Monday 15 January 2024

"WHENCE VERSE": Still More Limericks About ETYMOLOGY


PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio,  2018. See previous collections of poems about word-origins at post #112 and post #119

SONGLINK: For those readers who like poetry set to music: You can find lots of singable limerick medleys on our sister blog "SILLY SONGS and SATIRE".

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The frontier of poetry: PALINKUs (palindrome-enriched haiku verses) from the year 2023


A continuation, proudly displaying another years' worth of this palpitatingly new poetic form. These poems have been individually displayed on the 17th of each month on our companion blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense", but for your convenience, they have been collated here to facilitate your review. 

 Go back, if you wish, to revisit our first creations of this type by clicking (2020), and the intervening offerings for 2021, and 2022






























You can continue this astounding journey, exploring our new poetic form. Click below for yearly collections of posted palinkus (one each month)as available on this blog-site.
2020: haiku, and the origin of the 'palinku'
2020: early palinkus, from August 2000
2024 -- pending.
  
(Alternatively, you could proceed to our related blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense", where we have in a more casual manner, published these terse verses one-at-a-time, on the 17th day of each month.)



GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR WEB-EXPLORERS: 
To resume daily titillations on our related blog "Daily Illustrated Nonsense", click HERE. Once you arrive, you can select your time frame of interest from the calendar-based listings in the righthand margin, and check the daily offerings for any month in the years 2020 to the present. (As of June 2024, there are about 1400 unique entries available on the Daily blog, and most of these are also presented here on "Edifying Nonsense" in topic-based collections.) The 'Daily' format also has the advantage of including some song-lyrics, videos and other material that are not shown here on this topic-based blog.








Friday 5 January 2024

VERSUM TERSUM: Limericks for LOVERS of CLASSIC LANGUAGES


SATIRE COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, September 2018. The involved verses have been published at OEDILF.com, an online humor dictionary that has accumulated 120,000 carefully edited limericks.

CURRENT CONTENTS
Aramaic
Greek
Hebrew alphabet
Homo latinophonius
Constantinopolis
Yukky Roman foods
Anglo-Latin  (4 verses, a 'brief  saga')










Authors' Note: In its earlier versions, the Hebrew alphabet was a pure abjad, or consonantary, with over twenty consonants, but no vowel sounds. The modern script used today has five symbols which may assist in the vocalization of vowels. In certain specific usages (poetry, teaching children, studying ancient texts, books of prayer used in the diaspora), a system of diacritic marks under the letters indicates the standardized vowel sounds. Without them, as in the majority of informal printed texts and in handwriting, you have to know some grammar, and have a moderate vocabulary of root words (often consisting of three consonants) to solve the meaning.   





Authors' Note:

mus (MOOS): Latin for ‘mouse’
puer (POO-er): 'boy', a prototype Latin noun, often used in early lessons to introduce the topic of declension
faex: Latin for 'dreg', 'sediment' or 'deposit'
faeces: the more familiar plural form

The author has several decades of experience in attempting to get trainees who had never studied Latin to use Anglo-Latin words appropriately in medical reports. 
Presumably, Linnaeus' associates and protégés in 18th century Swedish academia were all well-versed in Latin.





Authors' Note: Our seer in Byzántion likely made his prediction in the early 4th century A.D.

Byzántion: Greek name for the Greek colonial city-state founded on the Bosporus in pre-Roman times; known in Latin as Byzantium, it lent its name to the subsequent Byzantine Empire

Konstantinoúpolis, and Constantinopolis: Greek and Latin names respectively for the expanded city, planned as his empire's eastern capital (Nova Roma) by Roman emperor Constantine; known in English as Constantinople

Hagia Sophia (ah-yah so-FEE-ah) Greek for Holy Wisdom; famed for its huge dome, the third iconic church built on the site served as an Eastern Orthodox cathedral from 537 A.D. until 1453, the year of conquest by the Ottoman Turks

Istanbul: capital of the Ottoman Empire, and subsequently of modern Turkey, the city's current population of 15 million (2017) makes it Europe's most populous city.



Authors' Note: 

gigeria: Latin term for the delicacy 'cooked bird entrails'; forerunner of the old French term gisier, from which our use of gizzard is derived

garum: highly popular Roman sauce made from fermented fish intestines, used equivalently to our catsup

Gourmands in ancient Rome were notorious for their consumption of exotic (and in modern terms yukky) foods of all sorts.



(Note that the 4 verses of this "brief saga" can be found in more readily legible format on the blog "DAILY ILLUSTRATED NONSENSE"; click HERE.) 


You can also find a singable version of "Anglo-Latin" on our sister blog "SILLY SONGS and SATIREHERE


If you want to resume daily titillations on our other blog 'Daily Illustrated Nonsense', click HERE. Once you arrive, you can select your time-frame of interest from the calendar-based listings in the righthand margin, and check the daily offerings for any month in the years 2020 and 2021. (There are now over 1200 daily entries on the Daily blog, and most of these are also presented here on 'Edifying Nonsense' in topic-based collections.)