I came, I saw, I conquered

[Ebbot]

What's the difference between:

Veni, Vidi, Vici (Caesars famous phrase) and Veni, Vedi, Vici (Alizées song)?

:confused:

[heyamigo]

my guess would be that it's the italianized form of V, V, V. i think veni is the italian equivalent of latin vidi, but i'm not sure. it's very clear this is the italianzied form because alizee's pronunciation of all 3 V's are "V" as well as the "c" is a "ch" whereas if it were latin, it would be pronounced weni, widi, wiki because latin V's sound like W's and C's are always hard "k" sounds. hope that helps.

[Ebbot]

my guess would be that it's the italianized form of V, V, V. i think veni is the italian equivalent of latin vidi, but i'm not sure. it's very clear this is the italianzied form because alizee's pronunciation of all 3 V's are "V" as well as the "c" is a "ch" whereas if it were latin, it would be pronounced weni, widi, wiki because latin V's sound like W's and C's are always hard "k" sounds. hope that helps.

Yes, thanks :)

[fsquared]

You know, I've seen this come up before (e.g. at mf-international) but I don't recall a definitive answer, though it must be out there somewhere. So here's my guess: perhaps it's the translation of Veni Vidi Vici into Corsican (Corsu).

Now, I don't know any Corsican and I don't know enough Italian or Latin to interpolate, but I was able to google "vedi corsu" and find documents in Corsu with the word "vedi" in them, (and the other two as well) so it seems there's a possibility at least.

[Deepwaters]

Whoa, now that's something I hadn't considered!

I studied Latin myself for a number of years, and Alizée's pronunciation of the Latin words in that song always both bothered and amused me. I wondered why she was pronouncing it as if it were Italian. Why not at least speak Latin with a French mispronunciation instead of an Italian one. :p

But Corsu is one of the closest to Latin of all Romance languages, so much so that I can almost read it. Yet in pronunciation, it appears to be more like Italian. You may well be right!

[fsquared]

Whoa, now that's something I hadn't considered!

I studied Latin myself for a number of years, and Alizée's pronunciation of the Latin words in that song always both bothered and amused me. I wondered why she was pronouncing it as if it were Italian. Why not at least speak Latin with a French mispronunciation instead of an Italian one. :p

But Corsu is one of the closest to Latin of all Romance languages, so much so that I can almost read it. Yet in pronunciation, it appears to be more like Italian. You may well be right!

Hrm....as much as I'd like it to be true, I can't get it to work. Here are the conjugations for the appropriate verbs in Corsu:

http://perso.orange.fr/e.garidacci/lingua-corsa/cunghjucazione/tableaux/vene.htm
http://perso.orange.fr/e.garidacci/lingua-corsa/cunghjucazione/tableaux/vede.htm
http://perso.orange.fr/e.garidacci/lingua-corsa/cunghjucazione/tableaux/vince.htm

(Don't ask how much time I wasted digging up these sites :p)

[Deepwaters]

Oh, well . . . so I guess what we're left with, is that Mylène misspelled the words, and Alizée mispronounced them, because I guess neither one of them ever studied Latin. :p

[fsquared]

If you search for Veni Vedi Vici, you get some things (including like a French clothing line or something). Maybe it's a common variant of some sort, with maybe a "standard mispronunciation"? (We have lots of those in English :) )