Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Latin is a Language, as Dead as Dead Can Be.

It killed the ancient Romans, and now it's killing me...

Yes, I definitely have torn my triceps. Not fun. Have a heat pack and some painkillers and am grumpy. We have a bank holiday coming up this weekend which I am not going to work, so I should get enough rest for it to heal.

Oh - and to the person who emailed me to point out that it should be tricep - no, it shouldn't. Nor should it be bicep. Triceps and biceps are Latin words and they are singular. If you want to be really picky the correct plural forms are tricipites and bicipites. But we English speakers (of all varieties) are lazy, so we use triceps and biceps as both singular and plural.

See - I told you I was grumpy.

I did Latin at school. I was no good at it. I have tried to learn it as an adult. I am still no good at it. I can remember some things though. Such as the plural form of triceps.

And Three Blind Mice (which I think goes...tres mures, tres mures, quae qui currant, quae qui currant, secuna agricolae uxorem, quae caudo secuit cultro rem, qui vidit magis mirabilem quam hos mures... I can say it but I'm not sure I can spell it correctly these days, it's been a hell of a long time since age 11).

Oh yeah, my Latin teacher was singularly unamused by my writing those two opening sentences in the front of my Latin workbook...I got detention for a fortnight.

See you next week. Goodnight and may your God/s go with you.

Ze

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