Last month, I came up with a personal motto for the blog:-
But mottoes are so much better in Latin. I loved Latin at school, but last studied it in 1976 and that was the Cambridge Latin course which worked by osmosis rather than grammar drill. So I got out a text book and set about trying to work it out – you can read about my first efforts here, (sorry can’t get link to work, original post was March 31).
I got as far as ‘Egredite domo nunquam sine liber’ – but I knew, or rather suspected, it wasn’t quite right.
I am now indebted to Dr Stephen Ridd, classics teacher at Abingdon School for correcting my schoolgirl Latin. I collared him this morning when he visited us and he sorted it out for me – I was on the right track wordwise, but grammatically I had some problems! Apparently when you are instructing someone not to do something, you have to approach it in a roundabout manner, telling them to be unwilling to do that thing.
So thanks to Stephen, the final motto, in the right Latin order translated into English, essentially reads: Be unwilling home to leave, unless a book you have. That’s very Yoda-ish – It’s much better in Latin …
I love this! Great idea and great motto. Your link about the devising isn’t working for me though.
Blooming links! I can’t get it to work, although I’ve double-checked the code. I have updated the post giving date of original for anyone wanting to refer back.I’ve had so much fun playing about with this Latin. I wish I’d studied it further – as it is genuinely a useful language to know in my book.