Advertise here with Carbon Ads

This site is made possible by member support. ❤️

Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.

When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!

kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.

🍔  💀  📸  😭  🕳️  🤠  🎬  🥔

kottke.org posts about latin

Cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit Sung in Classical Latin

This is so highbrow that it’s looped back around to being lowbrow: a cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit sung in classical Latin.

Sine lúce, angor minus

Oblectáte, nunc híc sumus

Mé sentió aeger, stultus

Oblectáte, nunc híc sumus

Barbarus, albínus, culex et, mea libídó

Hei! Hae, ha ha ha ha!

See also Bardcore: Medieval-Style Covers of Pop Songs. (via open culture)

Reply · 2

Vatican City ATMs use Latin

ATMs in the Vatican City have Latin as one of the language options:

Latin ATM

Anyone know what that means? Google Translate spits out a bunch of jibberish… (Photo by Seth Schoen)

Update: Lots of slightly different answers as to what this says, but this email from a Ph.D. candidate in Classics at Columbia is representative of the spread:

Anyhow, a super-literal translation would be something like this:

I ask that you insert [your] card in order that you come to understand the method needing to be used.

But more colloquially, we can do this:

Please insert your card to learn the instructions.

or even (although I’m really getting into sloppy translation territory here):

Please insert your card for instructions.

(thx, charles)

Update: And it may be more accurate to say that Vatican City ATMs previously offered a Latin option. According to @johnke, “they removed the Latin option with a software update sometime in late 2010/early 2011”.


How to swear in Latin. (via cyn-c)

How to swear in Latin. (via cyn-c)