Latin Grammar Mistakes in Japanese Entertainment

     The world of anime, manga, and videogames seems to like to incorporate languages and cultures from all around the world including even the ancient world. My impression is that they do so even more so than western forms of entertainment, and as a result the Latin language has also come up a lot more in pop-culture from Japan than it ever really does in the US. In my experiences, Latin when used in US shows and songs, it is mostly for short phrases (usually very common ones like vēnī, vīdī, vīcī). Japanese entertainment, however, as well as using short words and phrases from Latin, sometimes incorporates full sentences, and many times they are not just quoted clichés but actually newly composed sentences specifically for the show or game.
     This is part of what drew me to anime so much when I started watching it. It wasn’t until I had started studying Japanese formally that I began to watch Japanese anime. I did so mostly to get some listening practice in a way that wasn’t just the dull recordings of class (even if it was in a crude, slang Japanese that you rarely actually hear in Japan and would definitely never use in a classroom setting). At this point I had already studied Latin for several years, and when I first came across an entire song in Latin in anime (Elfen Lied), I was amazed. Nerdy college freshman me found it extremely fascinating and cool that people were doing things like that with a language I had grown to love since I was eleven. Never had I imagined that Latin would come up in something in pop culture in such a way.
     Of course, whenever nonnative speakers (and for Latin, there are no native speakers, it being a dead language and all) compose original sentences, there are bound to be grammar or spelling mistakes. I also am not a native speaker, so I am by no means faulting anyone for any mistakes in Latin compositions. After all, I find it so cool that people even do that at all to begin with to care too much about mistakes. But I still think it’s worthwhile and interesting to point out some of the mistakes from the Latin found in some of the more popular anime and games.

Si Deus Me Relinquit – Black Butler

     This song has quite a few major mistakes. The lines “Omniās jānuās praeclūdō, / Sīc omniās precātiōnēs obsignō” has the form omniās twice for the feminine accusative (=direct object) plural of omnis “all”, but this form does not exist in Latin; both should be omnēs. The line “Quī mē dēfendet” has a plural subject quī but a singular verb dēfendet. Assuming the intended form was the singular, the correct form should be “Quis mē dēfendet” for “Who (sg) will defend me”; assuming the intended form was the plural, the correct form should be “Quī mē dēfendent” for “Who (pl) will defend me”. In the last line “Ab mē terribilissimō ipse”, ipse (nominative) should be ipsō (ablative) to modify mē terribilissimō, and ab is rarely used before consonants and never before “m”, ā is the correct form, so the line should read “Ā mē terribilissimō ipsō”.

 

Lilium – Elfen Lied

     This song has two glaring mistakes in its Latin, the first of which seems to me to be a typo. The line “Et lingua ejus loquētur indicium” contains the word “indicium” meaning “notice, sign, indication, discovery” or anything else along those lines, but the intended meaning was “judgement” which is jūdicium (or iūdicium), so it looks like someone messed up what should have been a “u” with an “n”. The second is in the last line “Ō castitās līlium” which is translated as “Oh lily of purity/chastity”, only that castitās does not mean “of chasity” but just “chastity” (i.e. it’s nominative when it should be genitive). For “Oh, lily of chastity” the Latin should read “Ō castitātis līlium”. There is one last mistake, which is not as apparent, but the first two words in the fourth line, “quoniam cum”, don’t make a lot of sense together. They can both mean “since” but are used in different constructions. The verb form that follows indicates that quoniam is the better choice of the two, and cum should be dropped.

     Although I wouldn’t normally point out pronunciation as a problem since Latin is rarely taught to be spoken nowadays (again, it being dead and all), there was one pronunciation mistake that made it difficult to figure out what was actually supposed to be said: the word probātus is pronounced as “probates”, a form that does not exist in Latin. Aside from the inconsistency in pronouncing “c” before “i” as “s” in the word indicium (like English), and then later as “ch” in accipiet (like ecclesiastic Latin), some other pronunciation oddities worth mentioning are amoenam pronounced as a-mo-E-nam, splitting the “o” and “e” when they are part of the same syllable (diphthong) and should be read as a-MOY-nam for classical Latin and a-MEH-nam for ecclesiastic Latin, and jūstī (or iūstī) similarly pronounced as three syllables i-OOS-tee, when it should be two: YOOS-tee. Also, the song shifts back and forth between ecclesiastic and classical pronunciations, with the word vitae being a prime example. In classical Latin it is WEE-tye, and in ecclesiastic it’s VEE-teh, but the song has a hybridized version, VEE-tye, with “v” pronounced as ecclesiastic and “ae” as classical.

One-Winged Angel – Final Fantasy VII

     One of the greatest RPGs of all time and one of the greatest video game songs composed by one of the greatest (if not the greatest) videogame composer of all time for one of the greatest videogame villains. Do I need to continue talking about how awesome this game and song are? Well. They are awesome. And if you do not know what I’m talking about in this section, do yourself a favor and play though FFVII, like right now. The Latin in this song is a clean, beautiful, and almost entirely faultless ecclesiastic Latin. I am partial to the pronunciation of classical Latin, i.e. from around Cicero or Vergil’s era, but although I hate to admit, ecclesiastic Latin was the better choice for this song and produces a much better effect.

     There is only one line that puzzled me: “Nē mē morī faciās” (lit. “May you not make me to die”, translated as “Don’t let me die”), but I struggled to figure out what was going on in this line for a while. A purist classicist would first point out that the verb faciō normally would not take an infinitive construction (mē morī) as an object. The more “correct” form would be “Nē faciās ut moriar”, which would translate literally to “May you not make it that I die”. In later Latin, however, theses substantive clauses of result (for my fellow Latin nerds) are very commonly replaced with infinitives, so it’s not entirely incorrect to say “Nē mē morī faciās". However, even the more grammatically accurate form does not quite match the intended translation of “Do not let me die”. The Latin word faciās implies that one is actively bringing about the death. Here the Latin is the semantic equivalent of “I hope you don’t kill me”; it has neither the force of the command that the English translation “Do not let me die” does, nor the connotation of “let” as “allow”, rather it means “make”, "force", or "bring about". In other words, the English is saying “Do everything in your power to make sure I don’t die”, whereas the Latin is saying “I hope you don’t do everything in your power to make sure I die”. It is a nuanced difference, but one that completely changes the connotations behind the statement. This is likely a result of translating from the Japanese causative form, which is used for both “allowing” someone to do something and “making” someone do something. 死なせないで shinasenaide can mean either “Don’t let me die” or “Don’t force me to die”, with the former meaning being far more common as it is a more practical usage. The Latin should therefore have used a verb of permitting such as permittō, patior, or sinō for “let”, instead of faciō.

 

      And that’s it for this post! But I do have one last thing I wanted to mention. There are occasions where something seems like it’s being used incorrectly, and being the classicist that I am, I am sometimes quick to judge, but the linguist in me has to hold me back and look at it from other perspectives to make sure. An example is the usage of the word “magi” in the anime Magi. The Latin word magī is plural, but the anime often uses "magi" to refer to just one individual. The singular form in Latin is magus. In this anime, however, it is a loan word and is a new concept. In this sense it’s similar to English words and phrases that come from Latin, but we consider to be English, not Latin. In other words, “magi” is a new word that represents a being in the Magi universe that comes from the Latin word magī, and is based off of the magī, the biblical kings that visited Jesus when he was born. Also worth mentioning, although not Latin, is “magoi”, which seems like it comes from μάγοι (magoi), the Greek equivalent of magī, and “djinn” from Arabic jinn, which is also only used to refer to multiple genies, whereas jinnī is the correct form when referring to only one. To reiterate though, I think these are best treated as words derived from their respective languages, rather than as actual usages of the language itself. 

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Song Lyrics

 

Si Deus Me Relinquit – Black Butler

Sī deus mē relinquit, Ego deum relinquō. Sōlus oppressus clāvem nigram habēre potest. Omniās[sic] jānuās praeclūdō, Sīc omniās[sic] precātiōnēs obsignō. Sed / Quī mē dēfendet [sic] Ab[sic] mē terribilissimō ipse[sic].

If god abandons me, Then I abandon god. The sole oppressed man can have the black key. I close all doors, Thus I seal away all prayers. But who will defend me From my most terrible self.

• NB: The first two lines are sometimes translated as "If god has abandoned me, then I will abandon god", but the verbs in both are present tense in Latin. Similarly, the second to last line is often translated in the present tense, but in the Latin it is future.

Lilium – Elfen Lied

Ōs jūstī meditābitur sapientiam, Et lingua ejus loquētur indicium[sic]. Beātus vir quī suffert tentātiōnem. Quoniam cum probātus fuerit, Accipiet corōnam vītae. Κύριε, ignis dīvīne, ἐλέησον. Ō quam sancta, Quam serēna, Quam benigna, Quam amoena. Ō castitās[sic] līlium.

The mouth of the just man shall meditate wisdom And his tongue shall speak judgement. Blessed is the man who suffers temptation. Since he has been tested, He shall receive the crown of life. Lord, divine fire, have mercy. Oh how holy, How serene, How benevolent, How pleasant. Oh lily of purity.

• NB: I used "j" for consonantal "i", in the same way that "v" is used for consonantal "u". This is my personal preference for consistency with u/v, but there is no difference between using "j" or "i". The Romans did not distinguish between "i" and "j" (both "I") or between "u" and "v" (both "V").

 

One-Winged Angel – Final Fantasy VII

Aestuāns interius / Īra vehementī. Aestuāns interius / Īra vehementī.        Sephiroth / Sephiroth Aestuāns interius / Īrā vehementī. Aestuāns interius / Īra vehementī. Sephiroth / Sephiroth Sors immānis / Et inānis. Sors immānis / Et inānis. Aestuāns interius / Īrā vehementī. Aestuāns interius / Īra vehementī. Sephiroth / Sephiroth Venī, venī, veniās; Nē mē morī faciās. Venī, venī, veniās; Nē mē morī faciās. Venī, venī, veniās; Nē mē morī faciās. Venī, venī, veniās; Nē mē morī faciās. Venī, venī, veniās; Glōriōsa Nē mē morī faciās. Generōsa Venī, venī, veniās; Glōriōsa Nē mē morī faciās. Generōsa Venī, venī, veniās; Glōriōsa Nē mē morī faciās. Generōsa Venī, venī, veniās; Glōriōsa Nē mē morī faciās. Generōsa Sephiroth / Sephiroth / Sephiroth

Burning within / with a violent anger. Burning within / with a violent anger. Sephiroth / Sephiroth Burning within / with a violent anger. Burning within / with a violent anger. Sephiroth / Sephiroth Fate, monstrous / and empty. Fate, monstrous / and empty. Burning within / with a violent anger. Burning within / with a violent anger. Sephiroth / Sephiroth Come, come, may you come; May you not make me die. Come, come, may you come; May you not make me die. Come, come, may you come; May you not make me die. Come, come, may you come; May you not make me die. Come, come, may you come; Glorious May you not make me die. Noble Come, come, may you come; Glorious May you not make me die. Noble Come, come, may you come; Glorious May you not make me die. Noble Come, come, may you come; Glorious May you not make me die. Noble Sephiroth / Sephiroth / Sephiroth

• NB: Most lyrics will write "estuans" for what I have written as "aestuāns". The original form in classical Latin is with an "ae", but in medieval times this often gets confused with "e" as they had come to be pronounced the same way. There is no real difference between the two.