Amo Amas

DESCRIPTION: "Amo amas, I love a lass, As a (cedar) tall and slender. Sweet cowslip grace Is her nominative case, And she's of the feminine gender." Other bits of (somewhat dubious) Latin combine to praise a girl. "Roru corum Sunt divorum. Harum scarum...."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1833 (Popular Melodies, Songs, and National Airs, according to Jackson-EarlySongsOfUncleSam)
KEYWORDS: foreignlanguage love courting wordplay
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Jackson-EarlySongsOfUncleSam, pp. 261-262, "Amo Amas" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Peter and Iona Opie, _I Saw Esau: Traditional Rhymes of Youth_, #122, "(second of three 'Variations on a Theme')" (1 text)
Roud #20743
NOTES [145 words]: Latin "Amo Amas" are the first two conjugations of the verb "amo," "to love," i.e. "I love," "you (singular) love." (The next word is usually "amat," "he/she/it loves.) For some reason, this is the standard verb often used to demonstrate conjugations.
Note that a verb conjugation is not the same as a noun declension, so "nominative case" does not refer to the verb "amo." As for the bit about the "feminine gender," there are two notes: First, nouns have true gender in Latin, and second, it's grammatical gender, not natural gender in English. So there are plenty of Latin nouns which we in English would not consider feminine which are feminine in Latin, e.g. "terra," "earth/land"; "ecclesia," "church/assembly."
Bottom line is that this is clearly schoolboy wordplay, not any attempt at real Latin. It's sort of a bilingual "She's my darling, she's my daisy...." - RBW
Last updated in version 7.0
File: JESU261

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