Disputatio:Zingiber (cadaver medicatum)

Mumia[fontem recensere]

Displiceatne nomen Latinitatis recentioris 'mumia' pro illo 'cadavero medicato'? --Fabullus 18:31, 1 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mihi non displicet, sed Cassell's ait Anglicum 'mummy' in usu classico solum est homo mortuus arte medicatus (ex Tacito), et Iustinus heri mihi subiecit breviorem vocem aptam esse cadaver medicatum. IacobusAmor 19:27, 1 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Equidem ita vertere soleo (sunt, obiter, Iacobe alii loci classici quos invenire potero solum domum regressus), sed hic fortasse locutio classica difficultatem praebet: Zingiber enim noster verisimiliter haud arte humana factus est "mumia," ergo ineptum forte videtur eum "medicatum" dicere. Fortasse igitur "mumiam" dicere opportebit. --Iustinus 06:26, 4 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Notanda from my changes[fontem recensere]

Have have no idea what the ancient name of Badari was, but some sources seem to say that Naqada was the ancient Ombos. Of course most sources equate that name with modern Kom Ombo instead. This being the case I haven't touched the transparent Latinizations Iacobus used.
According to L&S, the comparative of celeber is rare, so I've substituted praeclarus.
One drawback of rendering "Ginger" literally as Zingiber is that the common noun is neuter, causing problems in the accusative (presumably we'd use Zingiberem, since names are not normally neuter (outside of Greek diminutives), but that might strike some readers as odd or overly innovative).
For "scavengers", omnivora is not a great translation. There surely must be an ancient term for this, but I don't know it off hand. On the basis of en:scavenger I've gone with necrophaga.
Vita futura -- Iacobe, is this something you got from Cassells? --Iustinus 02:42, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the useful changes! ¶ I didn't find anything in Cassell's for 'afterlife'—the English wiki semiliterately has 'after life' (two words)!—so I went for 'future life'. And something there is quite curious: I was translating what I thought was "on his way in the afterlife" (hence per viam in vita futura), but the original is actually "during the journey to the after [sic] life," for which in + acc. (in vitam futuram) is what I'd have used too, if I'd thought that was what I was translating. Weird! ¶ Why did you change alimenta ad mortuum alendum to alimenta ad mortuum nutriendum? I was remembering an old professor's stylistic hint: that the Romans liked to repeat etymological elements—so, since the noun alimentum relates to the verb alere, the pattern alimenta . . . alendum would seem likelier than alimenta . . . nutriendum. Or is nutrire semantically apter than alere to cover the English idea of 'sustain (with food)'? ¶ For 'naturally', Cassell's has secundum naturam, not e natura (to which you changed it). IacobusAmor 04:56, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The best I can come up with for "afterlife" at the moment is aeternitas--but wait, if you go to en:afterlife you will see an interwiki link to vita aeterna (an article I expect you will want to make some modifications to). I guess you have a point about repeating etymological elements, but I was thinking like a modern and avoiding repetition. Still, yeah nutrire seems to me semantically better here than alere though I couldn't give you a good reason why I feel that way. I'm likewise not sure how best to render secundum naturam, but it seems like that should mean "in a manner not contrary to nature" as opposed to "by a natural process." I confess that for e natura I was probably thinking of e lege natura, which is a name for the missionary position! --Iustinus 05:57, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Why did you prefer e natura to (as I'd have preferred) ex natura (as in, e.g., Tacitus, Hist. 1.21, "mortem omnibus ex natura aequalem oblivione apud posteros vel gloria distingui")? See discussion below. IacobusAmor 15:10, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Afterlife is life after death (Vita post mortem?) Aeternitas or vita aeterna is not a good rendering as this might also refer to a life uninterupted by death. --Fabullus 07:15, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The mental process: afterlife → life after the present → life future → vita futura. IacobusAmor 14:03, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But the "after" in "afterlife" is usually taken to refer not to now, but to death. Fabullus is of course right about the problem with using vita aeterna. I note that many modern languages do render the concept with the equivalent of vita post mortem, but I would hope there's a better way to do this in Latin. For one thing, vita post mortem uses a prepositional phrase adjectivally, which is one of those things that you can do in Latin if you really have to, but are always told not to. It seems like in all those existential discussions written in Latin, even just in antiquity, one would somewhere find a usable phrase? Anyone have a copy of Smith & Hall or White's at hand? --Iustinus 15:38, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The last phrase of the Nicene Creed famously asserts belief in vitam venturi saeculi, but of course that dates from several centuries after the Golden Age, and is replete with Christian dogma. IacobusAmor 17:37, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting because that's a rather close translation of Hebrew עולם הבא. The fact that it is non-classical is no a terrible obstacle; good style and vocabulary are generally preferable, but in the final analysis this is a Latin Wikipedia, not a Ciceronian one. Your argument about it being too Christian—or rather Abrahamic—is not without merit. Venturum saeculum should probably cover the uses of that phrase/concept in Judaism and Christianity (Reform Judaism has, in my humble and not exactly unbiased opinion, done something pretty interesting with it). --Iustinus 19:56, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I should add, though, that "the next world" (also a translation of עולם הבא) is often used as a generic synonym for "afterlife," at least colloquially. --Iustinus 19:58, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, for hundreds of years, the standard English (Anglican) translation of vita venturi saeculi has been rather literalistic: 'the life of the world to come.' Similarly, saeculum has traditionally been rendered as 'world' in the phrase per saecula saeculorum 'world without end'. IacobusAmor 20:14, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Jews usually say "world to come" as well, but "next world" is actually equally valid (for the Hebrew at any rate). Per saecula saeculorum likewise translates Aramaic עלמי עלמיא (I'm pretty sure I've seen a Hebrew equivalent too, but I can't remember the exact form and don't want to embarrass myself by guessing). עולם mean both "world" and "eternity," which is why saeculum was chosen as the translation. But obviously we're getting off track. --Iustinus 20:22, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Track? There's a track? Aiieee!!! IacobusAmor 20:55, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A, ab, abs[fontem recensere]

Iustine, I note that you leveled my abs to a. I like the sound of it before /k/ (as do many English speakers, as the made-up word absquatulate indicates). Browsing desultorily in the Bellum Gallicum hasn't turned up abs, but it has turned up quite a few instances of ab that—one suspects, especially from reading Vicipaedia—modern ears would reduce to a: ab Caesare (7.20), ab Gnaeo (6.1), ab Lucio (5.53), ab Sequanis (1.1), and of course ab is regular before vowels & h. White says "before c, q, and t, abs is used"; Cassell's says, more precisely, "abs only sometimes before c, q, t—esp. te)." And of course we have the evidence of the words abscedere, abscidere, abscondere, absque, abstergere, absterrere, abstinere, and abstrahere. ¶ Curiously, Caesar used a, not ab, before Venetis (3:18). Does that mean he heard the V of "Venetis" as something other than /u/?

Yes, we tend to overgeneralize the rule of "only ab before a vowel" to mean "only a before a consant" (the v in Venetis of course counts as a consonant). But a lot of your abs and abses just struck me as too heavy. That's of course a purely subjective criterion, so if you wish to restore them, feel free. I would however advise you not to use compounds as a guide, as the rules for prepositional prefixes often differ from those of simple prepositions. For example sub tractis but substractus, cum actis but coactus. --Iustinus 15:38, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

E, ex[fontem recensere]

Same deal with e and ex (= eks). Caesar has ex labore & ex paludibus (both 7.32), where, one suspects, most Vicipaedians would have written e labore & e paludibus. Likewise ex montibus (3.2), ex regionibus (4.5), etc. IacobusAmor 14:01, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Same answer as for #A, ab, abs --Iustinus 15:38, 5 Ianuarii 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not zingiber[fontem recensere]

I came here because the article about Oetsius said (till I clarified it) that he "lived in the time of ginger". Now that I see what it meant, I need to change this man's name, because zingiber is a bad translation -- the Latin for a red-haired guy is "rufus". I notice that they tend not to call him "ginger" any more because it's not respectful; I suppose the problem is that in rhyming slang "ginger" translates to "queer": no such second meaning with "rufus". So, should he be Rufus (cadaver medicatum)? Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:58, 8 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that in the interim the article in enwiki has shifted so as to include not just the one mummy but the lot of them buried together, and the Latin version is therefore behind the times and needs to be refocused. Over here in North America, and probably in most of the English-speaking world, ginger has practically nothing to do with color and definitely nothing to do with sex, so for most purposes, ginger is obviously and only zingiber (Merriam-Webster does allow it to mean 'a strong brown'). Every dialect has its quirks. In Australia, red-haired people are called Bluey. But yes, clarify away! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:18, 8 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A bit disrespectful on the part of those Anglophones to conclude he doesn't merit an article on his own :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:24, 8 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)[reply]