See Languages.
"I went over the spells I'd haywired. A real technician has to know at least one arcane language - Latin, Greek, classical Arabic, Sanskrit, Old Norse, or the like - for the standard reasons of sympathetic science. Paranatural phenomena are not strongly influenced by ordinary speech. But except for the usual tag-eads of incantations, the minmum to operate the gadgets of daily life, I was no scholar."
-Operation Chaos, V, p. 32.
(What is a "tag-ead"?)
In other words, people are impressed if we speak in a language that they don't understand. I wish that I had learned Latin, French and Irish properly at school. (I was at secondary school in the Republic of Ireland.) At a Wiccan hand-fast (marriage), I recited Poul Anderson's:
"Tene Mithra, etiam miles, fides nostris votis nos."
-You will find this quoted elsewhere on the blog.
In the remembrance book for Ninian Smart (scroll down), I wrote: "Multa docuit multos."
But that is my limit.
Matuchek claims to know "...one slightly esoteric language..." (ibid.)
- and composes a verse beginning:
"Ashes-way of the urningbay..." (ibid.)
Search me.
(A guy in Lancaster University Religious Studies Department used to joke, "We teach the two sacred languages: Sanskrit and German.")
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I looked up this part of Chapter V in my 1971 Doubleday edition of OPERATION CHAOS and "tag-ead" should be "tag-ends". Unfortunately you came across a misprint.
And I thought you had been seriously studying Latin?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Seriously studying Latin, I had, but it's difficult. I wish I had been interested when I was at school but how many of us could be properly interested back then? Education is all back to front somehow.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I know, for most of us learning a new language takes time, hard work, and concentration. Only a rare few learn languages easily.
Ad astra! Sean
I've always envied Luz O'Malley her talent with languages... 8-).
He's reciting Dog-Latin there, btw.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Don't forget how THE REBEL WORLDS mentioned how the Intelligence Academy drilled into cadets like Dominic Flandry the methods needed for quickly learning ALIEN languages! (Smiles)
Yes, that was dog-Latin Steven Matuchek used. The were-tiger Saracen emir should not have kept so much crystal on his desk!
Ad astra! Sean
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