What, did I forget to send in my membership renewal again?

Sorry, you just didn’t pass the entry test to our very exclusive club.  Better luck next time.

You wouldn’t let me join, would you, you black-balling bastards?  Why, I wouldn’t become a hoi polloi now if you got down on your lousy stinking knees and begged me!

Oh sod the motto, that’s not important. But if any of you could put in a word for me I’d love to be a hoi polloi. Hoi-polloiry opens doors. I’d be very quiet, I was a bit on edge just now but if I were a hoi polloi I’d sit at the back and not get in anyone’s way.

I nearly got in at Hendon.

I’m really sorry ...

At least I’m part of the vulgus mobile.

You get many dropped calls with them?

I see that Dr. T has got into the cooking sherry again.

I do not any more about Latin than my Spanish, French and English have taught me, but I do know plenty about AP style and journalistic standards. A person is called an expert when they study something and have a degree in it, or are just a well-known authority on the subject.  The standard is to put it as simply as possible so that the reader understands that the person is an authority on the matter.

Dave Wilton - 07 March 2007 06:57 PM

I see that Dr. T has got into the cooking sherry again.

No such luck.  “Not while I’m cooking!” she always says.

Faldage - 07 March 2007 04:11 AM

Or, as in one of the missing verses from Carmina Burana’s Olim lacus colueram swan song:

Mallem in aquis vivere
Nudo semper sub aere
Quam in hoc mergi pipere.

Rolfe Stonebender - 09 March 2007 01:55 AM

Faldage - 07 March 2007 04:11 AM

Or, as in one of the missing verses from Carmina Burana’s Olim lacus colueram swan song:

Mallem in aquis vivere
Nudo semper sub aere
Quam in hoc mergi pipere.

Translation, please. And by “missing”, do you mean there are verses not included in the Carl Orff work?

Orff used verses one, three and five in his setting of the swan song. 

Verse two:
Eram nive candidior
I was whiter than the snow
Quavis ave formosior
More beautiful than any other bird.
Modo sum corvo nigrior
Now I am blacker than a crow.

Verse four:
Mallem in aquis vivere
I would rather be living
Nudo semper sub aere
Always under the clear sky
Quam in hoc mergi pipere
than swimming in this pepper sauce.

Edit: Translation tweaked per Dr. T’s suggestion.

Thanks, Dr. T.

It’s worth noting, though, that (as far as the English goes) in “rather than” the “rather” is redundant since the sentence starts with “I would rather”.  You would get a better-formed English sentence with “than” instead of “rather than” there.

An example of quam (meaning “rather than") used with infinitives, both with and without a finite verb of desiring in Classical Latin:

nam et qui dicunt, egisse malunt quam agere, et qui audiunt, finire quam iudicare [Pliny the Younger, Letter to Arrianus VI.ii.5] ("The truth is, our advocates take more pleasure in finishing a cause than in defending it; and our judges had rather rise from the bench than sit upon it.")

Another from Cicero, Pro Caelio XIX:

A quo quaeram, si prodierit, primum cur statim nihil egerit, deinde, si id queri quam agere maluerit, cur productus a vobis potius quam ipse per se, cur tanto post potius quam continuo queri maluerit. ("If he comes forward, I shall ask him first why he did not prosecute immediately, and then, if he preferred to make that complaint rather than prosecute, why he was trotted out by you instead of his own self, and why he preferred to complain so long afterwards instead of straightaway.")

All of the examples cited have malo, which makes all the difference, doesn’t it? It’s as though one would justify the construction ‘writing to painting’ by saying that there are examples of the form ‘I prefer writing to painting’.

Yup.  We do have malo filling in for tam.