I finally caught a moment of Lonesome Dove when I could write down and check the

Latin Phrase "uva uvam vivendo varia fit"

and

The Latin phrase, "uva uvam vivendo varia fit" that appears on the Hat Creek Cattle Company is a corruption of the latin phrase "uva uvam videndo varia fit" from the scholia to Juvenal 2.81. It means, literally

a grape changes color [i.e., ripens] when it sees [another] grape.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096639/trivia

Ain't That Gus all over?

Y'gotta :hearthrob Westerns!

Smart.

Morality Plays

America!

Moi



Ever hear of a EuroWestern?

No, NOT Spaghetti Western, Euro!

Wow! So frontier cowboys from Texas were Latin scholars? Who'd a' thunk.

Sandi

C&TL2745 (imported) wrote: Mon Jul 06, 2015 1:56 pm Wow! So frontier cowboys from Texas were Latin scholars? Who'd a' thunk.

Sandi

Well, I really loved watching "Lonesome Dove," (the sequel was only so-so and the prequel just sucked) and if you have also seen the mini-series, you might remember that when the two leading characters (Augustus McCrea and Woodrow Call) were discussing the Latin words written on the side of the wagon, Woodrow said "You don't know what that means, for all you know it might be inviting people to come and rob us" and Augustus replied "It would be a pleasure to shoot at an educated man for a change." Also, on the wagon were the words "We don't rent pigs" which makes no sense at all..... why would anyone rent a pig?

I have read that the great western migration was the largest movement of educated people in history. You had to have reasonable resources just to get the wagon and oxen and food to make the trip. Some of the diaries were good reading. (Not that there were no schlock human beings in the group).

I have as an alternative translation: The fruit of the (grape) vine as it is living wanders off.

They call them Westerns, but here in Oregon, all the action takes place east of us.

Note that the verb vivendo means living and videndo means seeing. If we take the corrupted sentence which the word vivendo was inserted, the translation would be:

A grape is changed by living with other grapes.

But the "varia" is used like "(he, she, it) strays off course" rather than the English interpretation of "vary". It's used that way in all the modern Latin languages of today. I honestly think they're wrong.

Uva = grape vine.

Uvam = sour (fermented) fruit (grapes).

Vivendo = living.

Varia = stray off course. (variously)

Fit = becomes (belongs with gerund for complete phrase).

Hence: "Fruit of the vine -living (he, she, it) variously -had".

I'm no expert but coming from Spanish background this is how I'd see it.

A few Mexicans at this time period would have been familiar with Latin since after all the mass was said in Latin at this time.

But it is true Mexicans and SW Hispanics have been the least into going to church.

....

devi (imported) wrote: Thu Jul 09, 2015 9:12 am Uvam = sour (fermented) fruit (grapes).

....

I'm no expert but coming from Spanish background this is how I'd see it.

A few Mexicans at this time period would have been familiar with Latin since after all the mass was said in Latin at this time.

But it is true Mexicans and SW Hispanics have been the least into going to church.

Latin is a bit more complicated than Spanish. A lot more complicated, actually. Whereas English and Spanish change the form of pronouns according to the role they play in a sentence--"he" for subject, "his" for possession, "him" for direct object or indirect object, for example--Latin does it for nouns, too, and with a vengeance. English has nominative, objective, and possessive cases for pronouns, but Latin has nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative cases, each with its own set of endings, for nouns, pronouns and adjectives. There was also a vocative case for nouns, used when addressing someone by name.

"Uva" is a noun in the first declension, and the "-a" ending indicates the nominative case--the subject. "Uvam" is the same noun, but in the accusative case--the direct object. So the sentence as written is nonsense, because it has a grape living a grape. If it were living with a grape, the word "cum" (with) would be there, and the second "grape" would be in the ablative case.

The big question is whether the writer of Lonesome Dove screwed up the Latin from his own ignorance or carelessness or to make a point that the characters in the story didn't know their Latin as well as they thought they did.

Sandi

I remember years ago when the company I worked for decided to do business in Canada, we had to add French to all the labels, we found out in a hurry we needed to hire someone from Canada who actually spoke French as there first language. Knowing a language and writing it or speaking it to make sense is not always the same thing.