Anyone here speak Latin?

[Data Holmes]

First off, if you do, very cool and many props to you.

That said, do you know what the latin word is for entertainment. Non of the online translators seem to come up with anything.

 

[Surfin' Santa]

Does Pig Latin count?

I never studied the language, but perhaps the generic concept of "entertainment" doesn't have an exact equivalent in Latin -- other than the words for music, dance, theater, comedy, the arts, etc.

Anybody who actually knows Latin, we can use some help here.

 

[Goliath]

Does anyone actually speak Latin anymore?

Anyway:

"entertainment, i.e. hospitality, hospitium; i.e. a feast, q.v., convivium, epulae; i.e. amusement, oblectatio, delectatio."

Source: here.

 

[John Picard]

First off, if you do, very cool and many props to you.

That said, do you know what the latin word is for entertainment. Non of the online translators seem to come up with anything.

I studied Latin for 4 years in high school. The closest equivalent I could come up with was "play": lascivio, fabula.

Is there a high school or college nearby with a Latin department?

Camelopard beat me to it. Good job!

 

[Goliath]

Meh. All I knew was where to look for a dictionary.

Anyway, I hope it helps.

 

[Data Holmes]

Does anyone actually speak Latin anymore?

I would if I could. It's one of three languages that I really would love to learn to speak before I die. The other two are German and Irish, but Latin has always been on top of that list.

Anyway:

"entertainment, i.e. hospitality, hospitium; i.e. a feast, q.v., convivium, epulae; i.e. amusement, oblectatio, delectatio."

Source: here.

Huh... Not the direction I was thinking. I was thinking more along the lines of movie/tv direction of entertainment than a feast/hosting type. I had started to figure that there may not be a direct translation line for it though, but I didn't even get as far as you did. Thanks.

 

[Holdfast]

I agree that there may not be a direct translation but rather a choice, depending on the nature of the entertainment on the audience. Camelopard's translation would work for entertainment within the context of a feast or ceremony.

For more large scale entertainment, I'd be tempted to angle towards spectaculum (spectacle) or - thinking more laterally - ludi (games) or perhaps even more idiomatically: circenses (circuses, but used in the same broad sense as the famous Juvenal quote to imply entertainment in general).

(disclaimer: I never could get my head around Latin at school!)

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Does anyone actually speak Latin anymore?

In terms of everyday speak and even a lingua franca, it's essentially a dead language, and no-one "speaks" Latin freely anymore, except in terms of phrases that have seeped into other languages (or unless you're one of the Hostiles ).

Latin words make up a huge component of today's English, so I guess in that respect we still have a little bit of Latin in there (as well as Greek, French, etc.).

As a language of the past, both for literature and historical purposes, it's still something that I feel should be taught in schools.

 

[Pingfah]

I was taught Latin in school, but only to read, not to speak for obvious reasons.

 

[Surfin' Santa]

Does anyone actually speak Latin anymore?

Not as an everyday language, of course, but English contains thousands of Latin-derived words by way of Norman French. (Whoever the hell he was.)

In Europe, doctors and other learned professionals used Latin as a lingua franca as late as the 1700s. I mean, not just for the medical terminology -- if two doctors from different countries didn't speak each other's language, they would actually converse in Latin.

Huh... Not the direction I was thinking. I was thinking more along the lines of movie/tv direction of entertainment than a feast/hosting type.

Well, considering that the ancient Romans had neither movies nor television, it's not surprising they didn't have words for them.

However, the word television itself is half-Latin and half-Greek.

 

[Holdfast]

I recall my former Latin teacher saying that one of oral Latin exams she had to pass involved debating a topic involving modern things using Latin. So she had to translate concepts like television, telephones, etc, etc into a plausible Latin equivalent while discussing whatever the topic was, all on-the-fly. So I guess it can still relevantly be used as a spoken language, if you need to, though some of the phrasing would be clunky (stuff like "viewing box" for TV, for instance).

 

[Data Holmes]

I recall my former Latin teacher saying that one of oral Latin exams she had to pass involved debating a topic involving modern things using Latin. So she had to translate concepts like television, telephones, etc, etc into a plausible Latin equivalent while discussing whatever the topic was, all on-the-fly. So I guess it can still relevantly be used as a spoken language, if you need to, though some of the phrasing would be clunky (stuff like "viewing box" for TV, for instance).

That would be an interesting exam... Adaptive translation of concepts into a language which predates them combined with the BS quotient necessary of a debate/positioning oral presentation. Sounds like fun.


I figured that there would be an "equivalent translation" perhaps associated to plays and their public performance which would apply, as tv/movie is essentially an evolved form of play.

 

[Goliath]

Huh... Not the direction I was thinking. I was thinking more along the lines of movie/tv direction of entertainment than a feast/hosting type.

Maybe you should be looking at words connected with the theatre. The word for "drama," for example is "fabula," which also means "play" or "story."

 

[Goliath]

I recall my former Latin teacher saying that one of oral Latin exams she had to pass involved debating a topic involving modern things using Latin.

I drew a comic strip for my high school paper entitled "Murder Muffin."

When I took Latin in my first year of university, I discovered that the closest translation was panulus sanguinarius--"murderous little bread".

 

[Count Zero]

Well, Latin is still sort of the official language of the Vatican and thus they've made up plenty of words for modern things. So you might have more luck there, since their publications often deal with stuff like that.

I studied Latin at school, but of course, we just learned to translate it (and recite it with those stupid rules about stressing whixh syllables in poems), not to actually speak it. There are people capable of speaking it, but that's not how the language is usually taught.
Ludi would have been my first thought as well, since it refers to the entertainmanet industry of the day. Circenses as well.

 

[Data Holmes]

Huh... Not the direction I was thinking. I was thinking more along the lines of movie/tv direction of entertainment than a feast/hosting type.

Maybe you should be looking at words connected with the theatre. The word for "drama," for example is "fabula," which also means "play" or "story."

I was thinking about that. I also found an unsited and not explanation given reference to the latin word Ludicrum, but again non of the online translators recognized it, or translated it into "game" dispute this one page's talking about it meaning entertainment. Seems that entertainment, fun, and a few associated modern "phrases" link together in latin, with the latin words having multiple meanings. Almost a latin equivalent to the modern usage of Cool which can mean different things given the context of it's use.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I recall my former Latin teacher saying that one of oral Latin exams she had to pass involved debating a topic involving modern things using Latin.

I drew a comic strip for my high school paper entitled "Murder Muffin."

When I took Latin in my first year of university, I discovered that the closest translation was panulus sanguinarius--"murderous little bread".

That's what I love about that language. In modern parlance it has a wickedly erudite sense of humour.


One of my favorite ways of reinforcing the Latin I learned was through the Asterix books. The Bell/Hockridge English translation had some humorous uses of Latin words and phrases throughout. It's also one of those famous publications to have been translated into Latin itself.

 

[Count Zero]

Well, I checked my real-life dictionary, and ludicrum does relate to the theatre, it means play, spectacle but more in the vein of joking and jesting.

 

[Technobuilder]

Harry Dresden: "Dammed Correspondence Course."

I regret not trying to learn Latin in High School.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I took four years of Latin in Junior High and High School, but we never actually spoke it. While, as a writer, I enjoy language in general, I stuck with it mainly because of the teacher we had in High School, and his ramblings and digressions and asides-- to this day, he is the single smartest person I have ever met face to face. He's even smarter than me.

As for translating "entertainment" into Latin, you could always use panem et circenses, of course; but for a less cynical approach there's also effectus, theatrum or fabula.