Spanish Word of the Day

Fecha: 25-2-13
Palabra: Vaticinar

Today's SWD means to foretell.

The question for the advanced readers is to compare and contrast vaticinar with the English Vatican, as in the place where I want a license plate from. For example, do they call it the Vatican because the Pope is supposed to be able to foretell the future?

Ejemplo time.

¡Los centauros debemos ocuparnos de lo que está vaticinado! = Centaurs are supposed to concern themselves with what has been foretold!

Something's really wrong here. There are no major errors anywhere. It's all at least technically correct.

Who are you and what did you do with the Wizard? ;)

Quote: Wizard

The question for the advanced readers is to compare and contrast vaticinar with the English Vatican,..

My guess is they are related in the same way of the scorpion and the coconut (in short, that's a long, long shaggy-dog type joke in Spanish, which has the effect of the audience wishing to lynch the jokester. No, I'm not going to tell it here, or anywhere).

Quote:

¡Los centauros debemos ocuparnos de lo que está vaticinado! = Centaurs are supposed to concern themselves with what has been foretold!

That's technically correct (see above). However, unlike the Futurama bureaucracy, that's not the best kind of "correct."

So try "Los centauros NOS debemos ocupar de lo que está vaticinado."

Also, "vaticinar" is not much used. I'm assuming you were translating a literary work, or at least something on print (it's not the same thing), so that might be ok. In any other context, I'd go with "predecir."

Quote: Wizard

compare and contrast vaticinar with the English Vatican, as in the place where I want a license plate from. For example, do they call it the Vatican because the Pope is supposed to be able to foretell the future?

Here is a good example of "false friends" from several millenia in the past. The phrase mons Vaticanus is the Roman hill on which Papal palace stands, but the name is an Etruscan loan-word. It is not related to Latin word vātis which means "sooth-sayer"

Surprisingly the word also exists in English as vates with the same definition.

Quote: Pacomartin

but the name is an Etruscan loan-word.

Does it mean anything?

It's related to something I've wondered about knonw place names within Rome. There's the Palatine Hill, where the rich owned estates and the Imperial Palace eventually sat. I'd always assumed it was related to the Latin word for "Palace" (Spanish Palacio), but it was anmed that in the earliest days of Rome, long before the Empire or the Palace.

Ditto with the Capitoline Hill. That would seem to be related to words like Capital and Capitol (NOT the same thing), and that was where the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was located. But, again, the temple seems to have derived its anme from the Hill rather than the other way around.

Short joke:

¿Que le regaló Batman al Papa?
El Baticano.

Oh, that's so not funny!

Quote: Nareed

Does it mean anything?

Etruscan existed from 700 BC-100 BC and only a single book survives. Geographically it was mostly defined by present day Tuscany (which means land of Etruscans).

There are thousands of inscriptions, but the language is not Indo-European and seems to be an isolate. As a result, it is almost completely untranslatable except for a few dozen basic words (often things you might put on an inscription). Most of the names (including this one) are not translatable.

The following list of Spanish words can be traced back to an Etruscan word. They were all taken into Latin first and passed into Spanish.

abril
as
ceremonia
conserje
hoyo
máscara
moneda
otoño
persona
retoño
romance
romano
romántico
satélite
Saturno
servir
siervo
tosco
tribu
vernáculo

Quote: Pacomartin

There are thousands of inscriptions, but the language is not Indo-European and seems to be an isolate. As a result, it is almost completely untranslatable except for a few dozen basic words (often things you might put on an inscription). Most of the names (including this one) are not translatable.

I was afraid of that.

In his novel "The Gods Themselves," Asimov has one character as the renowned translator of the Etruscan inscriptions (he relates the tongue to Basque, which he claims is also not Indo-European. More on record, Cicero, who lived in the First Century BC, is said to eb the last man who could read Etruscan. Too bad he left no record behind, or none survived...

Quote:

romano

That would mean of and/or pertaining to Rome. What "Rome" means is antoher matter. It would be stunning if that was lost. of course, it's likely named after Romulus. But then what does "Romulus" mean? Most ancient names, and modern ones for that matter, carry meaning.

Quote: Nareed

More on record, Cicero, who lived in the First Century BC, is said to eb the last man who could read Etruscan. Too bad he left no record behind, or none survived...

That would mean of and/or pertaining to Rome. What "Rome" means is antoher matter. It would be stunning if that was lost. of course, it's likely named after Romulus. But then what does "Romulus" mean? Most ancient names, and modern ones for that matter, carry meaning.

Wikipedia says the last person known to have been able to read Etruscan was the Roman emperor Claudius (10 BC – AD 54), the author of a treatise in twenty volumes on the Etruscans, Tyrrenikà (now lost), who compiled a dictionary (also lost) by interviewing the last few elderly rustics who still spoke the language. Urgulanilla, the emperor's first wife, was Etruscan.

Ruma was the name of an Etruscan "clan" (or a subgroup similar to a clan). It is possible that Rome and Romulus came from this word, but no one knows for certain.

In the USA (according to MIT), 165 Native American languages are still spoken.
74 almost extinct (handful of elderly speakers) (45%)
58 with fewer than 1,000 speakers (35%)
25 with 1,000-10,000 speakers (15%)
8 with 10,000+ speakers (5%)
Largest Native American language is: Navajo 148,530 speakers

The government of Mexico recognizes 68 distinct indigenous Amerindian languages as national languages in addition to Spanish. According to the Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples (CDI) and National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI), while 10–14% of the population identifies as belonging to an indigenous group, only around 6% speak an indigenous language.
Nahuatl (Nahualt, Nahuat, Nahual, Melatahtol) is spoken by 1.38 million speakers

Quote: Pacomartin

Wikipedia says the last person known to have been able to read Etruscan was the Roman emperor Claudius (10 BC – AD 54),

Right. I wonder why I thought of Cicero...

Still, you wonder why an emperor's works did not survive.

Languages become extinct. None of that is good, as all cultures ahve something of value, but not all are as important. Imagine if Greek had been lsot. Impossible? Sure, given the history of Greece and the Greek cultures. But that just points to the importance of said cultures. Greece and Rome (East and West) are the bedrock upon which Western civilization is built. That doesn't disappear. Still, a lot of history about both Greece and Rome, and others, has been lost.

search for "google translate" and check it out!

búsqueda de "traductor Google" y échale un vistazo!

precisely, http://translate.google.com/#en/es/

PS: amazingly user friendly. Switches back and forth with a mouse-click. Click on the speaker icon to hear the words too.

Quote: odiousgambit

search for "google translate" and check it out!

búsqueda de "traductor Google" y échale un vistazo!

precisely, http://translate.google.com/#en/es/

PS: amazingly user friendly. Switches back and forth with a mouse-click. Click on the speaker icon to hear the words too.

It should be búsque de "traductor Google" means "search for 'Google Translate'" . You are using the noun "search", and not the verb "to search".

"Google Translate" does not translate so much, it relies on a huge database of translated text to develop statistical rules. It does not actually know any grammar. As such it will always make errors. It is fine for giving you the "gist" of the meaning, but ultimately it will not translate one text into another language accurately.

The software serves a valuable need, but if you send it in an e-mail to someone who speaks Spanish, chances are that it will not be clear.

Since the European Union requires every document to be translated into 15 languages, and everything is online, it provides a useful source of material for the database. As a result, the "translations" will more often tend towards European Spanish which can be very different from Latin American Spanish.

Since Latin America was settles much earlier than British North America, and there was less contact through history with the mother country, Latin American Spanish differs from European Spanish more severely than American English differs from British English, Canadian English, or Australian English. In English most of the words are common, but the accents change. In Spanish there is not just accent differences, but huge vocabulary differences.