Pedants' Paradise

[ahinton]

In paradiso.

Of course! I realised that soon after I'd typed it but you got in with your response before I could return to the keyboard! But then perhaps that typo was an apposite invitation in the circumstances given that, as you wrote "but this is Pedants' Paradise"!

[jean]

"Nobody" in the thirty-two years since the novel appeared, except on a Radio3 message forum thingy? Is that really the simplest and most likely interpretation?

More likely then that they knew some Latin, but not quite enough to get the neatness of the original joke or to understand the inadequacy of the new verson. (It's clear this writer didn't get it, and when she got some help, she didn't quite understand that, either.)

Or they understood, but didn't care.

And the second version has only become widespresd since the televising of the adaptation of the novel

But what is your alternative theory? I have given up trying to understand Bryn's.

It's quite a subtle joke, the original. If I'd been MA's Latin teacher and seen what my students were doing to spoil a good thing (assuming you're right and they were all involved) I'd have siezed on it and used it as a basis for a lesson on the Gerundive of Obligation, and they'd have remembered it for ever.

[jean]

...in paradisum.

He's thinking, as he often does, of being led into Paradise (in+acc), as opposed to being already there (in+abl).

[ahinton]

He's thinking, as he often does, of being led into Paradise (in+acc), as opposed to being already there (in+abl).

As I indicated to FF, I wasn't "thinking" at all but mistyping, as I do all too often.

[jean]

Don't spoil a good joke, ah.

[Serial_Apologist]

This whole discussion reminds me of the joke about the two university professors spotted walking across the quadrangle, when one of them turns to the other, and says "And fifteenthly..."

[P. G. Tipps]

He's thinking, as he often does, of being led into Paradise (in+acc), as opposed to being already there (in+abl).

He's not one of Brendan Rodgers' transfer targets is he ... ?

[jean]

This whole discussion reminds me of the joke about the two university professors spotted walking across the quadrangle, when one of them turns to the other, and says "And fifteenthly..."

Well, don't blame me.

Everything that needed to be said had already been said in #3518:

What can one say other than … crumbs? [micae!].

and #3519:

... yes, I was surprized (and a little irritated) by the form used by Margt: Attwood - and it will be irritating indeed if this becomes the 'standard' form of the hoary old joke.

[french frank]

He's thinking, as he often does, of being led into Paradise (in+acc), as opposed to being already there (in+abl).

Well, sixteenthly, I don't think that can be right. How could being led into (in + acc) be inferred from 'not necessarily by definition incompatible in paradisum' which must refer to what the situation is in (in + abl) paradise? Anyway, ah has said it was a typo which seems the easiest explanation.

Incidentally, when editing medieval texts, a lectio difficilior is usually preferable - a subtly different view from William and his Razor.

[Richard Barrett]

when editing medieval texts, a lectio difficilior is usually preferable

The Middle Ages must have been a Pedants' Paradise indeed.

[jean]

Incidentally, when editing medieval texts, a lectio difficilior is usually preferable - a subtly different view from William and his Razor.

Yes - but that's because we're dealing there with the inadequacies of the medieval scribe who, when copying something he couldn't understand, made it into something easier, which he could!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But, no, that wouldn't work either as it would presuppose that they had got Joe Stillwell's quote impossibly wrong or had independently come up with something very similar.

Unless the kids had known that there was a "Latin" version of "Don't let the ... ", but didn't know what it was, and so made up their own - which is exactly the sort of thing that teenagers do. (Non descendit illegitimi a similar example.)

[jean]

It would be an extraordinary coincidence if they came up with 'carborundorum' without ever having heard the original 'carborundum', don't you think?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

But surely it's equally unlikely that none of them, no one, had come across the original 'cod-Latin' and therefore become aware of the mistake?

They might all have; or some; or just one - ("My uncle Jack said this thing at Christmas, but Dad wouldn't let him repeat it when I asked him to") - but not seen it written down, and/or only vaguely remembered that it existed so they had to construct their own version. It's what kids do.

Are we preferring to think that a forty-six-year-old woman, having previously known the original at school, forgot it in later life (when there is more chance of her hearing the "proper" version) and so "remembered" an inaccurate version? Occam's growing a beard at this point.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It would be an extraordinary coincidence if they came up with 'carborundorum' without ever having heard the original 'carborundum', don't you think?

Yes - Uncle Jack must have used the original, and the kids have remembered it faultylyly. (Which is why it is appropriate in a novel in which women are infantilized and commodified, no?)