dianevm - 05 April 2008 08:47 AM

Est totus graecus mihi.

Now you really said, “He’s all my Greek,” which neither strikes me as here nor there—so just get down, girl!  But if only to demonstrate how your quaint Latin excercise might also have very pressing need of some canine etiquette, “it’s all Greek to me” could perhaps be more literally rendered tota sunt nobis Graeca in any formal, classroom setting:

tota = natural gender to agree with understood haec neuter plural for either spoken or written speech and usually glossed with singular “this” in our proper idiom.
sunt = logical copula inserted here between two adjectives modifying each other tota & Graeca but thanks rather to syntactic eloquence, than to correct word order.
nobis = dative plural yet with copulative verb quod cf. supra preferred by much over sing. number mihi for editorial reasons of good Latin prose, “It’s all Greek to me!”
Graeca = standard adjective used for that classical allonym Graecum which has moreover as its Greek autonym Ἑλληνική “Greek language” only to rephrase said Latin expression with a less familiar adverb tota Graece “all in Greek” and, by no possible means whatsoever, err to say diminutive graeculus “queer bastard”!

And the symbolism of lifting this entry from last year’s thread on “decade” is ???

Such a humble custom as this medieval jeu de la poule can even be plainly seen among indigenous nationals of bacchanalian S&C Mexico today: For indeed these simple peasants must of long observance, right before preparing a staple meal of cooked poultry, first select then introduce one plump hen or cockerel to a hungry pack of strindent children who, in ready turn, freely run it down until someone wrings the poor creature by its delicate, slender neck so that unwary strangers to this poverty-stricken region very often espy severed cock’s head, detached chicken feet and spoiled poolean remains all being used here as ritual offerings, predominately in the autochthonous cult of rustic Santeria—O happy gods of rich & fertile vale!

And this is Lent and the poor indigenous nationals should be fasting and abtaining from meat altogether, irregarless of the bacchanalia currently being celebrated, which, by the way, will hit
us all on the coming St. Paddy’s Day. Ah “erin go bragh”, indigenous or no….

Roman grammarian Quintillian left us his 1.cent AD classic text Institutio Oratoria which can sometimes be justly translated “Teachings on Rhetoric”: so perhaps “lessons learned” = institutione instituta as here rendered in the Latin “ablative absolute” construction.