Beware the Classics major

[truepenny]

Sorry, oracne, copperwise, redbird. I deleted the previous entry (about gross errors in Latin in the Signals catalogue), because I became suddenly and monumentally uncertain about my own ability to sort out the parts of speech in ego dilecto meo et dilectus meus. I was hoping I'd moved fast enough that no one had read the post, but such was in fact not the case. Mea culpa.

Mine and redbird's point about the masculine nouns in the Friend bracelent [ ETA: should be "bracelet," of course, but bracelent is such a cool word I'm going to let it stay. ] of the Mother, Sister, and Friend bracelet set stands. And I repeat, the mistake merely serves to highlight the sexist nature of the enterprise.

But, although I still say that there's something wonky with the My Beloved rings, I can't get ego dilecto meo et dilectus meus to sort out in such a way that I can make sense of it. Assuming that the missing verb on both sides is esse (Ego sum dilecto meo et dilectus meus est.), we've got "I am [to] my beloved" (and I think we are allowed the dative of possession) and "[the] beloved is mine." And if I'm right, then it is definitely a man speaking about his male beloved.

But I might be wrong. My Latin is pretty darn rusty. Any thoughts?

Comments

[redbird]

Google to the rescue! Here's the Vulgate (the closest thing to an "official" Latin Bible:

ego dilecto meo et dilectus meus mihi [qui pascitur inter lilia]

The part in brackets is about lilies, and seems to have been dropped from the ring text.

Either the Latin of Jerome's time is not what I thought (entirely possible, given that I had one semester of Latin 23 years ago), or the text they're quoting refers specifically to a male beloved. I have no idea if that's an accurate reflection of the Hebrew; I could google for that as well, but I wouldn't be able to read it. Forms of "to be" seem to have been optional.

For anyone else who wants to hunt out translations or the original, it's in chapter 6 of the Song of Songs.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thank you!

That mihi helps a good deal--it firms up the parallel structure so that it is, in fact, "I [am] [to] my beloved and my beloved [is] [to] me." That's a dative of possession (and now at least I'm sure that is the dative) and an understood esse.

iirc, Hebrew doesn't have the verb "to be."

The King James translation gives "I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine." Checking the lines around it shows that the King James translators at least were asserting a female speaker and a male beloved (who "feedeth among the lilies" not unlike James Thurber's unicorn). And the Vulgate gives as the last line of Chapter 5 (King James gives it as the first line of Chapter 6): quo abiit dilectus tuus o pulcherrima mulierum quo declinavit dilectus tuus et quaeremus eum tecum Which is clearly addressed to a woman (O pulcherrima mulierum--most beautiful of women) and asks where her (male) beloved has gone.

I still think that if it's a female speaker, it should be ego dilecta mea. Or perhaps that would merely indicate a female beloved? This is where I got confused and deleted the first post.

[naomichana.livejournal.com]

Nope -- dilectus indicates a male beloved, and meus goes with dilectus. (In Hebrew it's "Ani dodi, v'dodi li" -- and while ani, "I," is gender-neutral, dodi is distinctly male-beloved -- I think in theory it would be doda for a female beloved.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Not the dilectus, the dilecto.

I think my problem is that I can't figure out whether the Latin is saying "I am the beloved of him" or "I am [the thing belonging to] my beloved."

Is that dilecto pointing to the speaker or the beloved?

[naomichana.livejournal.com]

It's saying "I am to my beloved" -- that's a dative. (Well, it could be an ablative, but none of those make particularly good sense.) Only... okay, wait, I just looked at the whole thing. You are so right. That's... weird. It looks like they're trying to translate the Hebrew into Latin and failing.

See, the Vulgate for SoS 2:16 -- at least the Sixto-Clementine one I have in my office, and I'll check the online one in a sec -- has "Dilectus meus mihi et ego illi," which makes much better sense: "My [male] beloved is to me and I to him." The Septuagint, because you never really believe that Hebraica veritas line of Jerome's, is "Adelphidos mou emoi kagO autO" -- I can't take the time to look up the right Unicode, so those capital Os are actually omegas, but the point is that it's basically the same as the Latin. The Hebrew "Ani dodi v'dodi li" repeats the word for "beloved" -- literally it's "I [male] beloved and [male] beloved to me."

[naomichana.livejournal.com]

And the problem with "ego dilecto meo et dilectus meus" is that the assumed phrase at the end is "is to me." I.e., "I [am] to my beloved and my beloved [is to me]." It's decent Latin, but the actual Vulgate is much more clear. So is the KJV, for God's sake.

*drive-by Song of Songs geekery*

[liv]

Have you come across the Mishnaic discussion about whether it's textually possible for the gender of the speaker to change in the middle of a verse for the opening of the Song? Which hinges on whether you can randomly decide to read 'dodecha' (your love) as 'shadayich' (your breasts). If you haven't I shall look up the reference for you, because... eee, Mishnaic rabbis doing text criticism, it's very cool.

[dancingwriter.livejournal.com]

The literal translation of the Latin is "I to my (male) beloved and my (male) beloved to me." And yes, it is a woman speaking here; the Song of Songs alternates its first-person narration (so to speak!) between female and male.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, then, my initial suspicion is validated. Any heterosexual man wearing a ring with that inscription is pretty much guilty of false advertising.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Or any gay woman.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes, absolutely.

In the context of the catalogue, though, it's pretty clear they're not thinking about gay women.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

True. But I almost bought a set for myself and my female beloved this Xmas, so now I'm glad I didn't.

I really love the Signals catalog overall but I think if I want something with a language inscription I'd best check with someone with a clue. :)

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Or rather, someone who HAS a clue. Heck, I can't even speak English today, much less Latin...

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Hoo boy. Yes.

I'm glad you didn't buy them, too. Because if you had, this post would have really ruined your day.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Sure would have. :)

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

I see someone else has pointed out the missing "mihi" which is necessary for any of it to make sense.

Lazy slobs. They could have gotten this right with five minutes' work in any library; all libraries have a Latin first-year text in there, and all issues raised by this dumb idea are covered in the first week's lessons.

It might be worthwhile embarrassing them by starting a campaign to ask them to offer stuff for *other* gender combos, too. Or maybe underwear emblazoned "ET IN ARCADIA EGO".

[larryhammer]

Or maybe underwear emblazoned "ET IN ARCADIA EGO".

SNARF!

[flit.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Amicus (friend) is second declension, which is masculine. My Latin is also very rusty, but I believe it is actually appropriate to refer to a female friend as an amicus. If you were referring to someone as friendly, though, the adjective would take the gender of the modified noun.

It's a weird gendered language thing... there are Latin words for the male (mentula, -ae) (sp?) and female (cunnus, -i) sexual organs which are reversed from the genders of their owners! And inanimate object nouns are all over the map, gender-wise.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, even if we aren't sure about the Latin, redbird pointed out, in a comment (to the original version of this post, which I deleted in a spasm of self-doubt):

"A close look at the image shows they also used the masculine in French and Spanish (ami and amigo, where it should be amie and amiga)."

So there is an inherent flaw here.

This might help

[(Anonymous)]

Because the translation is incorrect. Not the Latin...

It's from the Douay Rheims translation of the Holy Bible.

Song of Songs, Chapter 2 Vs 16: My beloved to me, and I to him...

It's incomplete. The whole line is: My beloved to me, and I to him who feedeth among the lilies

The Hebrew version is Ani Le Dodi Ve Dodi Li.