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“Baby Got Back“, also known as “I Like Big Butts”, is a hit rap song written and recorded by American rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot, from his album Mack Daddy. The song samples the 1986 Detroit techno single “Technicolor” by Channel One. This is a translation of it. Translation Here, we have it translated into Latin by Quislibet. There was additional support and clarity offered by Ukelele. I have found it hilarious, and thus have reprinted the translation here. Enjoy. Text Content De clunibus magnis amandis oratio Mixaloti equitis mehercle! (By Hercules!) Rebecca, ecce! tantae clunes isti sunt! (Rebecca, behold! Such large...

A mysterious 600-year-old manuscript that has been deemed "unreadable" by the world's top cryptographers has finally been deciphered. That's the claim by one Bristol academic who has cracked the legendary Voynich manuscript and revealed its secrets. Dr. Gerard Cheshire believes that the document is written in a dead language called proto-Romance. By studying the letter and symbols through the manuscript, he was able to decipher the meaning of the words. According to the linguistics buff, the Voynich manuscript contains sex tips, info on parenting and psychology, and herbal remedies. "I experienced a series of 'eureka' moments whilst deciphering the code,...

A University of Bristol academic has succeeded where countless cryptographers, linguistics scholars and computer programs have failed—by cracking the code of the 'world's most mysterious text', the Voynich manuscript. Although the purpose and meaning of the manuscript had eluded scholars for over a century, it took Research Associate Dr. Gerard Cheshire two weeks, using a combination of lateral thinking and ingenuity, to identify the language and writing system of the famously inscrutable document. In his peer-reviewed paper, The Language and Writing System of MS408 (Voynich) Explained, published in the journal Romance Studies, Cheshire describes how he successfully deciphered the manuscript's...

I’ve been, as much as possible ignoring the Synod’s (“walking together”) document.  First, I’ve wanted a pleasant day.  Was the Synod really about producing a document?   Or was it about creating smokescreens and providing cover for the placement of poison pills and landmines?25000 words.The document, with the voting tallies for the paragraphs, is HERE in Italian only.   Gosh, I’ll bet that was helpful for the non-Italians.   Let’s rush through voting on paragraph after paragraph – there are, after all, only 167 – how long could that take?  what could go wrong? – in a language that not everyone...

One of the most dramatic pieces of evidence for a pre-Columbian crossing of the Atlantic is to be found in a single Latin marginalia, that is some words scribbled into the margin of a book. The sentence in question appears in a copy of the Historia rerum ubique gestarum by Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini which was published in Venice in 1477. In that work Piccolomini discusses the arrival of Indians in Europe blown from across the Atlantic at a date when America was unknown to Europeans (another post another day). Next to this passage a reader has written in Latin the...

Rowan W. Dorin, assistant professor of history, with the miscataloged parchments whose mystery he is working to solve. Credit: L.A. Cicero __________________________________________________________________________ When historian Rowan Dorin first stepped onto the Stanford campus in early 2017, he made it a habit to visit Green Library every week to dig through its collection of medieval documents and objects. After a few months, Dorin, an assistant professor of history specializing in medieval Europe, discovered something out of the ordinary. Three leaves of ancient parchment were labeled as a Hebrew translation of text about grammar, but its margins had Latin words like fish, capers...

There is wide consensus among scholars that Aramaic was the primary language spoken by the Jews of first century Palestine. The vast majority of Jews spoke it. Jesus spoke it. This has been the commonly accepted view since 1845, when Abraham Geiger, a German rabbi, showed that even Jewish rabbis from the first century would have spoken Aramaic. He convincingly argued that the Hebrew from the first century (Mishnaic Hebrew) only functioned as a written language, not as a living, spoken language. There are two reasons most scholars believe Aramaic was the primary language of Jesus’s time—and the language Jesus...

Red Greater Double THE BELOVED DISCIPLE JOHN, whom we saw standing near the Crib of the Babe of Bethlehem, comes before us again today; and this time, he is paying his delighted homage to the glorious Conqueror of death and hell. Like Philip and James, he too is clad in the scarlet robe of Martyrdom. The Month of May, so rich in Saints, was to be graced with the Palm of St. John. Salome one day presented her two sons to Jesus and, with a mother’s ambition, had asked him to grant them the highest places in his kingdom....

The earliest Latin commentary on the Gospels, lost for more than 1,500 years, has been rediscovered and made available in English for the first time. The extraordinary find, a work written by a bishop in northern Italy, Fortunatianus of Aquileia, dates back to the middle of the fourth century. The biblical text of the manuscript is of particular significance, as it predates the standard Latin version known as the Vulgate. and provides new evidence about the earliest form of the Gospels in Latin. Despite references to this commentary in other ancient works, no copy was known to survive until Dr...

One of the biggest NASCAR sponsors lobbied to have the event moved. Camping World Chairman and CEO Marcus Lemonis wrote in a letter dated for Tuesday that neither he nor anyone from Camping World would participate in an event at any Trump property "due to recent and ongoing blatantly bigoted and racist comments from Donald Trump in regards to immigrants of the United States." Trump has made several comments about immigrants while on the campaign trail. "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best," Trump said when announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination last month. "They're sending...

Sources inside the Vatican suggest that Pope Francis aims to end Pope Benedict XVI’s universal permission for priests to say the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), also known as the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. While the course of action would be in tune with Pope Francis’ repeatedly expressed disdain for the TLM especially among young people, there has been no open discussion of it to date. Sources in Rome told LifeSite last week that liberal prelates inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith were overheard discussing a plan ascribed to the Pope to do away with Pope Benedict’s famous...

A Glimpse Liturgy and Parish Life in the Late 1920s Msgr. Charles Pope • February 27, 2017 • Palm-sunday-latin-mass” by Boston at en.wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. I have said the Traditional Latin Mass for all of my many years of priesthood. Back in the late 1980s, only a few priests were “permitted” to do so and there were few resources available to learn it. About the only visual help was the Fulton Sheen film from the 1940s describing the Mass. So, I trained under a few older priests during my seminary years. I moved...

The landmass and the seas have been stretched and flattened Enlarge Image The Tabula Peutingeriana is one of the Austrian National Library's greatest treasures. The parchment scroll, made in the Middle Ages, is the only surviving copy of a road map from the late Roman Empire. The document, which is almost seven metres long, shows the network of main Roman roads from Spain to India. It is normally never shown to the public. The parchment is extremely fragile, and reacts badly to daylight. But it has been on display for one day to celebrate its inclusion in Unesco's Memory...

Gold bracelet found on arm of (slave?) girl killed near Pompeii by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. On the inside of the bracelet is carved "from the Master to his slave girl" (DOM[I]NUS ANCILLAE SUAE).

I used to teach this subject. I use a method that's a little different than the standard, a method aimed at results, not tradition, and no need to learn grammar at the outset, when you've got enough new things to learn. If you learned by the traditional method you may find this radically different; but trust me.

As the iuvenis voluptarius might say, put on your brevissimae bracae femineae and let's go to the taberna nocturna and drink some vinum rubrum Burdigalense. The Vatican has helpfully produced a new lexicon of modern words in Latin, providing translations for such non-classical terms as playboy, hot pants, nightclub and Merlot. The lexicon, which has just been launched, is intended to provide updated vocabulary for theologians writing in Latin about current issues. For those wishing to write about anarchy or dissent in the 21st century, entries include tromocrates (terrorist) and punkianae catervae assecla (punk). Theologians referring to the modern vices...

Learn the Latin of “O Salutaris Hostia” and “Tantum Ergo Sacramentum” Msgr. Charles Pope • May 31, 2016 • As a further reflection in the wake of Corpus Christi Sunday, permit me to offer a reflection on the two great Eucharistic hymns of Benediction. I sometimes get requests for help in understanding the Latin texts of these very familiar hymns for Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction.“O Salutaris Hostia” and “Tantum Ergo Sacramentum,” though familiar to many Catholics, remain only vaguely understood in terms of a word-for-word translation. They are sometimes referred to as just “O Salutaris” and “Tantum Ergo.” Most...

LAPORTE, Ind., Feb. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- C. Jack Trickler presents a clear and accessible study of the people who wrote the books of the Bible, their motivations and the historical, political and social settings in which they wrote in his new book, "A Layman's Guide to Who Wrote the Books of the Bible?" (now available through AuthorHouse). Trickler discusses his own theories, as well as those of other religious scholars, to offer a thorough, well-researched argument. "When you get into the Bible, you see enough evidence that the Bible was written by humans that you have to say, 'Well, who...

This video is simply a reference video, and is not intended to be divisive nor promote any kind of theological agenda.

A flake of limestone (ostracon) inscribed with an ancient Egyptian word list of the fifteenth century BC turns out to be the world's oldest known abecedary. The words have been arranged according to their initial sounds, and the order followed here is one that is still known today. This discovery by Ben Haring (Leiden University) with funding from Free Competition Humanities has been published in the October issue of the 'Journal of Near Eastern Studies'. The order is not the ABC of modern western alphabets, but Halaham (HLHM), the order known from the Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Arabian and Classical Ethiopian...