It's such a refreshing change that Eddie just assumes his audience is smart enough and quick enough to pick up on the word plays and little jokes he puts into everything and doesn't feel the need to explain them.
His true genius is that you can still follow along, even if you don't have a clue. My husband and I saw him on the Force Majeure tour, where he told an entire joke in German - in San Francisco, which I assure you doesn't have THAT many speakers auf Deutsch - and we were all laughing our fool heads off at it.
@@customcartoons Agreed. I've always wanted to enjoy Eddie, and I really think I'm coming around lately. I've always thought highly of him as an entertainer, a guy; it's been hard to navigate around his default combination of material and lack of faith in his audience. It's taken a great deal of time for me to understand he's not exactly as pretentious as he seems at first glance. I think his humor is kinda simple, and he tries a bit too hard not to be misunderstood. It's an easy thing to get used to when you want people to hear what ya say
As a person who is/has been studying Latin for three-ish years now, this skit is both entirely accurate, and also an accurate portrayal of my feelings on the subject. It's silly, but I love it.
@@BigDaddy-il6pb as good a question as "why study philosophy?" Wonder where Latin can get you in the world of Archeology; I suppose there's many areas of interest, outside of Ancient Indigenous people of America, but if I were to study a dead language I'd likely go Norse or Sumerian.
A lot of languages don't have grammatical gender. Though, English does still have the vestigial he/she/it distinction, for some reason, which makes the SJWs want to add more personal pronouns. Ugh!
I love that there is a comedian who, not only is very funny, but takes the time to write about language intelligently. The time and dedication it takes to hone the material to not only be funny, but funny to so many diverse audiences.
morpheos111 It's a shame that the subtitles kind of butcher it. Whoever wrote them is clearly illiterate, and doesn't know that German or French exist.
morpheos111 Eddie Izzard is certainly one of the most erudite comedians I've seen since Monty Python, and with great physical comedy and slapstick to boot.
Eddie Izzard is brilliant. He reads history books to comb out pure gold. No on has ever acheived his ability. So grateful for stumbling across this. I need to write this man a letter!
***** I see it as gibberish because, especially in the beginning of his act and throughout, he's making most shit up. Which is not a bad thing, but I think you can't say "he's just speaking 3 mashed up languages", when in reality he's mostly using latin-sounding fantasy-words (even though they are based on real words they _are_ made up) and drops a few actual german and english words or sentences here and there.. There's definitely a gibberish-quality to his talk, which is the reason it's funny in the first place. ^^ I mean "Infinitatis soldatis mathemalaticus impossibulatis." C'mon
They still teach Latin and Greek at Bede's today so I reckon he does know his Latin. Which is pretty obvious when you watch the part where he conjugates the verbs. The person who did the subtitles on the other hand must be one of the fine products of comprehensive education.
For those of you who don't speak them, Eddie's actually mixing five different languages into this bit, English, French, German, Italian, and Latin. At 2:57 he says, tres mauvais, which means, very bad in French. Veni, Vidi, Vici, which is what Caesar said of Gaul when he was there as a general, I came, I saw, I conquered. Impressive.
@@advickprosankto Not really, no. But English was heavily influenced by Norman French during the Middle Ages. So much so that some people have argued that English is more or less a creole language.
@@soup_god463 I am well aware what lingual franca means, but literally it means Frankish tongue, so I took the liberty to reinterpret it to French language to make a joke.
Eddie is an awesome comedian. I do love him. He has always made me laugh at loud, and his comedy is intellectual, too. He is a gift to us, and we should be thankful for him.
If you ever get the chance to see him live you absolutely have to. I’ve seen him twice and he’s easily the best comedian out there! Clever, funny and so fast!
There are three types of people in the comments: 1: The subtilter should be shot. 2: Poor subtitles, they were trying their best. 3: This schtick is hilarious!!!
Languages with many cases and grammatical gender are, naturally, very easy for their native speakers, since you don't really think in terms of bases and morphemes, but larger units. The same kind of joke could be made about the English articles, and definitely English spelling. But Izzard totally delivers this skit with style. The part about Roman numerals had me in stitches.
It's not German, it's English with a Latin accent, or a mix of both, like in 2:44 he says something like: "I'm messangarium et careere at heree, from a long way awayee. Portare news and bring ove..."
Edgar Manuel Juarez Actually I do agree with Hannah that he also uses German, of course with a mix of other languages (Most of it is English and I thinks there's also French in it) with a latin accent and probably some real latin. Your example at 2:44. (german in capital letters) I'm pretty sure he doesn't say 'Im messengarium...' but 'ICH BIN messangarium, ICH careere NACH heree, from long way away, portare ... ( then a word I can't really make out what it is, but it's probably 'news' like you said, and then I think he ends in French) très mauvais. (very ugly/very bad, so he probably sais that the news is very bad) I also think he says a few times 'MEIN HERR' (My lord in German) e.g. 3:16, 3:27 Also at 3:33 : MIT soldatus (mit is German for 'with'), WIE VIEL soldatus (wie viel is German for how many) 4:40 'UND, UND MEIN HERR' (German for: and, and, my Lord) 5:03 the gibberish was 'portari pink pajamas', portari looks similar to the French word 'Porter' (to wear', so he asked, '(does he) wear pink pajamas?'. 5:07 UND, ER KOMMT MIT elefantein (German: And he comes with elephants). 5:19: Elefantein très dangereus. (French for The elephants very dangerous, well the elephant part was not in French) It's basically a huge soup of languages that he mixed together with some strange latin endings (or latin sounding endings, I never had latin so I have no clue how exactly the end of words sound like) Anyway I think it was really funny, I like languages very much and I love him for playing around with it.
Haki7Hikari Thank you my friend, you explained it a whole lot better than me, I don't know German nor French so I inferred it was Latin, either way, like you said it is a really funny and clever piece of comedy. ***** is the best!
Edgar Manuel Juarez Your welcome! I learned French in school and eventhough I barely had any German, my mothertongue is Dutch (Dutch and German resemble a lot) so it was easy to distinguish those parts out of what you thought was Latin. If he would have used a lot of Spanish or Italian, I would probably have had the exact same problem. I really love his humor. And his voice too.
You think "ought" is bad? You should try "ough". You have bough (bau), cough (koff), through (thru), borough (burruh) and though (tho). Slough has two pronunciations, either the noun (slau) or the verb (sluff). And not to mention the town of Loughborough (luffbruh). I remember hearing a story about an African who came to the UK to go to university and spent hours asking people how he could get to Loogaborooga!
Subtitles are garbage, someone should get the sack. Only once in a while does he resort to actual gibberish, the rest is a mostly mixture of English colloquialisms plus French and German. All pretty clear.
Was about to say the same thing. If I understand what he's saying, you know it's in common phrases because I don't know shit about those languages, yet the subtitles say 'gibberish'. Even the stuff that is is plays on the latin-sounds, and if spelled phonetically would get the joke across better.
I am head over heels after listening to Eddie. He is so clever and smart and ready to share with the rest of us his unbelievable thoughts on languages and history. I've just met him tonight. Asking myself were was I all this time?
I can't believe my family here in America didn't find out about this Artist until 2015. What A Hoot ! He makes me ashamed that I didn't stick with French and Latin in school.
Well as he said . At its base it is very simple . No gendered nouns , simple verb conjugation, and understandable even if spoken incorrectly . Now spelling and pronunciation are a different story but that’s every other languages fault for loans us to many words
6:14 "It has taken off because on it's [sic] basic level, it is terribly simple". Does anybody else find it massively ironic that the person uploading this struggles with the English language and basic grammar?
Brilliant! I speak serbian - which has got lots of the declensions, like Latin - so this was hilarious! Also loved how he chucked in bits of german and french in there - genius!
This is absolutely beautiful and hilarious for someone who can actually have a good conversation about anything in Latin. Salve! Quod est nomen tibi? Ut vales? Valeo bene!
I haven't studied Latin but im gonna guess the translation, let me know how right or wrong I am. Hannibal is coming. Habbibal? With whom? Soldiers/Army. How many? Many. How are they coming? Elephants. /qui sunt?/ /porci et sciuri./ Hurry/Act!
Yes, Latin does indeed have six primary word cases but they're not silly. These cases allow Latin to convey meaning through word endings rather than through strict word order, thereby making it highly flexible with how its sentence structure is created. 1. **Nominative** - Used for the subject of a sentence (who or what is doing the action). 2. **Vocative** - Used for directly addressing someone or something (like calling or speaking to them). 3. **Accusative** - Used for the direct object of a sentence (who or what is receiving the action). 4. **Genitive** - Expresses possession or relationship (often translated as "of" or "from" in English). 5. **Dative** - Used for the indirect object (to whom or for whom something is done). 6. **Ablative** - Expresses various relations, commonly translated as "by," "with," or "from."
I agree with Eddie Izzard a completely about Latin, because I had to learn it in school as well, but a long time after he was in the same primary school as me, xxxx
A funny thing I just realized a short while back is that Spanish developed from a language that was pretty much just Latin spoken with a Basque accent... Since the Basques used to be the biggest group in the Iberian peninsula. There were some Celts too and maybe others but anyway. Kind of like how the Scottish English dialect comes from Old English (mixed with some Old Norse) spoken with a Gaelic accent (and some Gaelic words). There are probably hundreds of other examples. It blows my mind.
And remember, being dyslexic, he doesn't use a script. He's memorized the important bits, and just free styles from there. I saw him in Silicon Valley at an outdoor theater, and he spent a good 15 minutes just talking about the birds swooping over the stage.
Just a personal opinion: I've learned 7 languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Latin, French and German), of those 7, English is easily the most simple to become conversationally useful in.
I really enjoyed this. My sister is a single mom who home schools her children. Her children both speak and write Latin and found this skit very humors.
LogicQuicks Whoever wrote those subtitles didn't know what they were doing in general. They start out subtitling the salve stuff, but then just gave up, making everyone relying on subtitles miss the later jokes entirely. And Panthagoratus? Really? The name Pythagoras should be common knowledge, really, even if Izzard adds a -tus.
I am doing Latin in secondary and the bit about the cases at the start made me cry with laughter as that is my reaction whenever I see it in a text/get marked down for translating it into the wrong case.
My best memory of Eddie Izzard is his role as a British barrister trying a case in a Chicago law office via Zoom in front of an English judge on an episode of "The Good Wife". I don't know the season or the episode, but if you manage to search for it and find it, it is well worth the effort.
Don't think it's possible to speak a language fluently with 6 cases and no articles? Russians do it every day. In fact, grammatically the Slavic languages are much closer to Latin than Romance languages are.
Yep, every day. :) It is fascinating how close Latin and Russian are grammatically. I feel bad for my English speaking fellows. It's hard for me to comprehend how difficult it must be for an English speaker to learn Latin or some Slavic language.
Igor Arutiunian It's comparable to, but more difficult than (IMO), learning articles, "to be" in present tense, word order of the sentence, and phrasal verbs when learning English as a Russian speaker. (I teach English to Russian speakers.) :)
ExVeritateLibertas Indeed. It took me quite a while to learn English, and the only reason I actually learned it was that I moved to the US. I know some people who have spent more than 20 years in the English speaking environment and are still having problems with all the things you mentioned. (I'm not even sure whether my last sentence was grammatically correct) :D Is English your native? :)
Igor Arutiunian I am. But I still had to edit my last comment for mistakes. :) I have met a few people who speak English like native speakers (just a slight accent), who have never been to an English speaking country. Usually they started watching English-language TV and movies from an early age. But for the most part, I think immersion in a country where the language is spoken is usually necessary to reach an advanced level. I was able to learn German well only by living in Germany for 2 years. I had studied it many years before that.
Pretty simple grammar, horrendous spelling. But yeah, even the grammar could well be further simplified without loss of precision. (Just look at the closely related scandinavian languages.)
@@herrbonk3635 True, although the tense system can be hard for 2nd language learners, and it would be nice if the vocabulary wasnt doubled by invented words most natives dont understand.
People who think English is a particularly complex language are usually monoglots. What's challenging about the tense system? And what on Earth do you mean by "invented words most natives don't understand"?
@@williams.5952 For example "lascivious" a transparently non-English word that has been Anglified into an invented word most natives wont understand. English is full of words like this, often I will heard a new English word that I transparently understand in Latin yet have no idea what it means in English.
I never had to learn English as I speak it natively but even I get baffled by how some things work, I'd be interested to know how simple it is in comparison to other languages as a lot of people have said it's hard
I always thought it was very hard to learn because of how weird it was (it's part latin part germanic, part anglo-saxon etc. but apparently it's actually quite easy to learn because the grammar is so simple. the nouns are probably infuriating to learn though.
I'm Mexican and English is my second language, imo the hard part of English, at least for Spanish-speaking people is the pronunciation of words, since most of Spanish is based on the fact that every letter has a single sound and while reading you just have to assing that sound to that letter (with some exceptions) while in English you write a word like "live" and it has two different sounds depending on the meaning, or "tail" and "tale" are written different but sound the same (or almost), etc, that's the main problem in English, but I agree with TheAntiParadox, the grammar is pretty easy, in fact Spanish comes from Latin and it has masculine and feminine, and two third-persons, among other stuff that makes its grammar a bitch to learn.
Spoken English doesn't have more complicated rules, overall, than the wide range of other languages I've learned about (not "learned" most of them, just "learned about"). This is very much an amateur's opinion, but I'd class it as average or maybe even easier than most. However, written English is awful. I studied and loved Latin, it's complex but at least the spellings are consistent. I would guess that only entirely non-phonetic writing systems, like Mandarin, are harder than written English. I'm very grateful it's my first language, because I don't think I'd have the patience to learn to learn the spellings if it hadn't been made easy by being exposed to them everyday. Words just "look right" when you're brought up with them, but to formally learn English spelling from within another country would be a horrible chore.
"I never had to learn English as I speak it natively..." That's where I stopped reading. It must be so nice to have woken up in America one day and English just magically appeared in your brain.
Technically, also, just because English separates the grammar into separate words, and puts it in the front of other words rather than at the end does not automatically make it simpler. Just more compartmentalized, hence clearer. Learning verb conjugation in other languages is barely different from learning the use of 'in' 'at' 'to' 'of' or 'by' in English.
If there is so much fuss from the declining, its a good thing people never heard of lithuanian. There are special letters in some words where they come out and disappear for no reason. For ex. balti (Infinitive) -Bąla (present singular III person). Dont even get started on parts of the sentence.
+Guy Kazemeka Damn man, calm down a little bit. :D Don't judge poles if u don't know them. I've heard, that they are more clever because of their complicated language, and they can learn new languages quicker
Old English (Anglo Saxon) was fraught with many of the declension complexities of Latin. It has, over the millennia, eliminated declension through case endings, and has replaced it with word order and prepositions to show the relationship of nouns and pronouns in the sentence.
@@wiruwaruwolz I'll insist in my conspiracy that Hungarians actually have a very simple nice language that they use when no foreigners are nearby and they only pretend to speak Hungarian so everyone leaves them alone (jk).
i love how the subtitles gave up lol
Rhys Nelson I want to like this comment, but I show respect to the 420 🤏🏻😑🤏🏻
@@coleyamos 15 people didn't show the same respect that you did
Fry
It's such a refreshing change that Eddie just assumes his audience is smart enough and quick enough to pick up on the word plays and little jokes he puts into everything and doesn't feel the need to explain them.
I hated conjugating during Latin Class... this was AMAZING
His true genius is that you can still follow along, even if you don't have a clue. My husband and I saw him on the Force Majeure tour, where he told an entire joke in German - in San Francisco, which I assure you doesn't have THAT many speakers auf Deutsch - and we were all laughing our fool heads off at it.
Yes. Exactly.
Humor for inteligent people, that pay attention!
@@customcartoons Agreed. I've always wanted to enjoy Eddie, and I really think I'm coming around lately. I've always thought highly of him as an entertainer, a guy; it's been hard to navigate around his default combination of material and lack of faith in his audience. It's taken a great deal of time for me to understand he's not exactly as pretentious as he seems at first glance. I think his humor is kinda simple, and he tries a bit too hard not to be misunderstood. It's an easy thing to get used to when you want people to hear what ya say
The amount of German in his "gibberish" is hysterical
+Brian Ford Hannibal arriveratus, mein Herr. Mitt soldatis.
"I'd rather decline two beers than on German adjective." - Mark Twain
the bits of German make me laugh the most. "UND!"
Also some french
@ifyouwantbochin Fair
As a person who is/has been studying Latin for three-ish years now, this skit is both entirely accurate, and also an accurate portrayal of my feelings on the subject. It's silly, but I love it.
Why in the world are you studying Latin?🤔
@@BigDaddy-il6pb as good a question as "why study philosophy?"
Wonder where Latin can get you in the world of Archeology; I suppose there's many areas of interest, outside of Ancient Indigenous people of America, but if I were to study a dead language I'd likely go Norse or Sumerian.
Right up there with the Monty Python bit.
"It is masculine, feminine or neuter, the apple?"
"It's a fucking apple! Stop fucking around!"
Fuck you
A lot of languages don't have grammatical gender. Though, English does still have the vestigial he/she/it distinction, for some reason, which makes the SJWs want to add more personal pronouns. Ugh!
ghenulo You can't just 'add' pronouns. Languages develop organically, not by political agendas.
Surprised Graham Linehan hasn't popped up in the comments to start screeching about that line.
I love that there is a comedian who, not only is very funny, but takes the time to write about language intelligently. The time and dedication it takes to hone the material to not only be funny, but funny to so many diverse audiences.
morpheos111 It's a shame that the subtitles kind of butcher it. Whoever wrote them is clearly illiterate, and doesn't know that German or French exist.
morpheos111 Eddie Izzard is certainly one of the most erudite comedians I've seen since Monty Python, and with great physical comedy and slapstick to boot.
Intelligently? Maybe. Still, parroting the notion that English 'has taken off' as a world language because of its simplicity is not very smart.
Odd how the word "diverse" often leads to trouble these days.
Vivamus Izzard deus hominibus
As Heinrich Heine once said, "If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world."
That's why most Romans spoke Vulgar Latin to avoid such issues.
Lol the Romans did no latin they were just beaten as kids until they got it.
Ruined by the Catholic church
Interesting, the same thing would be true for German.
@@janethockey9070 Hmmm... wasn't the Roman Empire around centuries before the Catholic church?
All time best explanation of Latin - period. The guy deserves all the ticks, nods and applauds he gets.
It's FULL STOP. Not period.
Go learn proper English, American.
Eddie Izzard is brilliant. He reads history books to comb out pure gold. No on has ever acheived his ability. So grateful for stumbling across this. I need to write this man a letter!
He's not speaking gibberish. He's speaking German mashed with mock Latin and bits of French.
He's speaking like Salvatore from "The Name of the Rose" lol.
+TEC Still gibberish, with a few actual words here and there..
***** I see it as gibberish because, especially in the beginning of his act and throughout, he's making most shit up. Which is not a bad thing, but I think you can't say "he's just speaking 3 mashed up languages", when in reality he's mostly using latin-sounding fantasy-words (even though they are based on real words they _are_ made up) and drops a few actual german and english words or sentences here and there.. There's definitely a gibberish-quality to his talk, which is the reason it's funny in the first place. ^^
I mean "Infinitatis soldatis mathemalaticus impossibulatis." C'mon
nelly smith *you're
+nelly smith maybe he is, but from linguistic standpoint he is perfectly accurate.
"Pi?"
"Oh, thanks man."
Lmao, oh he's brilliant.
fav part
Though, of course, pi comes from Greek.
ghenulo yeah but the Romans did what they always do: stole the bakeries and claimed THEY were the ones who came up with pi
And they did so with the cunning use of flags.
@@MickeyCuervo36 The effin Brits had us Indians over there. 😣
A genius of comedy with his own, unique view of the world. Love him. So glad that guy exists.
The person behind the subtitles obviously did not know German or Latin.
+Viktor Suuta
Or English.
I'm taking it that Izzard doesn't know Latin either.
Actually, did pretty well considering.. I took 4 years of Latin.. but it's the audience I felt sorry for.. LOL
Or French.
They still teach Latin and Greek at Bede's today so I reckon he does know his Latin. Which is pretty obvious when you watch the part where he conjugates the verbs. The person who did the subtitles on the other hand must be one of the fine products of comprehensive education.
I just lost it at "QUAD The Fuck?!" Hilarious!
Just vulgar.
@@PedroMachadoPT I'm American. I love vulgarity. 😁😝
@@Anjalena
It makes sense.
@@PedroMachadoPT 😳🤷🤣
Quod, the Latin "what". Neuter singular nominative of course :)
For those of you who don't speak them, Eddie's actually mixing five different languages into this bit, English, French, German, Italian, and Latin. At 2:57 he says, tres mauvais, which means, very bad in French. Veni, Vidi, Vici, which is what Caesar said of Gaul when he was there as a general, I came, I saw, I conquered. Impressive.
Say what !
the fuckus subtitletatus are not exactutatus
+Aaron Bud and are distracticus
Goodus eyeacus
+Aaron Bud
Instead of "gibberish" he speaks german a bit.
+Paweł Proniczew And French :)
Whoever wrote them was stultissmus.
The one language you can just brutally ridicule without ever even offending anyone, that's kinda brilliant in itself.
'English has become the lingua franca' - that's just brilliant.
And here I thought it was pretty much the other way around. 😄
@@robinviden9148 French became the English language ?
@@advickprosankto Not really, no. But English was heavily influenced by Norman French during the Middle Ages. So much so that some people have argued that English is more or less a creole language.
@@robinviden9148 But that’s not what lingua franca means
@@soup_god463 I am well aware what lingual franca means, but literally it means Frankish tongue, so I took the liberty to reinterpret it to French language to make a joke.
The duck joke is an underappreciated one haha
Eddie is an awesome comedian. I do love him. He has always made me laugh at loud, and his comedy is intellectual, too. He is a gift to us, and we should be thankful for him.
If you ever get the chance to see him live you absolutely have to. I’ve seen him twice and he’s easily the best comedian out there! Clever, funny and so fast!
There are three types of people in the comments:
1: The subtilter should be shot.
2: Poor subtitles, they were trying their best.
3: This schtick is hilarious!!!
4. "I resent the entire english speaking world and this man for criticising latin"
"Quad the Fuck!" .... is my new wtf ~ Never gets old lmao! Eddie Izzard on Latin is my all time fav
Dear Eddie: such an amazingly brilliant creative man!
Languages with many cases and grammatical gender are, naturally, very easy for their native speakers, since you don't really think in terms of bases and morphemes, but larger units. The same kind of joke could be made about the English articles, and definitely English spelling. But Izzard totally delivers this skit with style. The part about Roman numerals had me in stitches.
English spelling issues are largely do to all the borrowed words from other languages . It killed any chance of a standard
I love how the subtitles give up for a while in the middle
"Speaking Gibberish" - always when he starts with some German >.
It's not German, it's English with a Latin accent, or a mix of both, like in 2:44 he says something like:
"I'm messangarium et careere at heree, from a long way awayee. Portare news and bring ove..."
Edgar Manuel Juarez
Actually I do agree with Hannah that he also uses German, of course with a mix of other languages (Most of it is English and I thinks there's also French in it) with a latin accent and probably some real latin.
Your example at 2:44. (german in capital letters)
I'm pretty sure he doesn't say 'Im messengarium...' but 'ICH BIN messangarium, ICH careere NACH heree, from long way away, portare ... ( then a word I can't really make out what it is, but it's probably 'news' like you said, and then I think he ends in French) très mauvais. (very ugly/very bad, so he probably sais that the news is very bad)
I also think he says a few times 'MEIN HERR' (My lord in German) e.g. 3:16, 3:27
Also at 3:33 : MIT soldatus (mit is German for 'with'), WIE VIEL soldatus (wie viel is German for how many)
4:40 'UND, UND MEIN HERR' (German for: and, and, my Lord)
5:03 the gibberish was 'portari pink pajamas', portari looks similar to the French word 'Porter' (to wear', so he asked, '(does he) wear pink pajamas?'.
5:07 UND, ER KOMMT MIT elefantein (German: And he comes with elephants).
5:19: Elefantein très dangereus. (French for The elephants very dangerous, well the elephant part was not in French)
It's basically a huge soup of languages that he mixed together with some strange latin endings (or latin sounding endings, I never had latin so I have no clue how exactly the end of words sound like)
Anyway I think it was really funny, I like languages very much and I love him for playing around with it.
Haki7Hikari
Thank you my friend, you explained it a whole lot better than me, I don't know German nor French so I inferred it was Latin, either way, like you said it is a really funny and clever piece of comedy. ***** is the best!
Edgar Manuel Juarez
Your welcome!
I learned French in school and eventhough I barely had any German, my mothertongue is Dutch (Dutch and German resemble a lot) so it was easy to distinguish those parts out of what you thought was Latin.
If he would have used a lot of Spanish or Italian, I would probably have had the exact same problem.
I really love his humor. And his voice too.
@@juarezcastelo "I don't know german"
Why are you commenting on it then.
Tenho saudades deste tipo dr comedia inteligente. Love the comedian
He trusts his audience to be well read enough and intelligent enough to understand his jokes and it's great.
No, he knows his monoglot audience is so ignorant of other languages that they regard his BS as authoritive.
"Romanes eunt domus - People called the Romans, they go the house?"
"In our roman house?"
"Romani Ite Domum! Now write it out a thousand times and if it's not done by sunrise I'll cut your balls off"
"Latin is silly!" Says the guy whose language can pronounce "ought" in 8 different ways.
GentlemanlyNinja What? No there isn't! There's only one way of saying it. And dialects don't count.
I think he means as part of a word. Like Fought and Drought.
You think "ought" is bad? You should try "ough". You have bough (bau), cough (koff), through (thru), borough (burruh) and though (tho). Slough has two pronunciations, either the noun (slau) or the verb (sluff). And not to mention the town of Loughborough (luffbruh). I remember hearing a story about an African who came to the UK to go to university and spent hours asking people how he could get to Loogaborooga!
Perhaps you're forgetting that it's comedy, not a Latin language history class.
_"Perhaps you're forgetting that it's comedy, not a Latin language history class."_
This ^
The guy in charge of the subtitles: "I surrender "
Quare tantum Latino odiuntur? Bellissima lingua quidem est.
Get out!1!
Homines quem intellegere non possunt saepe odiunt
Quod in orbe pacis vivebamus!
lol
Isthay is unnyfay uffstay.
Caecilius still lives on in our hearts...
+Marinus Dijkhuizen Too soon... too soon. :'(
Marinus Dijkhuizen What if Caecilius is actually dead... in his garden?
CAECILIUS EST IN HORTO IN HEAVEN!
Caecilius non est in hosto... but in our hearts.
You cant do this to me man... caecilius est mortu
Subtitles are garbage, someone should get the sack. Only once in a while does he resort to actual gibberish, the rest is a mostly mixture of English colloquialisms plus French and German. All pretty clear.
Plus I saw "w" pop up quite a few times even though there is no "w" in the Latin alphabet.
+PacificRimNZ Correct...but in Classical Latin, the V was pronounced as W. So Salve was spoken as "Salwe".
lanefamily0508 Yes I know, but why not write the actual Latin words? They did with some of them.
There is some latin in there too i guess
Was about to say the same thing. If I understand what he's saying, you know it's in common phrases because I don't know shit about those languages, yet the subtitles say 'gibberish'. Even the stuff that is is plays on the latin-sounds, and if spelled phonetically would get the joke across better.
May we always have access to brilliance
Thank you Mr Izzard
I love that he is a historically influenced comedian. I love history!
I am head over heels after listening to Eddie. He is so clever and smart and ready to share with the rest of us his unbelievable thoughts on languages and history. I've just met him tonight. Asking myself were was I all this time?
I think I've learned more about Latin (the language) than I ever grasped in three years of school. Amazing and funny too.
Best stand up comedian in the world, if you ask me. Brilliant!
"portare newsum très mauvais"
This whole thing is just amazing. :'D
Got shown this video in Latin club one day... It was so funny to have my Latin teacher show us this!!!
I can't believe my family here in America didn't find out about this Artist until 2015.
What A Hoot !
He makes me ashamed that I didn't stick with French and Latin in school.
I love that he's mixing english, german, and french to fake his latin rofl
Sid Caesar was the master.
This is so accurate and funny. It is how I felt in Latin class all the time
It gets better the more I watch it!!
The subtitles just give up around the middle, lol, I love it.
Talked about Hannibal and later eaten by Hannibal
Oh my God, I knew I saw his face in a tv production before. Thank you!
You’re right. He did eat him. Great show.
Yes, and Eddie showed some real acting talent
Being able to speak German and having learnt Latin this is probably the funniest take on any language I've seen so far XD
"English is simple". The funniest line in this skit!
Well as he said . At its base it is very simple . No gendered nouns , simple verb conjugation, and understandable even if spoken incorrectly . Now spelling and pronunciation are a different story but that’s every other languages fault for loans us to many words
Latin is complicated with all its different endings but because of that it is very succinct. It takes fewer words to express things.
Exactly! Something Mr. Izzard seems to fail to comprehend.
This man is totally awesome. As a woman I adore his wonderful eye makeup
OMG I was out of breath from that quod the fuck.
Love Eddie lol brilliant comedian
Genius routine from Eddie Izzard
One of the funniest humans on the planet! Absolutely LOVE him! Brilliant! Bravo!! Anyone John Cleese finds funny is Gold!😄🎶🇺🇸🌹🌹🌹
6:14 "It has taken off because on it's [sic] basic level, it is terribly simple".
Does anybody else find it massively ironic that the person uploading this struggles with the English language and basic grammar?
+yamanmustafa
He certainly hasn't said anything even remotely meaningful about the actual language he presumes to mock.
+nelly smith Subtitles written by an illiterate.
yamanmustafa "sawe". Yup. Much salve. Very right.
ooof! Such cleverness, such wit.
Brilliant! I speak serbian - which has got lots of the declensions, like Latin - so this was hilarious!
Also loved how he chucked in bits of german and french in there - genius!
This is absolutely beautiful and hilarious for someone who can actually have a good conversation about anything in Latin. Salve! Quod est nomen tibi? Ut vales? Valeo bene!
Qtf!
Just one thing: if you can't understand something that's doesn't mean it's gibberish
It meas we should kill it with fire.
Brilliant as usual....thank gauld for subtitles,,
Hannibal venit.
Hannibal? quo cum?
milites.
quot?
multi.
quidquam aliud?
elephanti.
qui sunt?
porci et sciuri.
fugite!
is it that simple? lol
Et intravi ad! Run a feris!
U missedus the jokeus.
Of course, my friend Master Purveyor of All Things Risible.
I haven't studied Latin but im gonna guess the translation, let me know how right or wrong I am.
Hannibal is coming.
Habbibal? With whom?
Soldiers/Army.
How many?
Many.
How are they coming?
Elephants.
/qui sunt?/
/porci et sciuri./
Hurry/Act!
Yes, Latin does indeed have six primary word cases but they're not silly. These cases allow Latin to convey meaning through word endings rather than through strict word order, thereby making it highly flexible with how its sentence structure is created.
1. **Nominative** - Used for the subject of a sentence (who or what is doing the action).
2. **Vocative** - Used for directly addressing someone or something (like calling or speaking to them).
3. **Accusative** - Used for the direct object of a sentence (who or what is receiving the action).
4. **Genitive** - Expresses possession or relationship (often translated as "of" or "from" in English).
5. **Dative** - Used for the indirect object (to whom or for whom something is done).
6. **Ablative** - Expresses various relations, commonly translated as "by," "with," or "from."
i just dropped a latin class and this just makes me feel so much better
I agree with Eddie Izzard a completely about Latin, because I had to learn it in school as well, but a long time after he was in the same primary school as me, xxxx
The subtitles... they do nothing
sub-par titles.
I LOVE IT! This is so cool! I laughed so hard. This should be shown in history class. Thank you.
"It's a fucking apple! Stop fucking around!" :D
A funny thing I just realized a short while back is that Spanish developed from a language that was pretty much just Latin spoken with a Basque accent... Since the Basques used to be the biggest group in the Iberian peninsula. There were some Celts too and maybe others but anyway. Kind of like how the Scottish English dialect comes from Old English (mixed with some Old Norse) spoken with a Gaelic accent (and some Gaelic words). There are probably hundreds of other examples. It blows my mind.
Eddie really is just out there turning language and history into genius comedy
And remember, being dyslexic, he doesn't use a script. He's memorized the important bits, and just free styles from there. I saw him in Silicon Valley at an outdoor theater, and he spent a good 15 minutes just talking about the birds swooping over the stage.
Bravo.... it has been a while since I had such laugh 😂
Just a personal opinion: I've learned 7 languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Latin, French and German), of those 7, English is easily the most simple to become conversationally useful in.
nobody cares.
***** nope.
Hard to read though. (Hard tue reed thoe.)
learn chinese
have fun
Only Indo European language....to many half wits in this world who have no clue what linguistics are like when comparing features objectively.
so wonderful , edutainment at it's best
"Its best" Not "it's". Tut Tut. Language guru Eddie would be SO disappointed!
I've learned more in 24 minutes of Eddie izzard than I ever learned in history class.
I really enjoyed this. My sister is a single mom who home schools her children. Her children both speak and write Latin and found this skit very humors.
whoever wrote the subtitles doesn't know latin.Many pronounce 'Salve' - Salwe. i.e the V is proounced like a W.
My professor describes it as "W with a buzz."
like ...sal..zz-wee?
More of a subtle v-sound.
LogicQuicks Whoever wrote those subtitles didn't know what they were doing in general. They start out subtitling the salve stuff, but then just gave up, making everyone relying on subtitles miss the later jokes entirely.
And Panthagoratus? Really? The name Pythagoras should be common knowledge, really, even if Izzard adds a -tus.
u
I am doing Latin in secondary and the bit about the cases at the start made me cry with laughter as that is my reaction whenever I see it in a text/get marked down for translating it into the wrong case.
Eddie must have attended Sid Caesar gibberish school
My best memory of Eddie Izzard is his role as a British barrister trying a case in a Chicago law office via Zoom in front of an English judge on an episode of "The Good Wife".
I don't know the season or the episode, but if you manage to search for it and find it, it is well worth the effort.
Don't think it's possible to speak a language fluently with 6 cases and no articles? Russians do it every day.
In fact, grammatically the Slavic languages are much closer to Latin than Romance languages are.
Yep, every day. :)
It is fascinating how close Latin and Russian are grammatically. I feel bad for my English speaking fellows. It's hard for me to comprehend how difficult it must be for an English speaker to learn Latin or some Slavic language.
Igor Arutiunian It's comparable to, but more difficult than (IMO), learning articles, "to be" in present tense, word order of the sentence, and phrasal verbs when learning English as a Russian speaker. (I teach English to Russian speakers.) :)
ExVeritateLibertas Indeed. It took me quite a while to learn English, and the only reason I actually learned it was that I moved to the US. I know some people who have spent more than 20 years in the English speaking environment and are still having problems with all the things you mentioned. (I'm not even sure whether my last sentence was grammatically correct) :D
Is English your native? :)
Igor Arutiunian I am. But I still had to edit my last comment for mistakes. :)
I have met a few people who speak English like native speakers (just a slight accent), who have never been to an English speaking country. Usually they started watching English-language TV and movies from an early age.
But for the most part, I think immersion in a country where the language is spoken is usually necessary to reach an advanced level.
I was able to learn German well only by living in Germany for 2 years. I had studied it many years before that.
ExVeritateLibertas Finnish has like more than 10 cases... even worse
I learnt Latin in the same primary school as Eddie izzard, so I have great sympathy for him, lmao, xx
The funniest joke in his routine was "English is a simple language".
Pretty simple grammar, horrendous spelling. But yeah, even the grammar could well be further simplified without loss of precision. (Just look at the closely related scandinavian languages.)
@@herrbonk3635 True, although the tense system can be hard for 2nd language learners, and it would be nice if the vocabulary wasnt doubled by invented words most natives dont understand.
It is, in comparison to other languages. Quite simple. It doesn't mean you can't express beautifully.
People who think English is a particularly complex language are usually monoglots. What's challenging about the tense system? And what on Earth do you mean by "invented words most natives don't understand"?
@@williams.5952 For example "lascivious" a transparently non-English word that has been Anglified into an invented word most natives wont understand. English is full of words like this, often I will heard a new English word that I transparently understand in Latin yet have no idea what it means in English.
How he writes and remembers a skit like that is fascinating!
I never had to learn English as I speak it natively but even I get baffled by how some things work, I'd be interested to know how simple it is in comparison to other languages as a lot of people have said it's hard
I always thought it was very hard to learn because of how weird it was (it's part latin part germanic, part anglo-saxon etc. but apparently it's actually quite easy to learn because the grammar is so simple. the nouns are probably infuriating to learn though.
I'm Mexican and English is my second language, imo the hard part of English, at least for Spanish-speaking people is the pronunciation of words, since most of Spanish is based on the fact that every letter has a single sound and while reading you just have to assing that sound to that letter (with some exceptions) while in English you write a word like "live" and it has two different sounds depending on the meaning, or "tail" and "tale" are written different but sound the same (or almost), etc, that's the main problem in English, but I agree with TheAntiParadox, the grammar is pretty easy, in fact Spanish comes from Latin and it has masculine and feminine, and two third-persons, among other stuff that makes its grammar a bitch to learn.
Spoken English doesn't have more complicated rules, overall, than the wide range of other languages I've learned about (not "learned" most of them, just "learned about"). This is very much an amateur's opinion, but I'd class it as average or maybe even easier than most. However, written English is awful. I studied and loved Latin, it's complex but at least the spellings are consistent. I would guess that only entirely non-phonetic writing systems, like Mandarin, are harder than written English. I'm very grateful it's my first language, because I don't think I'd have the patience to learn to learn the spellings if it hadn't been made easy by being exposed to them everyday. Words just "look right" when you're brought up with them, but to formally learn English spelling from within another country would be a horrible chore.
"I never had to learn English as I speak it natively..."
That's where I stopped reading. It must be so nice to have woken up in America one day and English just magically appeared in your brain.
Sì, mein Herr. 😂 I do love the mix of English, pigeon Latin and Italian with German thrown in. 💖
the way he says "pandas" was just too funny xD
Technically, also, just because English separates the grammar into separate words, and puts it in the front of other words rather than at the end does not automatically make it simpler. Just more compartmentalized, hence clearer.
Learning verb conjugation in other languages is barely different from learning the use of 'in' 'at' 'to' 'of' or 'by' in English.
Quad the fuck? XD
*quid
@@idk-db6jt *quod
I took 4 years of Latin in Highschool....I'd forgotten most of it until I watched this 😂😂😂 I remember having to memorize all those things
If there is so much fuss from the declining, its a good thing people never heard of lithuanian. There are special letters in some words where they come out and disappear for no reason. For ex. balti (Infinitive) -Bąla (present singular III person).
Dont even get started on parts of the sentence.
Polish is another inflective language which makes a big deal about word endings. Poles probably wouldn't see this guy's humor.
Bob P Fucking poles. Standing in cars and peoples ways.
The only good thing poles are for are electricity and lights.
+Guy Kazemeka Damn man, calm down a little bit. :D Don't judge poles if u don't know them. I've heard, that they are more clever because of their complicated language, and they can learn new languages quicker
Tyberiasz Cwany Im not talking about polish (good for polishing) or polish people. Im talking about the fucking goddamned poles!
+Tyberiasz Cwany are you polish? if so, you might have debunked that whole "more clever" thing...
Brilliant stuff , so funny and so clever xx
"Quod the fuck" I am keeping that ! Loved it
Izzard on history is sublime.
Old English (Anglo Saxon) was fraught with many of the declension complexities of Latin. It has, over the millennia, eliminated declension through case endings, and has replaced it with word order and prepositions to show the relationship of nouns and pronouns in the sentence.
...it's so beautiful...
What about Finnish with their crazy 17 clauses?
17 clauses?? Seriously?? YIKES
Lmao 14* (16 if you count the two that are archaic) and cases*
Hungarian has 18
@@wiruwaruwolz remind me to visit Hungary for Christmas. They're full up with clauses.
@@wiruwaruwolz I'll insist in my conspiracy that Hungarians actually have a very simple nice language that they use when no foreigners are nearby and they only pretend to speak Hungarian so everyone leaves them alone (jk).
Whoever did the titles was completely bewildered, poor lamb.
Go, Eddie!
Now that's genius comedy!🤣
brilliant. absolutely brilliant.