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

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