#percy should have licked the cherry colored sea monster! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

firstofficerrose · 2 years

Text

So I have this friend, and she is very, very, very very very smart. She's wonderful, and I love talking with her, but she's truly, terrifyingly smart.

How smart? She's fluent in Latin, entirely as a hobby.

So in the last couple of months, she's been reading through the Percy Jackson books for the first time, which is delightful, because she keeps texting me about them, essentially liveblogging her first impression of these books that she refused to read in middle school because she just wanted to read the source myths instead.

And she loves them! It's great! It's so much fun to watch my friend fall in love with these books I've loved for a little over a decade (I'm feeling old, as I write this, but it really has been that long).

So where this all comes together is when she hit the Heros of Olympus series. You see, there is Latin in HOO, and according to my friend, it is not Good Latin. It is, in fact, Bad Latin.

"That is the worse use of the subjunctive I have ever seen and you don't use that verb to refer to taking up arms, like ever"

"Technically, it's a "correct" translation I just"

"I'm still so upset at the prophecy as it was written in Latin"

"Like. Okay, sure, if you really wanted to use the subjunctive I will accept it if it's for meter or rhyming purposes, but neither hold"

"Ianuam is used for door in the phrase "Doors of Death" and that's such a mundane term to use. I would have chosen portas, at the very least, as it is commonly used for like entrances in general, whereas ianuam means essentially a front door for a house specifically"

"Also, ianuaam isn't even plural!"

"And necem is not even the possessive form!"

"That is Not a genetive noun and it's most certainly not an adjective"

"Filli Romani should be spelled fili romani"

"I almost got angry at it being the nominative plural version of son, but in the double check I did with the dictionary it reminded me that the Vocative Singular is by default the same as the Nominative Plural ending."

"Vocative isn't something that's used often? Like it Exists and it makes sense in the context, surprisingly, but it doesn't crop up very often"

"It also bothers me - perhaps irrationally - that in the translation provided, it was jused as "child of Roman" as opposed to "son of Rome." TECHNICALLY they are interchangeable terms. Technically. But that more speaks to the misogyny of Rome itself and the fact that the masculine terms of the words have over time kind of become synonymous with the gender neutral terms, and given that there IS an explicitly gender neutral word for child, it irks me slightly. However, that's just a small portion of my annoyance, because fili is not spelled with one l"

"Filli just looks ridiculous"

I'm having so much fun with her outrage at Bad Latin.

#pjo #hoo #bad latin #she also has some fantastic takes on the series #percy should have licked the cherry colored sea monster!#he's an adhd sea child #I want to wrap nico in a blanket and give him hot chocolate #don't we all?#she also has a whole Athena rant #it's so entertaining #rose rambles

8 notes · View notes