Latin Question

[Guest teotwawki]

in the episode "the hand of st sebastian", one of the members of the millennium group (in the -990-s) speaks in latin, "this is who we are".  now, i can read latin fairly well, but being a self-educated reader, my pronunciation and audible decryption skills are not what they should be.

it seems like the phrase is hoc est quae sumus.

can anyone correct or verify this?

[ok, in looking at the board, this message might be placed in "episode discussion".  if so, sorry for the placement here.   ]

~teotwawki~

[Guest teotwawki]

hmmm... just cam across this in someone sig line:

hoc est qui sumus.

i listen to the phrase and hear "quae", not "qui".  but, as i said, my pronunciation of latin... sucks.

[The Old Man]

Hi,

There was a recent thread on this on the Alt.TV.Millennium Newsgroup. I think someone came up with the correct version, possibly a member of TIWWA where you saw the signature.

Regards,

Graham.

[Guest Wellington]

Hi

Quae and qui are both grammaticaly correct. The difference is that quae is the female form of qui.

In the sentence hoc est qui sumus, I wonder whether hic would be more appropriate than hoc. Hic translates as this and hoc as that, if I recall my lessons (15 years ago, that is an excuse!) correctly and if I am not mistaken in the English linguistics (which I am far from mastering).

Regards

[Guest teotwawki]

thanks, very much.

'hic' does seem to fit more properly than 'hoc'.  time to track down a catholic school teacher i know and try the different phrases on them.

~teotwawki~

[Guest Dixon]

This is making me feel bad.  Latin was the only class I ever failed in my life.  Hics and hocs, quis and quaes...  Unfortunately, I can't provide any assistance in this regard.

[The Old Man]

Brian, do you guys in the US have to do Latin?

I think it may stilll be studied in the UK's Private schools only. I may be wrong...

Gra.

[Guest]

It was never a requirement for me in school in the US, but, I took it for a semester in high school.  It is always available in high schools in the US as language elective.  Learning another language was a requirement in high school for me.  I took Russian.  Very cool language.  I really enjoyed speaking it, and how it sounds.  But, I have very little memory of the words, grammer, etc.

[Guest LauraKrycek]

Wow, that's cool.  I wish my school had offered something like Russian; we only had Latin, French, and Spanish, and I liked French best (though looking back, Spanish would've made more sense because the Spanish-speaking population is shooting up so much in this country).  I really would've liked to have taken Italian, and I still really want to learn Welsh.  But I'm focusing just on getting better in French right now!

[Guest]

Yeah, I noticed about the French!  That is also another beautiful language to hear.  Must be kind of cool to be able to peek in on the French Ouro forums!

Yeah, we really had a great language program at my high school... too bad it wasn't quite so culturally or ethnically diverse as it language program.  Additionally, I also had a Russian Studies course in high school.  This was in my junior year 1983.  It was one of the first of its kind.  The teacher who taught it, researched it and created it on his own.  He was a cool and great teacher.  He had actually managed to visit Russian a couple times before he had created the class!  He was really great!  You know how he started the first class of that year of the class?

Everyone was sitting in the class room, wondering where the teacher was, because it was time for class to begin, etc.  Well... all of the sudden we hear from the back of the room, blasting - "...Baaaack in the USSR/You don't know how lucky you are, boys/Baaaack in the USSR..."

It was sooo cool and great!  He was a really funny and different teacher.  He really cared.  We all used to hang out at this office on breaks and between classes.  It was this little closet of an office that they stuck him it.  But he had it decorated with Beattles posters and 60s stuff (of his own from his "back in the day").

Good memory.

Ciao,

Scott