Lance Birch wrote:
> 
> Um, Ken... I don't ACTUALLY speak Latin!  (Despite the my last post :-* Hey,
> did you honk? ;-)
> 
> > Ve'ni, vi'di, vi'ci, di'es ir'ae.
> > Vae vic'tis, sic tran'sit glo'ria mun'di.
> 
> Anyway, what does your message translate to???

Veni vidi vici--quote from Julius Caesar's autobiographical account of a
military encounter... traditionally translated as "I came, I saw, I
conquered." Vici can also be translated as "I overcame," giving the quote even
more repetition, but I digress (even further).

"Dies irae... Day of Wrath. A thirteenth-century Latin hymn on the Day of
Judgement, sung at the requiem mass." (from 'Amo, Amas, Amat and More', by
Eugene Ehrlich)

Vae victis--woe to the conquered. Spoken, I believe, by a "barbarian" (from
the latin for "beard") conquerer of Rome. He reportedly uttered this while
forcing the Roman citizens to pay him a certain weight in gold. When they
objected, he threw his sword on the side of the scale with the weight,
requiring even more gold to balance the scale...
"The words, literally 'woe to the vanquished,' attributed by Livy [famous
Roman historian] to Brennus, a chief of the Gauls arranging terms of peace
with the Romans in 390 BC..." (ibid.)

"Sic transit gloria mundi... so passes away the glory of the world. ...used at
the oronation of a pope..." (ibid.)

Ibid.-- an abbreviation for "ibidem", translated as "in the same place".


> Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et
> fructuosis potiri potes! :-)

Somehow, these services haven't been in much demand, lately... except for this
message, of course. I guess that's what I get for studying a "dead" language
(by which I mean that it is no one's native tongue. It may be the Vatican's
official language, but they aren't exactly known for keeping up to date.)

> Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad
> caput tuum saxum immane mittam.

That's not usually a phrase I can laugh at :)

> or
> 
> Anulos qui animum ostendunt omnes gestemus! (OK, maybe not)

Ack! You forced me to get my Latin dictionary. (I didn't stick with Latin for
long.) And... my only response is that we're certainly displaying something
here, with all of this Latin... anyway...

> HAVE FUN!!!
> 
> --
> Lance.

For someone who doesn't speak Latin...
...actually, (nearly) no one speaks latin anymore. Some people can read it;
and some of them can read it well.

(Latin provided by Henry Beard:)

Care Sancte Nicholas, aveo horologium manuale Rolicis, quattuor vestitus
Armanios, et curram a Ferrario factum.



An afterthought--wouldn't Esperanto be a better choice for a POV language? It
was designed to be nice to deal with... the only major drawback being that I
don't know anyone who speaks it (including myself).

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