Onofframp: Latin Language Lessons

Mention Latin, as in the prior post, and suddenly the cosmically connected world delivers a Wall Street Journal A-Hed piece on a Vatican monsignor who has translated 'The Wimpy Kid' into Latin and secured someone to actually publish it. So, this is news, you might sneer? Yes. Sort of.

The story is for real, and the book, with a small first printing will really be available. The monsignor, Daniel Gallagher is a 45 year-old Pittsburgh native who excelled at Latin and wound up in the Vatican. He had the idea to have some fun translating a middle-school classic into classic Latin in an effort to give Latin some exposure.

Apparently, other children's books, notably some of the Dr. Seuss books have already been given the Latin treatment. Msgr. Gallagher is just hoping a contemporary book, translated into Latin, will give the basically extinct language some attention. It seems to have worked if you land on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

And though I joked in the prior post that if you found someone who taught Latin these days you would probably be talking to a nonagenarian, I was certainly wrong. Latin does still have a place in some schools' curriculum, with students taking a four-year cycle of it, leading to being able to read the Moby Dicks of written Latin, works by Caesar, Cicero, and Virgil, among others.

Admirable, for sure. Any attempt to bring back use of classic language can only help raise the lowest common denominators we have fallen to. Take the latest Republican presidential debate. How much better sounding would Donald Trump's comments about Megyn Kelly, a panel moderator have been if he said them in Latin? Immeasurably better.

Take what is now the famous reference to blood, however you want to look at it, Megyn Kelly's blood. The Latin word is sanguinem, a pronunciation improvement if ever there was one.

Someone has recently made a documentary of the William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal debates on ABC that were broadcast during the 1968 Democratic convention. The documentary, 'Best of Enemies' has to be a great piece of historical preservation to show what in effect gave us the first "talking heads."

I remember these two giving each other what really were tongue lashings with words you would find hard to pronounce, and therefore hard to look up. It was great.

I was used to seeing Buckley on his own show, and used to seeing Vidal on Carson, when he was in from living in Italy and giving the viewing audience his report card on how bad we were doing as Americans. The elocution of each of them was equal to Richard Burton reading the phone book. Near the end of Vidal's life he looked back and said it all was "such fun." It was.

Put ten Republican candidates on a single stage, and certainly someone won't disappoint with words that will live forever. Whenever the Buckley-Vidal encounters are reminisced about there is always a repeat of the famous retort of Bill's to Gore that goes: "Now listen you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face and you'll stay plastered." A movement to throw a punch is started, then abandoned. If one had been launched, we would have had the beginning of Jerry Springer shows to add to talking heads. Imagine.

What the hell is a "crypto" anything? They each knew it meant calling someone who is secretly involved with whatever movement follows the word crypto. Strong stuff.

Add to that what was the going euphemism for someone who is gay (which Vidal was) and call them a "queer," well, there's more than an edge to it. There's moral weakness. There's enmity.

Years and years later, Bill's son Christopher explained in a The New Republic (yes) piece that his father had broken his clavicle earlier that day while sailing, and was taped up rather securely under his shirt and suit. The upward attempt to throw a punch from a sitting position, like Johnny Bench throwing someone out at second from a crouch, quickly reminded his father of the pain, and he eased his body back into the chair. What some adhesive tape averted.

There have been a fair number of memorable verbal jabs thrown at debate-like encounters, and they will surely continue. Years ago, in some context I don't remember, Newsweek magazine referred to presidential candidate, the vice president Bush, as having a 'wimp factor.'

How do you write 'Wimpy Kid' in Latin? Inepto Puero. Inept boy, I suppose.