#high gothic language

[katesfoxhole]

Speaking of Latin being used as the translation convention for High Gothic, it just occurred to me that if Astartes was a third-declension i-stem plural noun, then the singular form would be Astartis.

I will be using that from now on.

I mean, I could instead headcanon that it's fifth-declension, in which case Astartes would be both the singular and plural (in the nominative case)... but that would be boooooring.

So, to recap:

[katesfoxhole]

Translating "rogue trader" into Latin (i.e. High Gothic) was a bit of a challenge. In my New College Latin Dictionary, the entry for "rogue" was furcifer, but when I put that into the Online Latin Dictionary, it turned out that meant something more like "rascal" or "criminal".

(actually the first thing I did was misspell it and get fucus for "rouge" as a color)

I tried "uncontrolled" next, which in the New College was effrenatus. That turned out to be a horse metaphor, it literally means "unbridled", a horse out of its rider's control. Implicitly because the rider has been negligent, has allowed the reins to fall slack.

I think that's a good description of the relationship between Rogue Traders and the Imperium. ^_^

I tag factions/groups in the nomitive plural, so "rogue traders" would be mercatores effrenati. Nom singular would be mercator effrenatus.

[katesfoxhole]

Studiastae tacticās lŏquuntur. Periti logisticās lŏquuntur.

"Amateurs talk about tactics. Professionals talk about logistics." --General Robert Hilliard Barrow, US Marine Corps

translation notes below the fold:

'"'Amateur'"' is derived from the Latin amātōr/-trīx, but that literally means "lover". The closest either of my two dictionaries get to the modern meaning is idiōta, "ignorant or uneducated man". Which, given the modern meaning, seems a bit mean. Greek gives us enthousiastḗs, which originally meant a religious fanatic or zealot, but its modern descendant is "enthusiast". The suffix -astḗs makes it into Latin as -asta, so one could form a psuedo-Latin word enthustiasta (1st declension). The Latin for "enthusiasm" is stŭdĭum, so one could also coin the word studiasta. Either works, and I've flip-flopped repeatedly on which to use.

The actual Latin for "tactics" is bella gerendi rationis, which roughly means "plans to manage war". The word 'tactics' comes to us from Greek rather than Latin: taktikē tekhnē "art of arrangement". But tactica as the high gothic for 'tactics' is pretty well attested in 40K material. I assume 1st declension, and it's the Direct Object of the sentence (thus Accusative Case), so I pluralized it tacticas.

Neither of my dictionaries has a Latin word for 'logistics'. Closest I can find is commĕātŭs, "supplies, provisions", but logistics is the MANAGEMENT of supplies. You'd think the Romans would have a word for it, since they were pretty good at it - and maybe they did and I just couldn't find it. I did find more specialized terms: lignatores for soldiers in charge of firewood, aquatores for water-gatherers, etc.

As with tactica, simply Latinizing the English word is well-attested in 40k lore (e.g. Corps Logisticae), so I chose to go with that. 1st declension again.

Pedant note: General Barrow's exact words were, "Amateurs talk about strategy and tactics. Professionals talk about logistics and sustainability in warfare." The quote comes from an interview given to the San Diego Union Tribune on November 11, 1979, shortly after he had been appointed Commandant of the Marine Corps. The quote may not originate with him and has been attributed to many people, including Napoleon; its actual provenance is uncertain AFAIK.

[katesfoxhole]

Hiding in terror from the fact that i messed up the Latin grammar in one of my most-used tags and need to edit about a jillion posts.

[katesfoxhole]

While coming up with a tag for Watchers in the Dark I realized I'd fucked up my Dark Angels tag. Of the three adjective forms of "dark" in my Latin dictionary I wanted the one that had (gloomy) with it, but misread which of them it was attached to.

Semicolons. Dictionary formatting is so dense. Gotta remember to look where the semicolons are.