Poe ruins everything

[epershand]

This morning in the shower I was wondering about the history of Latin scholarship. Presumably folks were running around ancient Rome using the ablative because it felt right and being innovative and playful with it for the heck of it. That's certainly the vibe I get from, say, Catullus or Ovid.

What, then, was the point when people decided it all needed to be codified into ridiculously elaborate rules to memorize, with distinctions, say, between the ablative of means, ablative of manner, dative of agent, etc? Was it during the middle ages when they were coming up with equally elaborate terminology for any metaphysical doubt one might possibly have? Or was it some folks in the Renaissance who looked back at all the Latin written during the middle ages and blushed at how embarrassingly straightforward it all was? (Not that Renaissance Latin is any less silly, grammatically speaking, but they at least *try*. Sort of.)

Which would be an interesting thing to research, I think. Except what actually happened then was that thinking about silly Latin from the middle ages totally diverted me and put the following mash-up poem in my head:

Bibat ille, bibat illa, bibat servus et ancilla
With the rhyming and the chiming of the
Bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells!

Comments

[eccentric_hat]

It could have happened whenever outsiders started learning Latin, couldn't it? Catullus and Ovid may have used the ablative because it felt right, but that wouldn't be good enough for a speaker of some vernacular who wanted to write like Catullus and Ovid, or just be able to read people like them.

Is the "bibat ille" line from Carmina Burana? I know I've come across it before, but Googling it turns up a bunch of unhelpful results.

[epershand]

That's my thought, but which SET of people moving from a vernacular? via_ostiense above says that there's at least some grammatical commentary from much earlier on, so I'll have to check those out.

It's from a drinking song. You've come across it before because Dani and I used to shout bits of it at each other, and the full text was in her .plan for ages.

[eccentric_hat]

How old a drinking song? It sounds kinda like a spoof of the Dies Irae, but I might just think that because my go-to Latin reference is stuff I've sung. (I can't remember anything I used to know about this--all I can really remember of "stuff that was always on Dani's .plan" is that "Lo! Idou! Ecce! Hark!" line.)

[ellen_fremedon]

It is from the Carmina Burana, and at least that part of it is also a spoof of the Dies Irae. (I've always wanted to hear a setting of the Carmina that sang it that way.)

[eccentric_hat]

Thank you! I'm glad to know I'm not just pulling an "all Latin poetry sounds the same."

[via_ostiense]

Or when teaching schoolchildren how to read and write with correct grammar. I can just imagine the paedogogus shouting, "Si ablativo comparationis uti vis, ne verbo 'quam' utere!"

[eccentric_hat]

...I wonder if they came up with rubbish explanations for the schoolchildren like we do? (I always get irrationally annoyed when I hear English teachers talking about "linking verbs" and "action verbs," where the former means "to be" and the latter means "all the other verbs in existence.")

[via_ostiense]

I wouldn't be surprised. Speaking of linking verbs, I was never able to distinguish between them and action verbs in English and found it all more confusing than helpful. That, actually, is a fair description of all the poorly taught English classes I had before high school. -.-