Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 April 22

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

April 22

Latin translation please?

I need a Latin term for a 16th century piece of quackery I've made up, tentatively called, in English, Doctor Scalfrotto's Organon of Beautification. Feel free to improvise - it can be a longish term - it's 'a manner of exercising the cranial muscles that the face is brought into closer agreement with the current conception of male comeliness'.

thanks in advance

Adambrowne666 (talk) 05:37, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Well organon is already Latin, or actually Greek but borrowed directly, or Latinized as organum. So how about "Organon Exornationis Doctoris Scalfrotto". Adam Bishop (talk) 07:36, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

That's a nice one - are there synonyms that make the meaning clearer to those of us (me) that don't know Latin at all? Don't have to use organon if you don't want to... Thanks again. Adambrowne666 (talk) 07:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

You could say "Instrumentum Decorationis...", which uses words with English derivatives. Adam Bishop (talk) 07:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

thanks again - but at the risk of overstaying my welcome, are there any synonyms for 'decorationis' that are closer to 'beautification', 'handsomisation', that kinda thing? Adambrowne666 (talk) 04:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Probably none that would be immediately recognizable - if you stick all the Latin roots in "beautification" together, you get "bellitatificatio". "Bellificatio" doesn't look familiar either (and also suggests "war-making"!). Handsome is a good old Germanic word so there's no Latin cognate. Adam Bishop (talk) 04:43, 23 April 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.210.170.49 (talk)

Actually, I like 'bellificatio' - for my eye it works to suggest beautification rather than bellicose behaviour - thanks so much, Adam Bishop; I think we've got a winner. Adambrowne666 (talk) 06:24, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome - it's not really a Latin word, but 16th century quackery and made-up Latin words go well together! Adam Bishop (talk) 08:04, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

All the better! Adambrowne666 (talk) 08:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, if we really want to be pedantic and make it pseudo-Latin, we could even change the 'Scalfrotto' into the genitive 'Scalfrottonis', as all nouns that end in '-o' would be in Ancient Latin (even though 'Scalfrotto' is not an '-n' noun). Or even 'Scalfrotti'. After all, it should agree with 'doctoris'. ChokinBako (talk) 10:52, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

thanks for that Adambrowne666 (talk) 07:48, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

A couple of questions on French

I have a few short questions on French.

1. In Australia, just after the French news in the morning on SBS, there is an announcement in French. A female voice announces something about radio in French (presumably SBS radio), then says what sounds like "soyez denautre." This I'm quite sure doesn't mean anything, so what is she actually saying?

2. I heard David Pujadas say something on the news that sounded like "agissance." Is this a word? I assume it comes from agissant, the adjective, rather than the present participle of agir (though the adjective is presumably just the present participle that has become a separate headword). Also, in general, can you form French words by taking the present participle, eg. chantant, then changing the ending to -ance, ie. chantance, to create, say, a gerund? Is there such a thing as a gerund in French? Thanks in advance 203.221.126.94 (talk) 21:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the other questions (if no one comes around I'll see what I can do), but French does have a gerund, it looks like a present participle preceded by "en": "en mangeant", "(while/in) eating". (This is a coincidence from Latin, where the present participle stem ended in -nt and the gerund/gerundive ended in -nd, but the d became devoiced to a t as it evolved into French). French can also use the infinitive as a gerund but I suppose that is technically not really a gerund (same as in Latin, and in English). Adam Bishop (talk) 01:08, 23 April 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.210.170.49 (talk)

OK, here's a stab at the rest...is she saying "soyez d'un(e) autre"? That doesn't really seem to make sense in isolation, but without listening to it I can't make any other guess. "Agissance" doesn't seem to be a word, perhaps it was the plural "agissants"? I also don't think you can make abstract nouns by adding -ance...in Latin that was productive, abstract nouns (which is what this form makes, not gerunds) could be created by adding -ia to the stem of the present participle (-ant-/-ent-), which turned into -ance/-ence during the evolution of French, but I don't think modern French does that anymore. Old French did, which is the origin of English words with that ending (consider "parlance"), but now I think French tends to use the infinitive for abstract nouns. Adam Bishop (talk) 04:35, 23 April 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 205.210.170.49 (talk)

1. She certainly says: "soyez des nôtres" (join us) — 2. "Agissance" does not belong to the French lexicon. "Agissant" (acting), "s'agissant de" (as regards sth/sby) do. AldoSyrt (talk) 07:02, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

"Soyez des nôtres": the phrase is an abbreviation of "Soyez l'un des nôtres", and means "be one of us". Soyez is the second person plural of être at the imperative. "Nôtres" is not very much in use any more, except in this phrase. You can see were it comes from if you think of the Spanish "nosotros".

Are you sure it isn't "Agissements"? That would mean acts, actions etc. I have never heard "agissance". And no, you cannot always create a word by adding -ance, it is not generative any longer. Do you have more context? --Lgriot (talk) 07:08, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Lgriot, I don't think nôtre[s] is so rare. It is the standard possessive pronoun corresponding to English ours, or our one: Leur chien est plus vieux que le nôtre ("Their dog is older than ours"). If we see this nôtre on the web without the circumflex, it's normally in a context of generally reduced use of diacritics, such as you get in French emails.

Nôtre also occurs as a possessive adjective, instead of notre in certain rare contexts. Petit Robert gives this account of such uses:

[Nôtre] I Adj. poss. À nous, de nous. Vx Cette idée nôtre: cette idée de nous.

Mod. et littér. (attribut) «Nous les avons faites nôtres [ces émotions]» (Proust). À présent, elles sont nôtres.

Compare English this idea of ours, perhaps. Or better, something of Shakespeare's:

O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?

O, stay and hear; your true love's coming.

Closely analogous.

Quant à agissance, ça n'existe pas.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 08:59, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Sure, I forgot about "c'est le nôtre" type of structures. you are right, the word is far from being dead. --Lgriot (talk) 12:20, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

There's a very famous French drinking song, which goes like :

Il est des nôtres

Il a bu son coup comme les autres

C'est un ivrogne

Ça se voit, c'est écrit sur sa trogne !

meaning something like : He's one of us / He drained his glass like all of us / He's a drunkard / You can tell it from looking at his mug (face). As to l'agissance, I confirm it doesn't exist. It might (???) have been la jouissance (for ex : avoir la jouissance d'un bien = to be entitled to use something), but one should listen to the whole sentence. 89.83.23.161 (talk) 20:03, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for some great answers, folks. Lgriot, you are very clever indeed, since after posting the question, with the aid of a bigger dictionary, I came to the conclusion that it was almost certainly agissements, as the context made (relatively) plain. It was about the agissments of Catholic priests, as admitted humbly by Pope Benedict XVI. Thanks as always to you bright sparks out there. I could add "resolved" at the top, but it might annoy people who may still be discussing this one. thx. 203.161.95.46 (talk) 03:38, 26 April 2008 (UTC)