Saturday, March 2, 2019

Is breviloquium Latin for Tweet?




According to the Vatican Is breviloquium Latin for tweet and breviloquare for to tweet. One could say that the Vatican is the authority on Latin, but don’t forget that there are also non-cleric experts on Latin. I myself don’t belong to these experts. Nevertheless I’ve already stated in a breviloquium that I think breviloquere for to tweet is moonshine [1].

I had read a German article with the title [2]: “Wie ein Kirchenvater aus dem vierten Jahrhundert Twitter inspirierte” [How a fourth-century church father inspired Twitter]. This is of course moonshine, too, as the fourth-century church father didn’t inspire Twitter, but had coined the word breviloquium [short speech] and inspired the people behind the twitter account @pontifex_ln to use it as to tweet, as the account twitters in Latin.

Latin expert Waldemar Turek of the Vatican Secretariat of State cited a letter by Cyril of Jerusalem as the source for the term "breviloquium". The Latin text goes like this: “Tuis confisus orationibus opus aggrediar, ut tua poscit devotio, et breviloquio perstringam de multis pauca." [Trusting in your speeches, I want to get down to work and summarize many (things) into less with short speech.]

Latin expert Katherine McDonald [3]: “The Vatican calls its twitter feed pagina publica Papae breuiloquentis: neither breviloquent nor particularly eloquent (unlike, it must be said, the Latin of Pope Francis’s actual tweets).” And: “Others have suggested pipare for ‘to tweet’, but that describes the noise of small birds, not the act of sending short, often pointless messages over the air. Sometimes serendipity comes to the rescue.” McDonald suggested the“verb missiculare, simultaneously a frequentative and diminutive of mittere, ‘to send little and often’”.

I suggested in my tweet another approach. As Latin doesn’t have a w one could change *twitare* into tuitare – to tweet.

Open for discussion!


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