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Exercises in Style (French: Exercices de style), written by Raymond Queneau, is a collection of 99 retellings of the same story, each in a different style.

This is the one I'm wondering about:

Sol erat in regionem zenithi et calor atmospheri magnissima. Senatus populusque parisiensis sudebant. Autobi passebant completi. In uno ex supradicti autobibus qui S denominationem portebat, hominem quasi junum, cum collo multi elongato et cum chapito a galono tressato cerclaro vidi.

I have the impression that it is quite correct Latin except from a few words at the end (junum, chapito, etc.) — the title indicates Macaronic Latin, i.e. a mixture with French.

Apart from that, how good is the Latin in this paragraph?

  • Are you certain that you typed all the letters correctly? Because there are a lot of errors in here that could be typos. P.S. Don't 99 retellings of the same story get a bit boring? – Cerberus Jan 10 '22 at 18:26
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    @Cerberus This is a copy and paste from the French Wikipedia page, I didn't check with a paper text. I find it more amusing than boring given the brevity of the story –  Jan 10 '22 at 19:32
  • Ahh then I wonder whether the editor of Wikipedia made a lot of typos. I am inclined to think so, because I wouldn't expect this many serious errors in a published text, especially if one is supposed to learn from it. – Cerberus Jan 10 '22 at 19:41
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    @Cerberus As the title suggests, there's nothing to learn from it, it's just a stylistic game. I must have a hard copy somewhere to check –  Jan 10 '22 at 20:00
  • @Cerberus Here is the full story (from a rather serious website) http://www.arretetonchar.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/IMG/Latin%20macaronique%20-%20Queneau,%20exercices%20de%20style.pdf –  Jan 10 '22 at 20:02
  • Thanks! I see supradictis instead of supradicti, so there is at least one typo in the Wikipedia version you quoted. But the other errors are also present in the PDF. I wonder whether the PDF was copied correctly from the original. – Cerberus Jan 10 '22 at 20:40
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    For the record, as an author Queneau was very "creative" in his usage of of the French language: made-up words, weird spelling, etc. He was a member of Oulipo, a literary approach in which playfulness and enjoyment are more important than grammatical and lexical accuracy. In this context it's not very surprising that he would have made a lot of mistakes in this Latin text... the question is whether he made them on purpose or not! – Erwan Jan 11 '22 at 15:53
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    The point of the story is that French expressions have been literally translated into Latin, resulting in a sort of pseudo or "Dog Latin". A good "translation" of this story in e.g. English would use similar literal translations from English into Latin, creating an equally faulty - but convincing - Latin. – Jos Jan 11 '22 at 15:55
  • This (autobus, autobi, m., 2nd declension: I think it should in fact be ex supradictis autobis, shouldn't it?) appears to spring from the same school as "Romanes eunt domus". Or alternatively the school of "Let's Parler Franglais" (as doubly satirised by Private Eye in the UK). The point being to show, for the sake of raising a laugh in those who may be fellow-strugglers, how bad your proficiency in a foreign language can be, not how good. – mike rodent Mar 28 '24 at 07:15

2 Answers2

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Not very.

Lexically, a lot of the words aren't Latin or aren't used with the meaning they had in (Classical) Latin: zenithi (French zénith < Medieval Latin cenit < Arabic samt (with the m being misread as ni) < Classical Latin sēmita 'path'), atmospheri (French atmosphère < New Latin atmosphaera from ἀτμός + σφαῖρα, not attested as a compound in Ancient Greek or Classical Latin), autobi and autobibus (French autobus, from automobile + omnibus, both clipped), passebant (French passer < Vulgar Latin *passare, not attested Classically), supradicti (the intended meaning is 'mentioned above/earlier', but as a variant of superdictus it actually means 'said in addition'; splitting off the supra would kind of fix it), junum (French jeune < Latin iuvenis), collo (French col 'collar' as opposed to Latin collum 'neck'), chapito (French chapeau with an Spanish-like diminutive, I guess), a (French à, should be another cum), galono (French galon 'braid') tressato (French tressé 'braided'; Latin would be plexo or similar), cerclaro (not sure what's intended there).

Grammatically, there are a number of issues as well: regionem should be in the ablative, not the accusative; magnissima should be maximus (irregular superlative, agreement with masculine calor); sudebant should be sudabant (sudo is in the first conjugation); passebant should be passabant (assuming reconstructed *passare, first conjugation); supra[ ]dicti should be supra dictis; autobibus should be autobis (second declension), or autobi should be autobus (fourth declension); portebat should be portabat (a trend); multi should be multum (the adverb).

It's possible I missed some. Of course, producing correct Latin wasn't really the point.
His use of autobi did remind me of Alfred Denis Godley's The Motor Bus, which did a better job of sticking to a declension.

Cairnarvon
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    Wow I missed a lot of things, thanks of lot for you detailed answer –  Jan 10 '22 at 18:01
  • cerclaro is related to the braid which encircles the hat. Encercler in French. – Luc Jan 12 '22 at 14:13
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Queneau’s exercise has the superscription “Macaronique”. It does not pretend to be classical Latin. It is a parody of a mixture of bad Latin and worse French.

fdb
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