When in Rome .

[Kevin the grey]

Part of the joy of living with two languages is the broadening effect it may have.
There is also the paradoxical quandaries it may raise . I who am master of all I survey(when I look in the mirror) raised just such a one with myself .

What was the French Translation for " Faux Pas" . Yep I did .
After I recovered from the head shaking , double take caused by this faux pas I raised the question again. (Dang I put a lot upon myself.) What would The Latin for "Faux Pas" be ?

Let us set aside cultural differences such as "There just aint no such animal" in latin . Could we look at it more figuratively ? Using "Mea Culpa" (sp) as a basis could we say " Nea Culpa" (sp) . As is evident my latin is indeed a dead language . (Why therefor must I trod upon its grave in such a disgraceful manner?)


Knowing a few words and phrases has actually saved my bacon once .
It put someone elses bacon in the fire as well . You should have seen the look of horrored dismay on this gents face when I thrust forth with a knowing repartee to his unseemingly rude and thought to be indiscernibly clever jab .

I let him slip free from my blade as it was in a dark desolate place . (his subconcious) Just my six foot two hulk looming over his deflated ego was enough .

 

[Grob]

The litteral is wrong step or maybe false step isnt it? I have made it a goal in life to learn a language every 5-10 years for the rest of my life. I got 20 years for the first one, so far I have a pretty good grasp of spanish and a truely pathetic understanding of french, ah BC where they really dont make any effort to be bilingual or even teach french to everyone. Latin is way down on the list

Yet another overinflated buffon falls to the grey cunning linguist.

 

[Esav Benyamin]

Right, faux pas is false step, from the Latin words falsus passus. But then, the idiom 'false step' wasn't necessarily used by the Romans in that sense.

 

[Kevin the grey]

Ah the vagaries of fate and the figurative . I thought Faux was false or more properly fault . As in not a false step or not at fault . "real or not" is "vrai ou faux" in French ? As they are figurative It may mean "A real step" or "a false step" if I follow your meaning correctly .

Just for my own edification how would one say " No guilt" ? in a way that would stand on its own such as "Mea Culpa"

Now it is a tangled web I weave as the french for not guilty is often " Non-coupable" which as you proabably well know means not "cuttable" or cannot be put to the sword or guillotine .

Would coupable have come from culpa ? My goodness even we say culpable at times .

I know what crime you must feel I do to language here . If ignorance is to be quenched it must be in the fountain of knowledge .

 

[Esav Benyamin]

coupable would come from culpa, guilt. Not guilty, Your Honor! ... I don't know. I find (in my dictionary) the phrase abesse a culpa, to be away from guilt, which I imagine means not guilty: Absum a culpa, I am free of guilt.

Cuttable would come from cultus, the root of cult, as in cultivate crops. To cultivate meant to cut up the ground with a culter, a coulter on a plow. Culter gives us the diminutive cultellus which gives us (Latin) cultellaria, (French) coutellerie, (English) cutlery, and (Spanish) cuchillo.

How's that for knife content?

 

[Kevin the grey]

coupable would come from culpa, guilt. Not guilty, Your Honor! ...

How's that for knife content?

Reply: You have certainly whet my appetite.

Just one more kind sir and I will plague you no more .

Does not the root coup of coupable in French mean cut ? by extension could we say that coupâble coming from culpa could mean that culpa (guilt in Latin) could have the same or original root definition as in "cut" .

As it was not just the French who were fond of short prison stays and shortening culpable prisoners mayhaps the original premise was the same .

Well I,ll stop my mirthful murky mind meanderings .

Is there perchance a book which could give a basic understanding of Latin ?
Would a dictionary help ?

 

[Thomas Linton]

As they are figurative It may mean "A real step" or "a false step" if I follow your meaning correctly .

Subject to checking, I think a "false step" in older English usage would mean a misstep, as in a stumble. ("He took a false step in the darkness.")

Just for my own edification how would one say " No guilt" ? in a way that would stand on its own such as "Mea Culpa"

"Mea culpa" is a confession of culpability ("I am at fault") - or a confession of sin ("Mea culpa; mea culpa; mea maxima culpa." [all Latin approx. It's been 50 years.])

If ignorance is to be quenched it must be in the fountain of knowledge .

I prefer oil.

 

[Esav Benyamin]

As language changes, sounds shift, some get dropped, and the original roots are hard to find. Languages like Latin and French, however, are recorded in writing at every stage of the shift from one to another.

Culpa was guilt, cultus was knife. The [l] sound often shifts towards a [w] sound, so culp- to cuwp- to coup- is phonetically logical.

The idea of culpable as coupable coming from coupé (ultimately from coup) is an example of folk etymology, a story that seems to make sense, but has no historical record joining one to the other.

I studied Latin 4 years in high school and one in college, and I have a shelf of books on it that I've picked up since. It is fundamental to much of our language and cultural studies, so I always enjoyed working with it. Conveniently, when I studied Russian, I found much of the grammar extremely close to Latin. Both of them are archaic Indo-European languages. In some ways, Russian was the more archaic of the two.

There are simple Latin text books available, although of course the language is not in much demand these days. Even in the early 1960s when I was in Latin III, we had only 6 students, and in Latin IV, there were only 3 of us.

Your best bet for good background on the words would be a Latin-English English-Latin dictionary like my hardcover Cassell's New Latin Dictionary.

You can also look up words on a good online dictionary like www.dictionary.com which will give etymologies. Also websites like www.wordorigins.org and www.worldwidewords.org

 

[Kevin the grey]

I am in awe . While there is no direct link, as you say, there is a certain logic to it. The mindset of the two cultures is the crux of the matter . It has been suggested to me that to try and think like a man of another culture without immersing oneself in that culture is doomed to failure .

I can only suppose over the intervening distances what their perceptions must have been like . Thank you for at least partially illuminating the darkness.