How nerdy are you?This week Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, died. A whole generation of pasty dice-obsessed nerds owes him big time. Me included.
So, in his honour, how nerdy were you? Are you still sunlight-averse? What are the sad little things you do that nobody else understands?
As an example, a B3ta regular who shall remain nameless told us, "I spent an entire school summer holiday getting my BBC Model B computer to produce filthy stories from an extensive database of names, nouns, adjectives, stock phrases and deviant sexual practices. It revolutionised the porn magazine dirty letter writing industry for ever.
Revel in your own nerdiness.
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chthonic, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 10:32)
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Ecce!This came up in a reply thread a while ago. Twenty years ago, I learned that in pictura est puella romana nomine Cornelia, and that etiam in pictura est puella romana nomine Flavia. Cornelia cantat dum Flavia sub abore sedet.
I am able to deduce from that a little of what Cornelia was singing about: a thing rather than a person, which would have taken "canat".
A little later, something happened with the upshot that Davus, servus Brittanicus, iratus est.
Click if this rings a bell with you...
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 12:57,
17 replies)
Sounds like my GCSE Latin courseFelix est in domine something something. I have forgotten most of it, as you can see. it was 12 years ago, after all.
I want to learn Anglo Saxon so I can read Beowulf in its original poetic form.
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Kroney, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 12:59,
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Caecilius est in horto.puella est in cenam. Grumio est coquus. ecce! canis latrat. ille centurio erat versipellis. ite Romanite domum.
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Maladicta, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 13:03,
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yeah!Ecce Romani! Books 1 - 4.
I also did a bit of Greek (ancient) at prep school. All I can remember is part of the alphabet and that all the stories involved a bloke called Dikaopolis (sp? please correct me if I'm wrong), who works on a farm.
(, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 13:05, closed)
Oh no we did the Cambridge course :)Caecilius FTW even if half the words were made up!
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Maladicta, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 13:06,
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Yay - Ecce Romani - I remember it well<linky>
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Fireflier La la la la, not listening on, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 13:10,
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Agh this brings back some memoriesCaecillius was a bastard.
(, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 13:35, closed)
Oh blimeyI thought I had lost all knowledge of my school latin, but as I read "in pictura est puella romana", it was like a frightening flashback that slapped me hard in the face.
I was a teenager again and being shouted at by a mad scottish latin teacher.
Come to think of it we used to draw speech bubbles with stupid comments on the pictures just like this weeks image challenge (although francais aujourd’hui had much better potential with Alain and Pierre's dirty little antics).
What goes around etc.
(, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 13:37, closed)
Another Ecce Man...Dikaeopolis was from the Greek series 'Athenaze'.
(, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 13:39, closed)
I remembera little orange covered book and only one line:-
Quintus est coque
Other than a mad nun shouting "Sum, Est, Sunt!" while gesticulating madly at herself, us and an imaginary figure behind her.
And that is the sum total of my latin knowledge pretty much.
Oh, apart from things like Per Ardua ad Astra and the other ordinary bits that any fule kno.
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chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 13:59,
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I did latin A Level...I sucked mightily at it though, scraped an E, mostly due to insanity-related issues.
It was surprisingly useful though, as I did a Zoology degree, and all the bits of animals are named in Latin, very simple Latin that translates to things like "end of foot".
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Cawl, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 14:03,
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shamemy thoroughly decent grammar school dropped Latin the year before I started, so how it had the nerve to call itself a grammar school, I don't know... My knowledge of the Latin language is therefore based on my understanding of the languages derived from it.
I do, however, both comprehend and smile at the following joke. It is said to work in any language but no one laughed when I told it in French:
Julius Caesar walks into a bar and says "I'll have a martinus".
"Don't you mean a martini?" asks the barman.
"No," replies Caesar, "if I wanted a double I'd have asked for it."
(*awaits correction if wrong*)
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crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 14:16,
closed)
i laughedbut it only makes sense if you have at least a passing knowledge of how latin plurals work. it doesn't make sense in french, because they pluralise using articles (les, des, aux), but it would make sense in italian and (i think) spanish.
(, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 15:29, closed)
Ecce gratumet optatum, ver reducit gaudia.
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flake has nothing against your right leg, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 21:36,
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great martini joke...and I understood most of the other posts too2 years of latin in high school here. I was even a member of the TJCL (texas junior classical league, thank you very much). Each year was a different teacher....but they were married to each other. Their home answering machine message was in latin. (How geeky is that if you have your teacher's home phone number?)
Enrolled in college latin but there weren't enough students so the school dropped the class....which sucked big time.
Still.....best bit I ever learned (from the wife half of the latin teacher duo) was this:
Erisne mia amare servus?
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flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Fri 7 Mar 2008, 3:39,
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Caecilius!I did latin in first year. Was god awful at it.
My excuse is that the woman who taught us was useless, english was her fourth language!
When she was translating from Latin to english, she'd get it wrong in the way only foreigers (and idiots) do.
"Caecilius is sleep in house" - Stupid bint
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Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Fri 7 Mar 2008, 10:07,
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Ooo! Ooo! I went to Latin summer school TWICEOnce to help with GCSE, once for the fun of it when I wasn't doing any more Latin at school. We did Catullus, so it was actually quite fun.
I was shocked when so many of Caecilius's (sp?) family died. Aren't Quintus and Grumio the only survivors, or have I mixed that up?
(, Sat 8 Mar 2008, 0:51, closed)
bonus deus!I got a "U" at "O" level, because I copied Andrew Kemp-Luck's homework for two years, as did the rest of the class, until the day he cunningly stitched all of us up by writing a fake translation for everyone to copy, leaving the genuine translation for himself...
Which frankly impressed me so much I forgot to beat him up for it.
My latin now extends about as far as the sarcastic pirate in the Asterix books...
(, Mon 10 Mar 2008, 11:03, closed)
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