Dead as Dead Can Be

Catherine1642

New Member

Hi All,

I was reading Suetonius and for some reason this famous little poem constantly popping up my head (maybe his vocabs are pretty crazy I don't know...):). I tried to translate it to latin but stuck on the second sentence.

Here's my try:

Latin is a language
Latinus est linguam (not so sure about the this, since it seems that this sentence is the antecedent of the next one.)
Dead as dead can be.
(No clue how to translate...:( )
First it killed the Romans,
Primum Romanos necavit,
Now it's killing me.
Iamque me necabat.


Any help will be appreciated! Thanks in advance!;)
 

AVGVSTA

Active Member

Location:
Quantum superposition between future and antiquity
Maybe mortuissima mortuissimarum? the most dead of the deadest? Also why is linguam in the accusative?
 

Mafalda

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Paulopolis
The problem with the famous little poem is that it does not make sense (just think of the logic of it: it is killing me because it is dead), and if you try to translate nonsense you will get nonsense.
 

Iáson

Cívis Illústris

  • Civis Illustris

quam maximē mortua?
The Latin for 'Latin' as a language is Latīna lingua.
There's no reason to use the imperfect in the fourth line.
 

Serenus

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Lingua Latina est lingua
quam maximē mortua.
Prīmum Rōmānōs occīdit,
nunc mē quoque occīdit.

The first occīdit is a perfect and the second one is in the present tense. Maybe I should've used interfēcit and interfacit, or necāvit and necat.
 
 

Dantius

Homo Sapiens

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
in orbe lacteo
quam mortuissima? :D
It's silly, but so is the phrase "dead as dead can be", or the whole poem for that matter.
 

Glabrigausapes

Philistine

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Milwaukee
If you're willing to make a few concessions, you can keep a little bit of the rhyme and meter (without which this whole bit of doggerel is, in my opinion, inappreciable and waste):

Est Latina lingua (There is the Latin language,)
mortua sane. (dead by all means)
Prius haec Romanos, (First it (lit. 'this thing I just mentioned') the Romans
nunc occidit me. (now is killing me.)

It's not classical, really, but that goes without saying. The last two lines are made a little better by the fact that occidit is morphologically ambiguous, it may be either present or past (one to agree with the time of the Romans, the other ours).
 
Top