Friday, November 10, 2017

[ttadzrfs] Three little words

Set up a story in which some initially unstated three-word phrase is very important, and it is strongly suggested that those three words will be "I love you".  But the surprise ending is "Carthago delenda est".

Inspired by jokes that Cato the Elder included the phrase at the end of sexy talk with his wife, wished his little kids good night with that phrase, and orders a cheeseburger with fries and Carthage must be destroyed.

Variants, ending in "-go": Chicago delenda est.  Fargo delenda est.  Wells Fargo delenda est.  Others?  Probably need to modify to have gender agreement (in the original, delenda and Carthago are feminine).

Incidentally, Carthago was probably pronounced closer to Cart-hago, not the "th" sound in English.  Theta in ancient Greek similarly (but not modern Greek).  Neither Latin nor ancient Greek had English's "th" sound; don't know about Phoenician.

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