A curious recurring theme of video game and anime soundtracks is the song that speaks a different language from that of singer, perhaps also the composer. This has happened in Spanish, Italian, and Russian, to name a few, but Latin is a repeat favorite. My oh my, can Latin yield results from distressingly beautiful to merely distressing. This depends not just on the inflection (or lack) of the singer but also the skill of each writer. The latter may seem to get off easier: if not having to sing weren't advantage enough, lifting non-contextual but stirring phrases from literature is a perennially beloved cheat.
It is also easier. In perfect fairness, there are brave original compositions that have a grand sweep all their own. But the details, ever a place of devilry, are even more Satanic when a writer's love of pretty new words meets Latin's schizophrenic vocabulary, mostly obedient to a prolific set of rules, and please please please
mind the exceptions (they are manifold). Mostly the errors will go unnoticed, for in the average course of playing or watching no one will hear the Latin and grab paper and pen to begin parsing. Yet there will always be pedants in the audience, some of whom will necessarily be classicists, and their curiosity once roused does not abate.
I am a pedant.
I was curious when I heard the song
Somnia Memorias from the Parasite Eve OST.
This is because the song, composed by Yoko Shimomura and sung by Shani Rigsbee, has lyrics in intermittent Spanish and Latin. The
lyrics can be found here with a running translation. The letras en español are simple, beginning with an existential wanderlust dissociative fit which segues into a mild attack of Spanish emo before careening into a lesson about coming to terms with your apocalyptic fever dreams.
Fine and well. But ah, the Latin. It gives the song its title, and takes peace from the pedants. It begins innocuously enough:
ultra somnia, ultra memorias -- "beyond dreams, beyond memories" (or "on the other side of", if repetition annoys).
Now see Grammar and Orthography conspire to introduce the hosts of Confusion:
arbor sacra, mala dulcem, maturum ferens
Though the commas would have you parse it one way, the inflections would have it otherwise: "a sacred tree bearing sweet, ripe fruit" makes the most sense, but if
mala is a neuter plural accusative, which it is, it wouldn't be
dulcem nor
maturum, and so it instead tells us of "the sacred evil tree carrying a pleasant early thing" which, if less mystical, is no less mystifying.
But the confusion deepens verses later, when the lyrics seem to abandon Latin altogether:
Alicubi apud memorias longinquas, aliquid intra me espergiselt
"Somewhere in the view of distant memories, something within me"...
Is a word that proves one of two things: either no official lyrics were ever released and the transcription is in error, or the composer completely invented a word, and did not even bother to dress it in a toga.
So which is it? A pedant, after compulsive repetitions of six seconds of the song, will notice that the word sounds like
espergesit: closer, but still not a word... unless the pedant has a decent dictionary, which will reveal a curious verb:
expergiscor, expergisci, experrectus sum -- 3rd,
dep: awake, bestir oneself
Any disciple of Wheelock can tell you: the
deponent verbs are active in meaning, but passive in form. Now it is evident! Our transcription underlined above is a strangely Late Latin manhandling of giving the deponent verb an active form. It reads
expergiscit in some lyric writer's forgotten notebook
, and makes
poppa Cato circumvolve in his fields, groaning a correction:
expergiscitur. But what could defunct rotary Romans say to the next line?
Amorem indulgentiam macroem dolorem conguoscebit
Ah yes. Love, concession, and sorrow are direct objects. Repeat listenings do not help descry what
macroem could be. Surely another third declension accusative?
Maiorem? An older person? Or big, great? Great big sorrow? An older person? Yes, then -- love, concession, old people and sorrow, or just great big sorrow, they are the direct objects of... something that will happen in the future!
Cognoscebit, could it be? Ah, but no, that'd have to be
cognoscet. We leave this lying by the roadside, romantically.
Omnia terminabit: it will end everything.
I can only close by noting that the final line in Latin begins with a spelling error:
luro ut esses prope me
To mean "I swear that you were near me", it would have to read
iuro. Or
juro, if you truly insist.
Can
you spot the wild subjunctive?
