According to a classics teacher of my acquaintance the Roman soldier on Torchwood last night was shouting, 'I'm hard me! Be afraid! Be very afraid!
Well there's a joke aimed at a narrow demographic, but admirable nonetheless.
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9 comments:
Nescio quid dicas.
Scio! Jocosum facetumque diverbium!
(why is it that when I comment on your posts it asks me to verify TWICE? It's flippin' annoying - is it because you're beta and I'm not?)
Should have done that in Latin, shouldn't I?
Since The Passion Of The Christ, it seems to be compulsory to speak Latin in an Italian accent. It's one of those things that seems so obvious, but it needs a mad alcoholic bigot to point it out to you.
I didn't tape it so I can't check, but I thought one of the words was "homines" (men). My Latin is a bit rusty, albeit good enough for me to get the Latin jokes in Life of Brian.
There must be Latin notes on a Whovian site womewhere.
I thought they'd got rid of the beta/non-beta divide.
Dear llewtrah, you are right about the actual Latin words (kind of). As I remember it, he shouted 'ego sum homo indomitus' or 'ego sum miles indomitus' meaning 'I am an unconquerable man/soldier'. As a professional Latinist (!) I took the liberty of translating this in a more idiomatic way for Realdoc. The rest of what he said was exactly 'Be afraid, be very afraid' in Latin. feliciter!
By Jove, that was it! Ego sum homo indomitus. I'm sure it was homo rather than miles. I translated "homo indomitus" while watching it as "I'm an indomitable man" because I tend to translate literally rather than into idiom (Latin is brill for figuring out foreign words in that manner!). I'm way better with written Latin than spoken.
I did a nice job of explaining to Billy the "Romani ito domum" joke in Life of Brian. His eyes glazed a bit when I chanted "nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative" and muttered "go ... imperative .... mmm"
Billy's eyes were so glazed I didn't launch into a discussion of the similar scene in "Canadian Bacon" where the Canadian cop makes the Americans translate their insulting graffiti into Canadian French.
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