Thursday, 20 June 2019

Esne?

Whereas JRR Tolkien invented fictional languages, CS Lewis and Poul Anderson merely referred to them -

Lewis: Solar;
Anderson: Planha, Eriau, Temporal etc.

We do not read a single word of the Time Patrol language, Temporal, although another time traveler speaks one sentence in Latin:

"Es tu peregrinator temporis?"
-see here.

Blog Central Analysis Of That Sentence
(i) Because "es" is a second person singular verb, it already means "thou art" and need not be preceded by the pronoun except possibly for emphasis.

(ii) A question would be asked not by changing the word order but by adding "-ne" to the verb. Thus:

"Esne Peregrinator temporis?"

However, an English-speaking time traveler might follow the English language practice of changing the word order.

Later: In fact, Anderson has:

"'Loquerisne latine?'"
-Poul Anderson, "Delenda Est" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 173-228 AT p. 183.

("Do you speak Latin?")

4 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And of course we see Latin being used as a lingua Franca by the Polesotechnic League!

I also thought of the Latin/Roman acronym: "S.P.Q.R.", meaning literally "Senate and People of Roman." "The" would have been added in English to make "The Senate and People of Rome."

Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Sean: "Romanus" would translate as "of the Romans" -- Latin used the definite article and indicated possessives differently from an analytical language like English.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

Thanks! I sit corrected. So, "S.P.Q.R." is best translated as "The Senate and People of the Romans" (despite me thinking that looks a bit odd)?

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Both,
I think that it is "The Roman Senate and People," with "Romanus" as an adjective, not a genitive noun.
Paul.