3 ms·

Cute, but I do think applying the actual Latin declination diminishes the rhetorical value of the phrase. English is mostly not declined, so readers in English

Cute, but I do think applying the actual Latin declination diminishes the rhetorical value of the phrase. English is mostly not declined, so readers in English often don't understand or expect to see words modified as dramatically as Latin grammar requires. So it becomes distracting, and probably ruins the joke for (the vast majority of) readers who don't know Latin. I would have gone with "lupa no grata" or even "lupus non grata" to maximize intelligibility to English readers. Classical Latin makes up a pretty tiny fraction of the lifetime of actual Latin usage, anyway. It happens to make up the bulk of the written literature that got passed down to modern scholars, but a hell of a lot more people actually spoke various pidgins of Latin, or transitional language as it changed into the Romance languages.

mbg721 5y ago
As a reader who does understand a little bit of classical Latin, I appreciated the correction.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> Classical Latin makes up a pretty tiny fraction of the lifetime of actual Latin usage, anyway. It happens to make up the bulk of the written literature that got passed down to modern scholars, but a hell of a lot more people actually spoke various pidgins of Latin, or transitional language as it changed into the Romance languages. Well, the amount of usage isn't quite the same question as the lifetime of the usage. 17th century international communication was done in classical Latin, albeit classical Latin that was mysteriously shifted closer to modern languages in a number of ways. An important treaty between Russia and China was formalized in Latin. (Though that might have been church Latin.) The lifetime of classical Latin isn't much shorter than the lifetime of Latin the living language that became the Romance languages. Also, while it's certainly true that modern Romance languages have diverged a long way from classical Latin, they haven't diverged in any way that's relevant here; they all still inflect adjectives to match the modified nouns. (Which is the only declensional phenomenon here that might surprise an English speaker - English still declines nouns to distinguish singular from plural. This is so natural to the modern English speaker that it was correct in the attempted phrase lupae non grata. The nominative case is expected from an English speaker, but is also, by coincidence, correct for classical Latin.)

mbg721 5y ago

As a reader who does understand a little bit of classical Latin, I appreciated the correction.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> Classical Latin makes up a pretty tiny fraction of the lifetime of actual Latin usage, anyway. It happens to make up the bulk of the written literature that got passed down to modern scholars, but a hell of a lot more people actually spoke various pidgins of Latin, or transitional language as it changed into the Romance languages. Well, the amount of usage isn't quite the same question as the lifetime of the usage. 17th century international communication was done in classical Latin, albeit classical Latin that was mysteriously shifted closer to modern languages in a number of ways. An important treaty between Russia and China was formalized in Latin. (Though that might have been church Latin.) The lifetime of classical Latin isn't much shorter than the lifetime of Latin the living language that became the Romance languages. Also, while it's certainly true that modern Romance languages have diverged a long way from classical Latin, they haven't diverged in any way that's relevant here; they all still inflect adjectives to match the modified nouns. (Which is the only declensional phenomenon here that might surprise an English speaker - English still declines nouns to distinguish singular from plural. This is so natural to the modern English speaker that it was correct in the attempted phrase lupae non grata. The nominative case is expected from an English speaker, but is also, by coincidence, correct for classical Latin.)