Pedants' Paradise

[Bryn]

Both versions are attempts at a joke. The first one is a better joke.

I don't understand your point about 'linguistic restrictions'.

Here's an article in which the writer doesn't understand the joke, but who fails also to understand the explanation given to her by someone who does understand:

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/...argaret-atwood

Until she illegally engages in Scrabble with Fred, Offred's vocabulary is highly restricted, as is that of all handmaids. This is a policy imposed from above, not some incidental quirk.

[jean]

But what has this got to do with two versions of the same joke, both pretending to be Latin, one succeeding slightly better than the other - and crucially, only one of them recalled by the writer?

Or are you offering an example of reader-reception theory, where the original writer's intention is largely irrelevant?

[Bryn]

Both versions are attempts at a joke. The first one is a better joke.

I don't get your point about 'linguistic restrictions'.

Here's an article in which the writer tries to explain Attwood's version of the joke, but is confused by the explanation given to her by someone who knows the original - she's probably confused because she didn't know there were two versions:

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/05/handmaids-tale-nolite-te-bastardes-carborundorum-origin-margaret-atwood

(Neither did Attwood, I'm guessing.)

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Well stone me. The article certainly reveals ignorance re. carborundum. It's still very much in use. My mower blades would be pretty blunt without my carborundum stone. A little less guesswork, and more credit to the author, would not go amiss.

[jean]

By 'author' do you mean Attwood?

The point is that she wrote (and apparently misremembered) carborundorum for carborundum.

She deserves no credit at all for that. She ruined a (quite) good joke.

[french frank]

By 'author' do you mean Attwood?

The point is that she wrote (and apparently misremembered) carborundorum for carborundum.

She deserves no credit at all for that. She ruined a (quite) good joke.

In other words, did the author mean to imply that a handmaiden was near illiterate and was unaware of grammatical cod-Latin? Therefore her attempt at cod-Latin was, reasonably, ungrammatical? One point that rules this out - or at least makes it unlikely - is that this lamentably illiterate handmaiden knew the genitive plural of carborundum. Of course, I'm only going by Bryn's mention of Gilead - I've no idea who perpetrated the grammatical solecism. It could have been by a rather inept Gilead Professor of Vulgar Latin (although even for Vulgar Latin, this leaves a lot to be desired).

Anyway, I've never forgiven Margaret Attwood for inducing me to waste hours plodding through the irredeemably unreadable Blind Assassin before giving it up 250 pages in. Pooh.

[Bryn]

By 'author' do you mean Attwood?

No, I meant Atwood, my earlier "Attwood" was a typo.

The point is that she wrote (and apparently misremembered) carborundorum for carborundum.

She deserves no credit at all for that. She ruined a (quite) good joke.

In the book, with which I presume you are familiar, the phrase is found scratched near a door. Why presume that Atwood was not knowingly doing here job as an author and reinforcing the point re. the linguistic restrictions imposed on the 'lower orders'? That it has been taken up so avidly just further reinforces her tilt at the American education system and Christian fundamentalism.

[jean]

Why presume that Atwood was not knowingly doing here job as an author and reinforcing the point re. the linguistic restrictions imposed on the 'lower orders'?

Because she says herself in the interview I quoted from that the words she used were what she remembered from her Latin classes.

Besides, as ff says,

One point that rules this out - or at least makes it unlikely - is that this lamentably illiterate handmaiden knew the genitive plural of carborundum...

And that whoever scrawled the graffiti knew also that 'nolite' (literally, do not wish to...) is the usual form for the negative imperative in Latin - but didn't know that it is followed by an infinitive, not this weird genitive plural.

I think we have enough evidence to consider these mistakes Atwood's own.

That it has been taken up so avidly just further reinforces her tilt at the American education system and Christian fundamentalism.

Do you mean by us, here? And how is the American education system being tilted at?

[french frank]

In the book, with which I presume you are familiar [Jean may have been; I wasn't], the phrase is found scratched near a door. Why presume that Atwood was not knowingly doing her job as an author and reinforcing the point re. the linguistic restrictions imposed on the 'lower orders'? That it has been taken up so avidly just further reinforces her tilt at the American education system and Christian fundamentalism.

Not sure I understand this (in bold). Could you elaborate?

[Bryn]

Because she says herself in the interview I quoted from that the words she used were what she remembered from her Latin classes.

Besides, as ff says,


Ahe also knwe that 'Nolite' (literally, do not wish to...) is the usual form for the negative imperative in Latin - but it is followed by an infinitive, not this weird genitive plural.

I think we have enough evidence to consider these mistakes Atwood's own.

In the book the scratcher of the phrase is unknown. It is only presumed that it was an earlier handmaid. That the phrase is a corruption of Latin is not in doubt. It's the intent of its construction as used in the book which is. On that question no evidence has been provided, just different shades of supposition.

[Bryn]

Not sure I understand this (in bold). Could you elaborate?

The book is a allegorical, no? The lower orders in it have limitation imposed on their education and use of language. That the phrase has been taken up in the form used in the book and used on jewellery and in tattoos without questioning its linguistic validity tends to confirm the book's subtext re. the state of play in American society at the time of its writing, a state of play which apparently obtains still.

[jean]

That the phrase is a corruption of Latin is not in doubt.

Neither version of the phrase is 'a corruption of Latin.' There is no corresponding original Latin for either of them to be a corruption of.

Both are examples of cod-Latin, or dog-Latin:

Dog Latin, also known as Cod Latin, macaronic Latin, mock Latin, or Canis Latinicus,refers to the creation of a phrase or jargon in imitation of Latin, often by "translating" English words (or those of other languages) into Latin by conjugating or declining them as if they were Latin words...

The points made on this thread are these.

One of the versions we're considering is better cod-Latin than the other one.

The less good version is the one Atwood put in her book, because it's what she thought she remembered. She appears to have been unaware of the original version, so she cannot have intended the meanings you want us to take from what she wrote.

Unless, as I asked earlier, we are looking at reader-reception theory here?

[jean]

That the phrase has been taken up in the form used in the book and used on jewellery and in tattoos without questioning its linguistic validity tends to confirm the book's subtext re. the state of play in American society at the time of its writing, a state of play which apparently obtains still.

All it 'confirms' is that the first version of the phrase is no longer widely known, and for that Atwood is at least partly to blame.

Neither version of the phrase has any 'linguistic validity' as an example of correct Latin. They both sort of look as though they might, but the first version does it better.

[french frank]

The book is a allegorical, no?

I had no idea of this, having (as previously said) avoided Margaret Attwood as prolix and uninteresting.

The lower orders in it have limitation imposed on their education and use of language. That the phrase has been taken up in the form used in the book and used on jewellery and in tattoos without questioning its linguistic validity tends to confirm the book's subtext re. the state of play in American society at the time of its writing, a state of play which apparently obtains still.

It was the nature of the illiteracy that I was questioning, because the graffitist's inscription goes against normal linguistic evolution (which is, after all, driven by the illiterate, not the educated) - at least in the development of the Romance languages. We cannot, I suppose (unless there is evidence to the contrary here), exclude the possibility that the graffitist him/herself was well educated and was mocking the ignorance of the 'lower orders' of his/her time.

It would certainly be the case, if as you say this 'Latin' injunction has appeared on jewellery and tattoos, that the state of education is damned as no better now, in an affluent society, than the state of education at that time, and which the graffitist was ridiculing.

Though Ockam's Razor might apply to that explanation.

[jean]

Remember it's Atwood herself who chose what to write, and when interviewed offered no explanation for choosing the wording she chose.

Ockam's Razor suggests to me that she just misremembered the joke from her schooldays.

Women are copying her wording (even if they know the other) because they want to identify with the message of the book rather than with General Stillwell, I suppose.

[vinteuil]

Women are copying her wording (even if they know the other) because they want to identify with the message of the book rather than with General Stillwell, I suppose.

... sorry, you've lost me here - what has Vinegar Joe got to do with all this??


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