Diaphanitas

"Dawkins et Verbum Latinum"
"Dawkins and a Latin Word"

My hero Richard Dawkins begins the first chapter of this new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, with a paragraph that is Relevant to My Interests:

Imagine that you are a teacher of Roman history and the Latin language, anxious to impart your enthusiasm for the ancient world — for the elegiacs of Ovid and the odes of Horace, the sinewy economy of Latin grammar as exhibited in the oratory of Cicero, the strategic niceties of the Punic Wars, the generalship of Julius Caesar and the voluptuous excesses of the later emperors. That’s a big undertaking and it takes time, concentration, dedication. Yet you find your precious time continually preyed upon, and your class’s attention distracted, by a baying pack of ignoramuses (as a Latin scholar you would know better than to say ignorami) who, with strong political and especially financial support, scurry about tirelessly attempting to persuade your unfortunate pupils that the Romans never existed. There never was a Roman Empire. The entire world came into existence only just beyond living memory. Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan, Romansh: all these languages and their constituent dialects sprang spontaneously and separately into being, and owe nothing to any predecessor such as Latin. Instead of devoting your full attention to the noble vocation of classical scholar and teacher, you are forced to divert your time and energy to a rearguard defence of the proposition that the Romans existed at all: a defence against an exhibition of ignorant prejudice that would make you weep if you weren’t too busy fighting it.

Nice analogy! But I have a problem with one of the statements he makes in the paragraph, and anyone has been reading my blog here long enough knows what it is!

This is the problematic statement:

ignoramuses (as a Latin scholar you would know better than to say ignorami)

Sorry Richard, but that's not right.

Ignoramus in classical Latin is indeed a verb form meaning "we are ignorant."

But the word ignoramus became the name Ignoramus in Thomas Ruggles's play Ignoramus, and in the Latin version of the play, the name Ignoramus is a second-declension noun (Ignorami, Ignoramo, Ignoramum, Ignoramo, Ignorame). More than one Ignoramus, in Latin, would in fact be Ignorami.

Our noun use of ignoramus comes from that Latin noun use, not from the Latin verb use, as so many people seem to think is the case.

This Latin scholar is perfectly okay with ignorami!