Latin Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, teachers, and students wanting to discuss the finer points of the Latin language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
In the Monty Python sketch "Dirty Hungarian phrasebook", one of the English sentences erroneously translates to "My hovercraft is full of eels". Obviously, not a sentence you'd hear back in the days when Latin was widely spoken, but I'm still curious, how would one most correctly translate it into Latin?
The current working version I have is "Mea navis aëricumbens anguillis abundat", as per the Wikipedia translation.
I can sort of make out the Wikipedia version. It seems to be saying "my floating? boat is overflowing by means of/by/with eels." The only thing there is aëricumbens, which I can't exactly figure out. It looks like it a present participle with something to do with the air, but I can't find it in a dictionary.
The Lexicon Morganianum translates hovercraft as "scapha (automaria) Hoveriana." Hovercraft is not a Classical concept, to my knowledge, so I think navis is an adequate word for it, and, following this logic, scapha is also a fine word for it. I would choose the one that best fits the size you imagine your hovercraft being. If it is a small one, use scapha, but, if it is a large one, use navis. You could also do what some of your examples do and make hovercraft a construction with a participle. This would produce something such as scapha volans (the small, flying boat). Or maybe scapha pendens (the small, suspended/floating boat).
For "full of," I might lift a construction from Caesar. Caesar says that "Caesar, scaphas longarum navium, item speculatoria navigia militibus compleri iussit" (Gal. 4.26) and "cum fluctibus complerentur . . ." (Gal. 4.28). So I might suggest that you use compleor + abl.
For eels, I might suggest anguilla, which is the word used in the Wikipedia entry. You could use either mea or mihi to show possession. The former is the possessive pronoun (my [boat]), and the latter is the dative of possession ([the boat] for/to me).
When combined this gets you scapha hoveriana mea anguillīs complētur or scapha pendens mihi angullīs complētur or. You can, of course, change the word order to change the emphasis or rhythm.
