by Alec Muffett
a friend in another blog faces this challenge:
Does anyone know enough Latin to translate “Nihil domestica sede iocundius” ? It was inscribed above the lintel of a house in Venice and it’s bugging me. The closest my l337 latin 5killz can get is something like “there is nothing common (domestic) in a pleasant home.” Er.
…and being aware of some extremely dead language geeks (permute as required) amongst the readership, I though I’d repost the challenge here…
Nihil Domestica Sede Iucundius / Nothing Better Than Home
(lit. “Nothing (is) more pleasant than the residence of the family”)
great! all that latin, and it’s actually a quote from the Wizard of Oz! 😎
“there’s no place like home”
many thanks!
Thanks guys! And thanks, Alec, for calling in the goons 🙂 Not knowing Latin, I couldn’t identify the comparative and completely misparsed it.
More feedback, this time from Geoff Arnold’s brother, who works in the Bodleian Library; Stephen (for it is he) writes:
My free translation is: Home sweet home.
More strictly: [There is] nothing merrier than the home (lit. domestic seat)
xplanashun: nihil = nuffink
domestica sede = ablative of comparison (quam understood) (tam quam, thank you ma’am)
iocundius = comparative degree of iocundus = merrier
(“Very creditable, Arnold Minor. An alpha-minus-query-beta-plus, I believe.”)
The same quote is on a letterbox in York by Alleycats bar-“nihil domestica sede jocundius”
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