Has a new practical reason to learn Latin emerged?

Question

How would you render:

If Trump bombs us into the Middle Ages, we'll all need to know Latin.

I'm posting an answer of my own, in hope of constructive criticism (or confirmation that I hit the Latin groove).

Answer 1

For the sake of comparison, here's a different rendering. Wherever possible I tried to make a different decision from yours.

Sī Trumps bombīs nōs ad saecula prīsca premet, omnibus Latine loquī necesse erit.

Latin conditionals are interesting, because the grammar expresses more information than in English. If the condition will happen in the future, the mood of the verbs indicates how "vivid" the condition is. I used a "future more vivid" (indicative) construction here to show that this concern is pressing and important—hopefully not because it is likely to happen in reality.

Since "Trump" ends in a consonant, and apparently comes from a consonant-stem in German, I treated it like a consonant-stem noun Trumps, Trumpis.

There seems to be no attested Latin verb for "to bomb [something] back to [something]", despite rigorous searching. So I used the verb premō "to crush, to force down", with the preposition ad "to". Given the meaning it would make sense to put re- in front of the verb, but *repremō isn't attested. See comments. As the instrument by which we are being forced back, bombīs is ablative plural.

This is the most difficult phrase to translate, since there's no Classical equivalent: another option (per Tom Cotton) is rētrōrsus "backward" with a form of agō "drive"; yet another (per Morgan's lexicon, via brianpck) is to use pyrobolus for "bombs" with a form of dēiciō "hurl [something] down onto".

In Classical Latin, prīscus refers to "the old times", when heroes were real heroes and kings were real kings: the long-ago age during which history and legend are somewhat mixed. For instance, prīsca Latīnitas is the Latin spoken before Classical times.

Saeculum can mean a century as in 100 years, but can also mean an indefinitely long span of time, or more generally an "age" (golden age, iron age, etc). I'm using it in the plural here, per Joonas Ilmavirta's suggestion, to indicate that we might be sent to anywhere in a long time period rather than to a single specific instant.

Just to have something different, I used an impersonal construction for "need": necesse erit omnibus "it will be necessary for everyone..." Since nōs appears earlier in the sentence I left off nobis here. And rather than "know the Latin tongue", which sounds slightly awkward, I used literally "speak Latin-ly" (Latine loquī).

Answer 2

Si Trumpus nos bombet in Medium Aevum, nobis omni sit opus linguam Latinam noscere.

Commentary:

• I chose Trumpus to drag Trump into Latin somewhat roughly, to avoid triumphus, and hopefully to sound a bit ridiculous. To English ears, it evokes the somewhat undignified word rumpus.

• I coined a verb bombare, from Italian bomba (from Latin bombus, a "boom"), although now that I look it up, I see that the Italian verb is bombardare.

• I put bombare into the present subjunctive, since it describes the protasis of a hypothetical scenario.

• I'm thinking that the object of bombare should naturally be the victim, not the bomb. I suppose the victim could be in the dative case, but the accusative seems right because I want to suggest that nos are being "pushed" in Medium Aevum. I'm imagining that if bombare has realy currency, it does not normally suggest causing the victim to move from one place to another—and certainly not from one time to another. I'm intending this to be a somewhat jarring or unusual use of the verb (as it is in English).

• Medium Aevum since Latin was still in common use then, and to suggest misery, famine, feudalism, loss of civilization, and a loss of knowledge, which I think is amusing since knowing Latin today is pretty esoteric knowledge.

• Dative nobis because it's our need; we're the ones with a stake in this opus.

• Dative omni (should be omnibus as TKR commented) to emphasize that it's all of us. I'm thinking that omnino would be wrong here because it's an adverb.

• Present subjunctive sit because I'm thinking that the apodosis of this hypothetical situation should still be subjunctive, and a result should have the same tense as the protasis.

• I chose opus over necesse on the hypothesis that opus more concretely indicates a practical need.

• The two-word phrase linguam Latinam only because nearly everything I read shies away from the single-word Latinum. I understand Latinus to be heard primarily be an adjective.

• Noscere for knowing a language, since I understand this verb to suggest close aquaintance, familiarity. I considered Latine loqui but for some reason I rejected it. Right now, though, I can't see why.

Answer 3

Just for fun, I'll add a version with some other possibilities:

Trump sī nōs tormentīs rētrōrsum conjiciet in minus ērūdīta sæcula hominum, omnibus sermōnem Latīnum callēre opus fuerit.

Trump: I'll just note that my preferred moniker for the gentleman in question is Cynocephalus, but in deference to those who might esteem him differently I'll just use his name.

tormentīs: I was going to go with pyrobolīs, but I see that's already in one of the comments, so I threw this in. (I'm not sure I completely buy pyrobolus anyway.) I realize tormenta does risk creating the image in the listener's mind of Trump as the ringleader at a circus shooting us out of a cannon, but I figure that the idea is fairly clear.

in minus ērūdīta sæcula hominum: This is from Cicero, Rēs Publica. My computer's being wonky so I can't find the specific passage.

sermōnem Latīnum callēre: My default here would be Latīne loquī, but I offer this as another option. I also considered Latīne sermōcinārī posse.

conjiciet/fuerit: I put the protasis in future most vivid, given that I think the possibility of this happening is quite likely. For the apodosis I thought it might be fun to use the future perfect, except imagining it as a perfect future, so to speak: "it have will be necessary for us." That is, in the past, it was necessary that in the future we learn Latin. Obviously erit is what's called for here but, hey, it's 3:30 in the morning.