tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post8361105243327740552..comments2023-08-10T05:32:21.163-04:00Comments on An Examined Life: Nuts to You, Boys!Vitae Scrutatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12808120163472036743noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-29533390879885193662008-05-26T23:57:00.000-04:002008-05-26T23:57:00.000-04:00This is why I enjoy reading this blog so: higher l...This is why I enjoy reading this blog so: higher learning and naughty bits!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-22407352657705428452008-05-21T13:08:00.000-04:002008-05-21T13:08:00.000-04:00Oh dear, terrible for him.I once caught the introd...Oh dear, terrible for him.<BR/><BR/>I once caught the introduction to Sean Hannity's radio show, which uses excerpts from Carmina Burana.<BR/><BR/>As the announcer boldy says "Sean Hannity is on the air," the choir in the background sings "mecum omnes plangite."<BR/><BR/>"Everyone weep with me."Kevin J. Joneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06907423156155669252noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-63984828122464565262008-05-14T10:14:00.000-04:002008-05-14T10:14:00.000-04:00I see nothing wrong with good, old-fashioned Anglo...I see nothing wrong with good, old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon bilabial fricatives every now and then, though the way some students seem to think, it's OK for them to use such language, but not for their professors. I've seen some rather negative reviews regarding my willingness to speak to them in their own language on occasion.<BR/><BR/>When I was in graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill I once took a seminar with Kenneth Reckford, who, if I remember correctly, was something of an authority on Aristophanes. We were translating some play or other and came across a rather colorful description of one of the characters, and Reckford asked the assembled worthies if they knew what the term meant. Most of us did know, having prepared the passage for translation, but Reckford was one of those stuffy old Harvard philologists, the type who always wore a tie and a tweed jacket to class, and most of us were nervous about going into too much detail in our translations.<BR/><BR/>Reckford waited for about a minute and then, when nobody volunteered, he said, with infinite aplomb, "Yes, it means he 'takes it up the ass'!" The seminar seemed to go more smoothly from that point on.Vitae Scrutatorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12808120163472036743noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-13096748911312416472008-05-14T09:35:00.000-04:002008-05-14T09:35:00.000-04:00Even I am too modest to translate the first line o...Even I am too modest to translate the first line of Cat. 16 to my students. I gave them the line once when they were asking me about the infamous 'naughty' Latin that they'd been hearing about. I told them a story about a friend of mine who made the mistake of bantering back and forth in Latin quotations with a female friend of his on a public blog. His then fiancee's mother was still rather suspicious of his character, and so she did a google search for him and found the blog posts. She didn't know much Latin, but she's had her children classically educated and so she eventually figured out how to translate the line. She, of course, didn't take the joke and concluded that my friend was already having an affair with another woman and trying to hide it from his fiancee by keeping it all in Latin. The greatest part of all of this is that her own daughter had been studying Latin since she was about 11 and was better at it than her fiancee. Eventually her mother managed to calm down long enough to be persuaded that it really was just a joke. <BR/><BR/>I offered my students extra credit if they could figure out what it meant. I had no takers. I've managed since then to overcome some of that modesty, but I'm still not quite as comfortable as you are -- I remember one student I met who was taking a course with you in my senior year saying, with more than feigned shock, "he likes to drop the F-bomb. A <I>lot</I>."djrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07752946730851928276noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-28644597713212911202008-05-12T09:56:00.000-04:002008-05-12T09:56:00.000-04:00As a more modernn schoolboy, I had a copy of the S...As a more modernn schoolboy, I had a copy of the Student's Catullus from University of Oklahoma Press. (Yes, even Oklahoma has apparently caught up with Latin invective.) It didn't provide translations, but it did provide "a Catullan vocabulary" section at that back, which was helpfully non-evasive.<BR/><BR/>The result was, of course, that I used Catulluan Latin putdowns routinely through late high school and college. For what do we study such things other than to be able to hurl insults at people and get back a blank expression?Darwinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-42240767948251962292008-05-11T19:43:00.000-04:002008-05-11T19:43:00.000-04:00Well, he does aspire to be an attorney. &*%$#$^ in...Well, he does aspire to be an attorney. &*%$#$^ indeed!DimBulbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14831601901629235143noreply@blogger.com