Talk:Latin profanity

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Latin profanity has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

An entry from Latin profanity appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 29 March 2006. It said "Did you know...that we know about Latin profanity from both graffiti at Pompeii, and from the poems of Martial, Catullus, and Horace?"

Contents 1 French : Miction 2 glubit 3 Poem names and translations 4 Featured article material 5 Vegliot Dalmatian 6 "Eery" expression 7 Cunnus and its cognates 8 Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo 9 Would Bartlet be relevant? 10 Translation of Catullus 105 11 "какать" (Kakat') 12 Mentula 13 Cunnus in English, and gender 14 futuis 15 Is "metaphorically" the right word? 16 profanity? 17 Romanian: Penis 18 Inconsistency 19 Origin of Latin "penis" 20 fossa/fotze?

[edit] French : Miction

The french word "miction", which is the medical-technical term for urinating, is an obious descendant of the latin's take a piss. Is it specific to french and should it appear on the page ?

I think it should. Anyway, please sign your messages. Thank You! --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 02:17, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so. Scientific terms were borrowed from Latin, not inherited from it. bogdan 22:44, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] glubit

As someone who doesn't know Latin and has seen (I can't say "read") only a few of Catullus's poems, I'm hoping for "glubo" to be discussed here, at least in brief. —JerryFriedman 20:30, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Poem names and translations

Some of the Catullus poems are incorrectly labelled, I think. Will someone with more knowledge correct that, please?

Also, where does "I will bugger and ream you, you faggot Aurelius and you pervert Furius, because you thought me indecent because my poems are somewhat sissified." come from? I cannot find that translation anywhere.

Most of the translations are my own. Smerdis of Tlön 15:18, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Featured article material

surely? (unsigned comment)

I think that this article is good for being a good article candidate. As for feature article status, it needs some fine tuning. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 09:58, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vegliot Dalmatian

Keenan Pepper asked whether "Is this notable??". Yes, Dalmatian language, although extinct, is notable for being on a different branch from the other Romance languages. Also, I'll say that people who read this kind of articles are interested in obscure things such as how to say "shit" in an extinct language. :-) bogdan 22:29, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's a good point, but I don't want this to turn into yet another example of list creep, in which a short list of examples grows ridiculously long as every passing reader adds his or her favorite. —Keenan Pepper 23:08, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Eery" expression

It is eery -to say the least - hearing in Romanian the identical expression as in the Latin fiction "cum veni(i) futui" (meaning "as soon as I came I fucked").

I'm not even sure what this means. "Latin fiction"? Why is there an extra i in parentheses? Where is this quote from? —Keenan Pepper 22:22, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, this expression can be easily found in the Pompeii inscriptions ("ego cum veni futui"), which might be interpreted as belonging to the vulgar Latin, but it also can be found in the Latin texts (Latin literature). I will check some examples. When I encountered this expression in the literary Latin I was astonished because it is identical to the everyday language in Oltenia-Romania, where I used to live for a while. It is one of the very few examples to illustrate how the ancient Latin - a very concise language, like the Ancient Greek and other ancient languages - has preserved part of its concisiveseness in at least one of the modern neolatin languages (Romanian). "Cum veni futui" - 3 words - can only be translated in modern languages like Englsih or others by using no less than 7 words : "as soon as I came I fucked".

The "i" in the paranthesis reflects the modern Romanian ortography for the expression. In Latin: "cum veni futui" can be translated in Romanian by "cum venii, futui". Same expression, same pronounciation, one more "i" added in the Romanian writting. I would add that it is not the only example where we can see entire expressions being conserved in Romanian from the Latin: when you are saying in Latin "multae caprae sunt", this expression is absolutely identical with the Romanian "multe capre sunt" or "sunt multe capre". To my knowledge the Romanian is the only neolatin language that has preserved whole expressions from Latin; in other words it has preserved the spirit of the Latin language. Other neolatin languages have "processed " the words and the expressions according to their new rules.

I have also changed the text about "shit" (merda); it was incorrect to consider that the Romanian language has lost this word since the verb "a desmierda" comes directly from merda and it is used on a daily basis in Romanian. It was only a an omission of the author, I think.

Giuvan

[edit] Cunnus and its cognates

Cunnus has a distinguished Indo-European lineage. It is cognate with English cunt

Isn't this rather debatable, given what Grimm's Law did to other Latin words beginning with the same sound? Marnanel 03:16, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I would think so, yes, and a search with "cunt etymology" on Google indeed gives many sources which refute that etymology. (See for example here or there.) I have edit the section, but I'm unsure what to do with the rest of the etymology, since that too has no source to back it up. Alatius 11:57, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo

What article on Latin profanity could be complete without this gem, pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo, from Catullus 16 (I will make you my boy etc):

Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,

Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi, qui me ex versiculis meis putastis, quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum. Nam castum esse decet pium poetam ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est; qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem, si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici, et quod pruriat incitare possunt, non dico pueris, sed his pilosis, qui duros nequeunt movere lumbos. Vos, quod milia multa basiorum legistis, male me marem putatis? Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo.

Saganaki- 07:37, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Would Bartlet be relevant?

There is an episode of The West Wing (Two Cathedrals) in which Jed Bartlet gets angry at God, saying

"Gratias tibi ago, domine. Haec credam a deo pio? A deo iusto, a deo scito? Cruciatus in crucem. Tuus in terra servus, nuntius fui. Officium perfeci. Cruciatus in crucem. Eas in crucem!"

which means

"I give thanks to you, O Lord. Am I really to believe that these are the acts of a loving God? A just God? A wise God? To hell with your punishments. I was your servant here on Earth. And I spread your word and I did your work. To hell with your punishments. To hell with you!"

Would this be relevant enough to add?

[edit] Translation of Catullus 105

MosheA says the verb is conare, "to know", but I know of no such verb. I think it's conari, the deponent verb meaning "to try", and a quick search for translations supports this interpretation.[1][2] —Keenan Pepper 19:20, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "какать" (Kakat')

Surely that's its right transliteration, instead of the latter "Kakaty", or may it be some typing mistake? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Frango com Nata (talk • contribs) 18:03, 27 January 2007 (UTC). Frango com Nata 18:04, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mentula

In what sense is "mentula" an "obscenity"? Does a Roman say "hey, chick, dig the size of my mentula", or "fuck off, you mentula"? The wp article suggests the former, while an article about the Game of Mentula (really!) suggests the latter:

Mentula itself is a Latin colloquial term meaning 'little dick'. Ceasar's officer Mamurra was mockingly called Mentula; Catullus mentions him under this name in four of his poems, for instance this distich:

Mentula moechatur. Moechatur Mentula? Certe!

Hoc est quod dicunt: ipsa olera olla legit.

-- Isidore 21:54, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cunnus in English, and gender

Cunnus was listed as the equivalent of vagina. Now, even though that word is often used today of the external female genitalia, rather than the internal organ, viz. the birth canal, it is strictly speaking not correct. Since it seems reasonably clear that cunnus refer mainly to the visible parts, rather than the vagina proper I have changed it to the more fitting vulva.

However, I would actually prefer cunt, etc., as it said earlier, since it has the same connotations (vague pun intended) as the latin word, but I guess the more neutral english term is preferable in Wikipedia, and I am not bold enough.

I also think that the following sections were spurious:

...its military nature explaining the masculine gender of the French vagin.

In Portuguese it has been logically transferred to the feminine gender

This seems to stem from an improper understanding of the concept of grammatical vis-à-vis sexual gender. Words commonly change gender as languages evolve, and more often that not (as far as I know) with little regard for actual alleged sexuality of the word in question. Especially the explanation that vagin should have become masculine due to the alleged masculinity of warfare strikes me as very fanciful, and unless someone can give a quotation from a linguist that states that this is in fact the probable explanation, I think it is best left out. And, in any case, it has little to do with the subject. Alatius 11:57, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] futuis

Does it make any sense at all to have a comment in the section on this word that the person who used it did not do so correctly? Since when did Cicero become the standard by which we who come to Latin as a second language will make comments that a NATIVE Speaker of the language made an error? By that standard then all of the Russians can start telling Americans that we speak incorrectly because we don't sound like Shakespeare. I am not looking to cause a deliberate fight but really, this comment in the article in inapropriate. I feel offended myself for the poor lady who left us a bit of how she speaks and might have never written anything else in her whole life, and we are going to critisize and correct her! I actually feel that she might represent how most people said the word then and that Cicero might be wrong. Maybe all the Roman eleits spoke with a lipst and that is how they got a different spelling. A much more important question is why Cicero, who killed his own people out of sheer greed, fellow Roman Citizens, without trial so that he could rule like a dictator for the rest of his year as Consul; why is he our standard to judge this woman's bit of writting as wrong. I can not protest the comment in the article strongly enough. It clearly shows an unfair bias to the Classical Latin Only movement and needs, really really needs to be removed.--Billiot 05:10, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

The phrase you find offending is: "Please note that the grammar of these graffiti is not Classical Latin; Cicero, for instance, would have written futuisti instead of futuis." I don't see a problem with this, at is it stated. Classical Latin, by definition, is the literary language of the upper class (more or less), and Cicero has traditionally, from the renaissance and on, been regarded as the chief model for this literary standard. What is pointed out is merely that the written Classical Latin is not necessarily the same as the Vulgar Latin which was spoken in the streets. I don't think it is meant to be judging or condescending. (However, I would change it to "...is not in accord with that of Classical Latin...".) Alatius 09:33, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Something more neutral definatly needs to be said if anything is said at all. Let us remember that Ciciro probably didn't go around correcting other people's Latin even though modern English speakers love to correct one another. I would like to say very strongly that I think it wrong and inapropriate for us to have anything in the article that would appear to seem as if we are correcting the grammar of the sentence. For all we know it was the real correct way and the rich people just had a funny way of their own. Mentioning a difference form Classical Latin in itself is ok, but we really need to find a way to not seem to be correcting a Native Speaker of Latin. After all Classical Latin isn't the Only Latin that ever existed.--Billiot 11:46, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it is better to say what type of Latin it is as opposed to what type of Latin it isn't. This would allow it to be mentioned in a possitive light and not a negative light giving the impression that it is somehow wrong. I would be much better to change the article to say that it IS vulgar Latin, where now it says that it ISN'T classical Latin.--Billiot 16:55, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Sure, why not, sounds fine to me. Alatius 19:01, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is "metaphorically" the right word?

Normally I wouldn't be quite so picky, but in an article about Latin vocabulary and grammar I just cannot resist. In the following passage from the "cunnus" entry, should not "metaphorically" be something "through 'synecdoche' or 'metonymy'" (probably synecdoche):

Horace's Sermones I.2 and I.3 use the word:

Nam fuit ante Helenam cunnus taeterrima belli
causa. . .

which attributes, metaphorically, the cause of the Trojan War to Helen of Troy's vulva.

--BSweezy 21:19, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. —Tamfang 04:12, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I changed this in what was a slight fit of overactiivity while doing a recent changes patrol (I forgot to check talk), having checked talk I put it back, but in a way I thought was clearer. If there's consensus against that, it's fine, but the revert message said it had been that way a long time, when it had been that way for 8 minutes. SamBC 17:08, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] profanity?

This article is about obscene language, not profane language. The title of the article is wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.93.17.66 (talk) 23:46, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Romanian: Penis

The article claims makes it sound like vargă is the preferred word for penis. As a Romanian speaker, I never have heard this word and it's obscure at best. The preferred word in Romanian is "pulă" which probably derives from the Latin 'pilum' or spear. So the article is correct in that the word is euphemistic and indirect, but the article just uses the wrong word! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.166.64.3 (talk) 15:36, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inconsistency

Why does the article translate "merda" as "shit", but "cunnus" as "vulva"? Yet the text itself makes clear that "cunnus" was considered an obscene word - meaning that the translation would be "cunt" or perhaps "pussy". Alternatively, if Wikipedia's policy is to give formal translations that don't reflect the vulgarity of the Latin words, why is "merda" not translated as "faeces" or "excrement"? 86.155.66.63 (talk) 17:13, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Origin of Latin "penis"

• Latin profanity#Synonyms and metaphors says "The Latin word pēnis itself originally meant "tail". Cicero's ad Familiares, 9.22, observes that ... ". But I read in a book about Latin that Latin "penis came from earlier *pesnis, compare Ancient Greek πεος (= "penis")". Did Cicero here have a good reference for his statement, or was he theorizing? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:28, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] fossa/fotze?

Could there be a connection between the German "Fotze" and the Latin "Fossa"? --Slashme (talk) 15:03, 10 June 2008 (UTC)