Deliberately ambiguous translation of "Songs of the wild dog"

Question

I am translating the phrase "Songs of the wild dog" into Latin, and I have the following:

~~Canti~~ Cantus Canis Feri

For context, this is the title of a music album I am working on. Aside from accuracy in translation, could this phrase mean anything else? I like double-meanings, so it would be a big bonus to me if the translation of the phrase had additional valid interpretations.

Cerberus · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-24T00:16:03.437

14

The regular noun cantus is of the fourth declension, so the genitive would be cantus. Because cantus can also be nominative or accusative plural, and the other two words are also multisignificant, you'd get many neat possibilities, some farther fetched than others:

CANTVS CANIS FERI:

Song of the wild dog
Wild songs of a dog
You sing songs of the wild
Strike up songs of the dog (ferio can mean "strike, punish, sacrifice, offer")
Beat the dogs of song (alternative accusative plural -is)
O, dog, you must sacrifice songs!
O, sung dog, you must sacrifice! (participle cantus of cano, nominativus pro vocativo)

Etc. You figure out how all of this is possible!

edited Mar 24 '21 at 00:16

answered Mar 24 '21 at 00:05

Cerberus

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The vocative of *cantus, -a, -um" would be "cante." Word order is why I stayed away from some of those meanings, though it's technically possible in poetry. – cmw Mar 24 '21 at 00:27
@C.M.Weimer: Well, it is meant to be a nominativus pro vocativo. – Cerberus Mar 24 '21 at 01:41
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Cantus, -us also an enchantment, a charm. – Hugh Mar 24 '21 at 06:45
Out of curiosity I put it into Google Translate since I expect someone might do that. Google gives it as wild singing dog, so it's at least directionally accurate. – Adam Mar 24 '21 at 14:23
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@Hugh: The charms of a wild dog, I like it. – Cerberus Mar 24 '21 at 19:22
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@Adam: Hah, Google Translate is always wrong in unpredictable ways! – Cerberus Mar 24 '21 at 19:22
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@Cerberus: No kidding. Try asking it to translate goatherd into Latin. – Joshua Mar 24 '21 at 21:24
@Joshua: Hah, unus caprimulgus. That makes exceedingly little sense. – Cerberus Mar 25 '21 at 00:12

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 23 '21 at 23:53

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Canti is incorrect. You want cantus. Note that the ending of cantus is long, as it's a 4th declension noun.

Technically, feri could refer to cantus (wild songs) or canis (wild dog), but because of the word order reading it so as a title isn't really natural.

answered Mar 23 '21 at 23:53

cmw

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Thanks! I made a novice assumption it was second declension. – Adam Mar 24 '21 at 14:22
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@Adam as a heuristic, nouns formed from verbs, describing the action (not the result) and ending in -us are very often fourth declension, e.g. exitus (from exire; exit, outcome, death), volatus (from volare; flight), usus (from uti; use) and many more. – Sebastian Koppehel Mar 27 '21 at 14:43

Deliberately ambiguous translation of "Songs of the wild dog"

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