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Star Wars Takes Over Harvard Commencement
An anonymous reader writes "Harvard University celebrated its 356th Commencement on Thursday. It is tradition at Harvard is to have an undergraduate deliver a Latin Salutatory address. This year's speaker, Charles Joseph McNamara, delivered an address all about Star Wars in Latin! TheForce.net has a write-up of the event, and the speaker was really hilarious. He apparently doesn't like Star Wars that much, but it's still awesome. The video is available online, and you too can see him do a Yoda voice and make light-saber motions ... in front of over 30,000 people. The speech is under "Morning Exercises" on the Harvard site. The Latin Oration begins at about 1:09:30."
Getting a lot of coverage today, Harvard, aren't ya?
Another example of how a lot of wealth can get you a lot of rewriting of history.
now i know why my submissions get turned down...
to be fair, this is getting old...I'm a huge SW fan, a fan of anyone who can lecture in latin, and I can't find anything about this submission remotely interesting, insightful, or of news value to nerds.
In fact a lot of stuff on Firehose that gets shot down just due to too much input and a filtering system that is possibly becoming obsolete could have replaced this article.
An address in a dead language available only in a dead video format. I suppose that should be expected...
Do you find something funny about my friend, Biggus Dickus?
I have but one thing to say to you, sir:
Romani ite domum!
-- ToroDon't be ridiculous, Latin's not that dead...
Seems to work on my computer under linux using the MPlayer plugin for Mozilla/Firefox. I guess there's other codecs behind that, but I do know that I'm don't have realplayer installed on this thing.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
I think it lost something in the translation from Klingon.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
I had to go to IMDb.com to look that title up. I stopped watching television a few years back, when it was all *Idol and "Reality" shows, so I had no idea what the fuck Lost was.
Maybe it's just me, but I'm guessing a lot of other nerdy SF shows were much bigger than Lost will ever be. Shows like The X-Files, or some of the Star Trek series.
Lost is Sci-Fi? That's new to me.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
A couple of things:
First, it's not entirely clear that Lost is a scifi show. The producers have said they won't resort to anything supernatural to explain the stuff that happens on the show, but the longer it runs the more that's in doubt. For now, it's a mystery that is not at all scifi. Maybe a very convoluted soap opera. Everything on the island has so far been either explained with mundane modern (or 20 years ago) technology, or not explained at all. Nothing has been explained by scifi to this point. Maybe the final explanation will involve aliens or something, but nothing like that has been even hinted at at this point.
Second, Jack is kind of a dick, and has been more and more so as time goes on. Personally, I can't stand the character. I get the feeling that if he wasn't so busy yelling all the time, he could have solved the mystery of the island about a year ago. Of all the actors on Lost (who play currently living characters anyway), he's probably the one I'd least want to hear from.
So, some dude talking about Star Wars in Latin is way geekier than Jack from Lost.
"It is tradition at Harvard is to have..."
English isn't for everyone
I was about to type up a response to this till I saw it was posted by an AC, so I'm not sure if it's a troll or not. Reply back under a good-karma account and I will continue.
Because it happened and someone reported it. That's how news works.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
This silly playacting saying things in latin pretending to be the heirs to Rome when the campus is really turning out barbarians. If you want to look at it another way, in the past barbarians were the clueless management that thought everything could be solved by threats and the farmers were the the technical staff.
And here I am, thinking I was missing something by not attending Harvard...
I think I am going to start a new religion.
It will be called The Church of the AntiReal. We will be dedicated to driving a certain dead video format even further into the ground, not for any logical reason mind you, then it wouldn't be a proper religious crusade.
I dont read
Off course it's a troll, and a recurring troll too. This thing pops up on every star wars/trek post on /.
if (could_moderate()) // something tells me i fscked this up
Timesprout.article(19456271).insight(2);
forgive my code, its been 5 years and 29 shock therapies since I last coded more than a perl script to alphabetize my DVD collection, and at least then I had a linux machine running with man.
feel free to improve and explain my OO memory failures ~cry~
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
Mortai Astrum
Go on, correct that. I'm not very good at declining nouns yet.
Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.
You're right, a google search confirms that. Well, typically I ignore Star Wars and Star Trek threads so I didn't know for sure. :)
Lost is the prime example of why good extended-length narrative shows should never be put in so heavy an ad-based medium. TNT and USA-level should be the closest these kinds of shows ever get to network. Lost should have been on Showtime. It would have been completed already.
A bilingual post in the spirit of the thread.
Lingua latina tamen vivit, etiam in mondo computatri. Opus Ubuntu unam sectionem habet pro translatione in latinam. Ecce hic! Ea non est mortua. Multi in mundo linguam latinam discunt, e.g. in plurimis universitatibus, aut in schola secunda (AP Latin?). Etiam, quisque studentus in Italia discere linguam latinam debes. Ea lingua universalis est, quidem hodie, et paene ubique ab aliquo locuta est.
The Latin language yet lives, even in the computer world. The Ubuntu project has a section for translating into Latin, you can find it here. Latin is not dead. Many in the world study Latin, for example in most universities, or in secondary school (AP Latin?). Furthermore, each student in Italy must learn Latin. It is a universal language, even today, and is spoken, by someone, almost everywhere.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Me siento muy bien. Pienso que iré para una caminata. (Ok its not latin, its Spanish, my sister is the one who speaks latin and I can't wake her at this hour because she's a lawyer who will do evil things to me. Spanish is latin based though...)
I think this is still OT since its about latin. But its late and use Google to translate the spanish if you don't get the MP reference...
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
Anybody else reminded of C3PO's narration of the characters' story thus far to the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi? It was probably his intention to mimic C3PO. This made me smile :)
See, what I don't get is why this is on-topic but discussion of Bill Gates isn't.
but you cannot tel them much!
"English motherf***er, do you speak it?"
Latin hasn't been a "home language" anywhere for hundreds of years - no one speaks it as their first language. It is used only as a formality out of tradition and the reading of old texts; English is the international business language now.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Well, primarily that it should be Magnus Penis.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Dead language?
Most legal terms and medical terminology are 100% latin.
A dead language isn't one which isn't spoken, it's one which stopped evolving. And Latin hasn't evolved for a long time.
Actually, no. It has to be deemed newsworthy after the reporting bit. ;-)
But it apparently was by the Slashdot editors. For some reason.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Somewhere at the end he says (translated): "Harvard University is giving us The Force, one even stronger than the Death Star in New Haven." A clear swipe at Yale :-)
I'm an italian student. For sake of precision, is not correct that EACH student in Italy must learn latin...
In fact latin is mandatory only in "licei", the non-technical secondary schools (maybe the most popoulos, i don't known).
Note that the vast majority of students in scientific (math, physics, chemistry, etc) and technical (engineering, architecture,...) faculties in Italy come from licei, so in fact most of "scientist" and engineers in Italy known latin.
Elen sìla lùmenn' omentielvo
What a bunch of stuffy unhappy people. It makes me feel bad that they all congregated in one place to sulk.
Then explain why "automobile" is translated in my text-book. Oh, and sex. Especially sex. Everyone knows sex wasn't inven...err...discovered until the 1960s.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
trans. I am not interested in your dopey religious cult.
Me transmitte sursum, caledoni!
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
I'd like a plaintext verbatim copy the address. It sounds like it would be useful in greeking mock-ups of web sites, etc.
It is proper to postulate that the Latin Language survives in the dialect of those of the English whose scholastic studies were at a superior or elevated level and whose aspirations were to achieve professional competence and status. Indeed Latin usage survives even among plumbers and electricians. Need I go on? In fact, Business English uses a mind-boggling array of pseudo-Latin terminology, probably because this makes it easier to translate into Romance languages. It is much harder to translate sentences made largely of the Teutonic root words.
The miserable gits dissing Harvard really need to get a life and discover the world of cross-cultural word play. It's infinitely wider and more interesting than, say, white "rappers" trying to sound black.
Pining for the fjords
So is there a screen there displaying what is being said, or do they just leave all the non latin speakers in the dust? Also, is latin required at Harvard?
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
Hay Asmandeus!! SHe has a sister!!! OMG Poniez! 11111!!!! Will she be my Latin lover?
Ok, I'll stop now
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Realplayer a waste of space.
Shouldn't that be I:IX:XXX?
there was no constant rate time measurement and certainly not to the resolution of minutes. As I recall, hours were of variable length depending on the seasons, and would be measured by at best sundials and at worst things like water clocks or candles. The Romans really weren't that interested in accurate time measurement, since the applications for it did not exist. So (and better scholars will I am sure correct me) I guess the time would be "about the VIIth hour"
Pining for the fjords
In Russia consiliae, Lingua Latina TE loquitur!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
...they encode their videos with Real.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
... but I understand not to everyone.
Not everyone is interested in different languages.
Not everyone is particularly interested in Latin.
But, then, for those who are, one must choose a subject of such general interest as to captivate an audience... talking about quantum physics in Latin probably wouldn't cut it (no offense meant to the quantum folks).
Now, that said, and despite this orator guy's extreme dedication and preparation, please remember that English is a Germanic language: your phonemes simply are inadequate for proper Latin pronunciation.
It really stands out in certain words and it hurts -- much like a scratched disk. Picture a French guy speaking English if you want a close approximation. Latin has a classic, noble flavor and, being no specialist at the matter, I can only imagine it to be somewhat like Italian.
Latin people would never, ever say "arrest" like English folks. The reverse is true for "Republica Romana".
Other than that, that student really showed an incredible effort. On a 0-10 scale, it's ten YMHO.
Finally, I may be wrong, but I think things ending in "ae" (e.g. "fabulae") do not rhyme with "bye" but rather with "fillet" (or even better: "lait").
Please don't take this post to be too disheartening; rather, think that things must be done at steps. This orator, given 5 or 10 years, could become the best Latin speaker in the world (not that there is too many of them, BTW, LOL). But perfect takes practice.
Pardon my errors, I'm not an English native speaker; nor a Latin native speaker (in which case, I'd be dead, lol -- wait, are there still any Latin speaker which is native in this world?).
Let's not go to Harvard. It is a silly place.
I counted at least 5 declensions of nouns - but the first three were the most commmon. And yes, the nouns could (as in english) be singular or plural in number, and could have one of six cases (there was also the locative, but I never got the hang of that).
Then there were the verbs, which came in four regular conjugations, and were subjunctive, indicative or imperative in mood; active or passive in voice; and varied in tense.
Lookup tables to gladden the heart of any programmer (many of them orthogonal).
And we still have a few latin plurals in English: formula/formulae (1st declension), cactus/cacti (2nd declension), bacterium/bacteria and erratum/errata (a neuter form), and index/indices, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseum.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
Star Wars Takes Over...then I quit reading. I really don't give a damn about how a bunch of rich kids choose to waltz through life on mommy and daddy's money. The less attention they get, the better.
What a stupid commencement on a big day. Mediocre pop culture incorporated into a scholarly event at THE top educational institution in the nation
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
...Bill Gates finally got his bachelor's degree and also spoke at the commencement.
/.ers may have about the guy, he is a significant figure in the tech industry. His completion of a degree should be an inspiration to all of us dropouts like myself :)
But since he didn't talk about Star Wars, I guess it's not news?
For all the issues many
After all, if the richest computer nerd in the world got there without a degree, then maybe there's hope for me too.
I find it amusing that the ALT text for the Star Wars tag used here reads "Star Wars Prequels." e.
Two minutes into the video, and the subtitles are messed up. He didn't say "crowded bathrooms" he said "frequent trips to the bathroom".
I hate it when the translators mess up the subtitles.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
If you look deep enough, everyone's motivations are selfish. Are you going to fault someone for giving to charity because it makes them feel good to help others? Doing something to feel good sounds hedonistic to me. Or what if they are doing it to help them feel less guilty about being affluent?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
...I wonder how you say "would you like fries with that?" in Latin?
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
It's up on YouTube now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47u6IJ2GVdM
If you really liked Charlie's great speech, you can download it now as an MP3 from the LATINUM podcast. http://latinum.mypodcast.com/ If you've ever had an itch to learn to speak (yes, speak) Classical Latin, then the Latinum podcast might be just the ticket. Latinum has one of the largest online collections of Latin audio that is available to users at no cost. Latinum has grammar, audio textbooks, songs in Latin, Vergil, Catullus, Caesar et cetera...the usual culprits,(and some not so usual), all read out or declaimed in beautiful Classical Latin.