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The headline on electoral-vote.com this morning is Habemus Dicentis, playing on Habemus Papam ("We have a pope") to announce the selection of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representives.

I would have expected a noun in the accusative case, like Habemus Oratorem. Is there really Latin precedent for dicens ("saying") meaning the speaker of a parliamentary body and/or putting a word in the genitive case with habere to indicate what we have?

Bonus question: If dicens is wrong, what is the Latin for the speaker of a legislative body?

Ben Kovitz
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    Are you sure it's meant to be singular? Dicentis is a valid alternative for the plural accusative, if that makes any sense in the context. – Joonas Ilmavirta Jan 07 '23 at 16:42
  • @JoonasIlmavirta Definitely singular: it refers to Kevin McCarthy, elected after many rounds of voting, as often happens when Cardinals choose a Pope. – Ben Kovitz Jan 07 '23 at 16:53
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    Seems a few people are running with the joke, but whoever came up with it should really be educated about how piss poor Google translate functions. – cmw Jan 07 '23 at 18:09
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    Habemus dicentem: "Hey, we have someone here who can actually talk!" – printf Jan 08 '23 at 15:10

1 Answers1

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As of today (2023-01-07), "habemus dicentis" is the translation provided by Google Translate when you type in the phrase "we have a speaker". Curiously, if you type in "We have a speaker" (capital "W"), you get something closer to your suggestion: "Habemus orator."

As anyone with any experience with Latin Google Translate shouldn't be surprised to hear, neither translation is correct. "Habemus" requires the accusative. Orator is nominative and doesn't fit at all. As for the first, even the most generous interpretation--which parses dicentis as an accusative plural--yields, "We have [people who are] speaking." I'm not aware of any context in which the participle dicens has the same meaning as the political function of a "speaker," and (more obviously) there is only one. It seems pretty clear that someone without any knowledge of Latin plugged this into Google Translate and made it a headline.

My suggestion would be to use praeses, which is used even in modern contexts to refer to the presiding officer of a committee. The phrase would thus be:

Habemus praesidem.

The one downside I see is that praeses is also a plausible translation for a "president." According to a comment from Joonas, though, some neo-Latin speakers distinguish praeses (head of a committee) from praesidens (head of state).

brianpck
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    The Finnish Nuntii Latini had the convention that the chairman of any committee or similar is praeses and the president as the head of a republic is praesidens. – Joonas Ilmavirta Jan 07 '23 at 16:55
  • @JoonasIlmavirta I'll update--that removes the ambiguity! – brianpck Jan 07 '23 at 16:56
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    And if you end the English sentence with a full stop, you get the perfectly grammatical Oratorem habemus. Google Translate is curiously sensitive to capitalization and interpunction. – Sebastian Koppehel Jan 07 '23 at 17:23