for your help, and looking forward to hearing from you!

Noel
 

Chamaeleo

New Member

Location:
Melbourne
Re: Translation

That's silly.

“Cool” in Latin would in indeclinable, until such time as it was absorbed into the language. It is also possible that it would stay indeclinable for ever. For example, my name, David, of Hebrew origin, appears in the Latin bible without any case endings.

Lingua Latína est “cool”.
 
B

Bitmap

Guest

Re: Translation

CHAMÆLEO dixit:
That's silly.

“Cool” in Latin would in indeclinable, until such time as it was absorbed into the language. It is also possible that it would stay indeclinable for ever. For example, my name, David, of Hebrew origin, appears in the Latin bible without any case endings.
That's what Latin did with a lot of Hebrew names/words ... it declined borrowed words from Greek, though. We can only speculate what it would have done with English words :p ... but modern inflectional languages like German tend to inflect their English borrowings (Latein ist eine coole Sprache!)
 
 

Matthaeus

Vemortuicida strenuus

  • Civis Illustris

  • Patronus

Location:
Varsovia
Re: Translation

Just use: Lingua latina omnium linguarum optima atque pulcherrima est. A little long, but more profound and elegant than the rampant, ubiquitous 'cool', which I believe has lost its force. :)
 

Chamaeleo

New Member

Location:
Melbourne
Re: Translation

Bitmap dixit:
That's what Latin did with a lot of Hebrew names/words ... it declined borrowed words from Greek, though.
Ah, but that's because Greek had virtually the same system of inflection. It would be perverse not to decline them!

Bitmap dixit:
We can only speculate what it would have done with English words :p ... but modern inflectional languages like German tend to inflect their English borrowings (Latein ist eine coole Sprache!)
That's different too. German doesn't have a broad variety of different declensions and agreements. It's a simple matter to add an e for to all foreign adjectives used immediately before a feminine noun. It's not really any more complicated than the English practice of putting an s on the end of foreign nouns to make plurals.

Deciding whether we're going to say “coolus, coola, coolum” or “coolis, coolis, coole” is a harder question. Arbitrary decisions have to be made. It starts to sound rather silly.

If you want something that sounds like slang, I'd prefer to find a Neo-Latin term based on Romance-language slang. This would give us “formídabilis”, “grandis”, “super” (indeclinable), “excelléns”, “phantasticus”, “incrédibilis”.

Or, as Mattheus said, you can just use non-slang.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest

Re: Translation

Bitmap dixit:
If you want something that sounds like slang, I'd prefer to find a Neo-Latin term based on Romance-language slang. This would give us “formídabilis”, “grandis”, “super” (indeclinable), “excelléns”, “phantasticus”, “incrédibilis”.
Great thanks. So in a sentence that would be, for example, Lingua Latina est super or Lingua Latina est phantasticus

Is that right?

Thanks!
 

Chamaeleo

New Member

Location:
Melbourne
Re: Translation

winterbottom dixit:
Great thanks. So in a sentence that would be, for example, Lingua Latina est super or Lingua Latina est phantasticus

Is that right?

Thanks!
It would have to be Lingua Latína est phantastica. Both Latínus and phantasticus need to change their ending to agree with the feminine noun.
 
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