Septuagint/Talk

When I was 14 and had finished a year of Latin language my father gave me Winne Ille Pu, a Latin translation of the A. A. Milne work. The map in the front had an arrow pointing to "VII Polus." Now I knew that was the 'North Pole' from having read Pooh more than a few times in earlier years, but even as a future-know-it-all-Ph.D.-holder I didn't know that the word in Latin for "North" is Septentrionalis, which current-know-it-all members of Western Civilization have often abbreviated with the Roman numeral VII because the first two syllables of "North" are ALMOST "Seven," or Septem. See? It's a pun. Once I understood it, I thought it was funny. On the other hand, like most puns, it can exclude the general reader who doesn't know a couple of extra languages. Hence (yes, there's a point to this rant) my opposition to using multilingual puns depending on insider knowledge in sources for the general reader. By the way, I went on to major in classics in college and teach Latin during grad school, so I am, to put it mildly, an elitist. On the other hand, I'm also a *polite* elitist (ask J H Kemp!) who prefers not to exclude people pointlessly. --MichaelTinkler

Why do you say that it's a "tri-lingual identification", though? What are the three languages? I see only one. --AV

In the identification there are two: greek and latin. The third probably came in Michael's mind as hebrew, the septuaginta beeing a translation.

Yep. We're writing in English, so that's one. Septuaginta is Latin, that's two. Whoops! I guess I mean bi-lingual, though the actual 70 is a Greek number not even represented here, so maybe that counts for 3. (I can't remember greek numbers that high this late at night and so far from a dictionary!). Not to mention the whole legend (or history) of who the 70 were and the further legend(whose source I can't remember) that the 70 worked separately and produced identical, miraculous translations. --MichaelTinkler

Still, the word itself is in one language - Latin; the fact that we're writing in English is irrelevant, since it's called Septuagint in all other languages as well, it's a direct borrowing from Latin. There's no trace of the original Greek name in the word (was there an origial Greek name? Perhaps they called it Septuagint directly in Latin, long after its appearance, based on the legend of 70 translators? I don't recall) or of any Hebrew. But I guess I'm being pedantic --AV

well, in fact, there are two languages. No one I know (and I have an undergraduate degree in Latin and used to teach it) goes around looking at Roman numerals in an English langugae context and reads them out loud as Latin words. I'm not sure what the Greek name was (hepta-something-or-other - I'm not finding it in my abridged Liddell and Scott).

Septentrionalis means the direction towards the septentriones, the seven stars that make up the big dipper. So the link isn't a pun, definitely not a mutlilingual pun, but rather an etymological abbreviation. Maybe you knew this already, but better safe than sorry. Btw, Latin translations of existing books are very neat.

whatever it is, I think it's one of those facts that are more annoying than interesting -- it's just a little anorak-y for my tase...JHK

Well, here's a dumb question. Did the Romans use this abbreviation? English isn't actually a part of it, and septentrionalis is a bit too long to write on a map. If so, then it can't really be considered any more exclusive than using the Latin in the first place, since it is just the equivalent of marking N-S-E-W. I suppose this is somewhat irrelevant to the case at hand, though, since there is no reason to write LXX for septuagint and we are supposed to be using English.