Popular Latin melodramas--In the Cubicula

The unrepentently French out there who still insist that legions of the Roman army spoke their Latin with a flat “r” befitting their status as the predecessors of les grands Français (though also, presumably, the oppressors of Astérix and les Gaulois) ought to take a look at ancient Provençal, which indicates to an astonishing degree the extent of Spanish and especially Italian predominance of vocabulary and inflection in early dialectical French:

Pos de chantar m’es pres talenz
farai un vers don sui dolenz:
mais non serai obedienz
en Peitau ni en Lemozi…
—Guilhem de Peitieus

This sort of evidence largely justifies my brother’s very Castilian pronunciation of the Latin address at his graduation ceremony last spring, although presumably the imperatores did not incorporate any Carlos V-era lisping. In any case, it’s very amusing to me so see the enormous flights of invention to which the translators in the world’s last Latin-speaking nation, the Vatican, are forced in able to express emergent concepts. Universalis destructionis armamenta somehow sounds far more intimidating than weapons of mass destruction, and my favorite circumlocution is definitely sonorarum visualiumque taeniarum cistellula (a little box of ribbons of sounds and sights) for videocassette, though globuli solaniani, “circular forms of a plant of the deadly nightshade family”, for potato chips definitely surpasses it in points for ludicrousness (evidently the Romans will not be credited with discovering America before the Vikings). As for me, I’m glad not to have the task of declining a word I just made up, though if I begin studying Russian soon, as I plan to, I will no doubt find out soon enough, to my sorrow, that I did not leave the unpleasant business of declensions behind when I stopped taking Latin.

p.s. Clay’s selection of Spanish poetry on the site is such a nice addition that I would like to add a further international element, but not wanting to subject anyone unncessarily to my wretched Norwegian grammar, I have not decided whether I would like to do occaisonal postings in another language or add another little feature-section or something completely different. In any case, hopefully there will be something along these lines fairly soon.