Dog Latin
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Dog Latin, also known as Cod Latin, macaronic Latin, mock Latin, or Canis Latinicus, refers to the creation of a phrase or jargon in imitation of Latin, often by "translating" English words (or those of other languages) into Latin by conjugating or declining them as if they were Latin words. Unlike the similarly named language game Pig Latin (a form of playful spoken code), Dog Latin is more of a humorous device for invoking scholarly seriousness. Sometimes "dog Latin" can mean a poor-quality genuine attempt at writing Latin.
More often, correct Latin is mixed with English words for humorous effect or in an attempt to update Latin by providing words for modern items.
Examples
A once-common schoolboy doggerel which, though very poor Latin, would have done a tolerable job of reinforcing the rhythms of Latin hexameters:
- Patres conscripti took a boat, and went to Philippi;
- Boatum est upsettum, magno cum grandine venti.
- Omnes drownderunt qui swim away non potuerunt.
- Trumpeter unus erat, qui coatum scarlet habebat;
- Et magnum periwig, tied about with the tail of a dead pig.
The meter uses Latin vowel quantities for the Latin parts, and to some extent follows English stress in the English parts.
Another variant has similar lines in a different order, with the following variants:
- Stormum surgebat et boatum oversetebat
- Excipe John Periwig tied up to the tail of a dead pig.
Another verse in similar vein is
- Caesar ad sum jam forti
- Brutus et erat
- Caesar sic in omnibus
- Brutus sic in at
which, when read aloud using common English-speaking mispronunciations, sounds like the following:
but which actually means
- Caesar I am already present for the strong one
- Brutus was also
- Caesar thus in all things
- Brutus thus in, but
The following spoof of legal Latin, in the fictional case of Daniel v Dishclout (from George Alexander Stevens' "Lecture on Heads", 1765), describes a kitchen:
- camera necessaria pro usus cookare, cum saucepannis, stewpannis, scullero, dressero, coalholo, stovis, smoak-jacko; pro roastandum, boilandum, fryandum, et plumpudding mixandum, pro turtle soupos, calve's-head-hashibus, cum calipee et calepashibus.
Dog Latin is featured in the dialogues of Cranly, a student in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. When asked the question "Have you signed?" Cranly answers "Ego habeo," apparently using habeo as if it were a translation of the English auxiliary verb "have". He also makes remarks such as "Credo ut vos sanguinarius mendax estis, quia facies vostra monstrat ut vos in damno malo humore estis," This is a word-for-word "translation" of his intended speech: "I think that you are a bloody liar, because your face shows that you are in damn bad humor." Adding to the effect, he mixes up the singular "you are" and "your" with the plural vos ... estis and vostra, among other pseudo-Latin constructs.
Further examples
- HoboSapiens, a John Cale album
- Homo Consumericus, a concept in social science
- Illegitimi non carborundum, dog Latin for "Don't let the bastards grind you down"
- Mater si, magistra no, a macaronic mashup of Mater et Magistra and Cuba si, Castro no
- Reductio ad Hitlerum, a dog Latin phrase
- Smugglerius, a dog Latin name for a cast of a smuggler's body posed as a dying gladiator
- Mots d'Heures, a book of verses in cod-French
- Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner, two Looney Tunes characters, are given various dog Latin Linnaean taxonomical names at the beginning of most of their cartoons, except for The Whizzard of Ow
- Syllabi, a hypercorrection of the Greek σίλλυβος or σίττυβος sillybos/sittybos "parchment label, table of contents
- dorkus malorkus, an insult spoken by Bart Simpson
- semper ubi sub ubi, A common English-Dog Latin translation joke. The phrase is nonsensical in Latin, but the English translation is a pun on "always wear underwear".
- gustatus similis pullus, English-Dog Latin translation that purports to mean "tastes like chicken."
See also
- Latatian, dog Latin in the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett
- Hiberno-Latin, playful learned Latin literature by Irish monks
- Latino sine Flexione, a constructed language based on Latin, but using only ablative as the standard form
- Law Latin, a form of Latin used in English legal contexts, similarly to Law French
- Lorem ipsum, nonsense filler text based on a Cicero work
- Macaronic language, using a mixture of languages, such as Latin and English
- Medieval Latin, including many influences from vernacular languages
- New Latin, post-medieval Latin used for international science
- Pig Latin, simple verbal code language based on English