I may have to take a leave of absence from blogging over the next few days, during which the calendar events are the brightness-peak of Venus in the morning sky on February 9 (already mentioned) and Saint Valentine’s Day, February 14. So how about you take another look at the pleasant things said a while back about that amiable day and a neat piece of love poetry.
It (the two-line poem, not my blog) is in Latin, which you may think not conducive to romance – how wrong you would be.
Curiosities of Language Department
Quisquis, which begins the little poem and is used again in its second line, is the expressive word for “whoever.” “Whatever” is quicquid, even more droll, which reminds us of the famous saying about not trusting “Greeks bearing gifts” such as the Trojan Horse, which comes from Virgil’s Aeneid:
Quicquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes
“Whatever it is, I fear Greeks even bearing gifts.”
But notice the word we translate as “even”: it’s just et, “and.”
I think this is a clear example of how words in one language don’t just map simply onto what seem to be the corresponding words in another language. Latin “et” has an area of usage outside what English “and” has. It depends, though, on the context “Et tu, Brute!”(Caesar’s exclamation seeing Brutus, “the noblest Roman of them all, among his assassins) could be rendered as “Even you, Brutus!” or “And you, Brutus!” Or “You too…” or “You also…”
Another Latin particle – small vital word – is etiam, “also.” This makes us think about how languages create their particles. For a certain need, English put together “all” and “so.” For the same need, Latin put together et, “and,” and jam, “now.”
You can go through life without wondering where “but” came from. It was Old English be-utan, “by-out.”
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
Mars and Mercury engaged in a love-triangle with Venus during this Valentine’s season:
http://www.starvergnuegen.com/astropix/2022/2022_02_15_planeten_2.html
On the morning of the 15th, Venus and Mars appear to have almost the same ecliptic longitude
As schoolboys learning Latin, my mates and I used to use it for secret codewords and ‘in jokes’. Even now, when we see each other, the first exchange is always “non modo…sed etiam”.
And re Caesar’s assassination: “Et tu Brute” is Shakespeare’s take. Suetonis notes the general suggestion that Caesar’s last words were the Greek phrase Καί σύ τέκνον (“and you too child”?).