A little ditty

Brian   Tue Jan 12, 2010 7:00 pm GMT
My mum told me this little ditty in the 80s. It perplexed my Latin teacher. It's just a little novelty.... does it make sense to you?

Si ville der digo
Fortebus es in aro
Dem nobus es
Demis trux
Sit ininem
Cusandux.
real Brain   Tue Jan 12, 2010 8:34 pm GMT
Here's my version of it:

Lemme tell you a little story 'bout a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer barely kept his fam'ly fed
and then one day he was shootin' at some food
and up through the ground came a bubblin' crude...
old timer   Tue Jan 12, 2010 8:35 pm GMT
This is an old "ditty" (I think it was on the "Today Show" 4 or 5 decades ago)

The last part is:


40 busses in a row
them no busses
them is trucks
sittin' in 'em (orig. version was "demis fula" = them is full of")
cows 'n ducks
Jed   Tue Jan 12, 2010 8:42 pm GMT
"Si ville der digo "

Civil there they go?

"civil"? is that right
Obadiah   Tue Jan 12, 2010 8:43 pm GMT
Might be "see willy, there they go"
Brian   Tue Jan 12, 2010 8:52 pm GMT
Yep, Old timer and Obadiah take it between them :).

My mum says it in her Scottish accent, which made "cusandux" sound more natural as transliterated into broad Scots "Coo's an' ducks". She learned it from her dad, and who knows how many generations before him. Amusement was simpler back then!

Sorry to squeeze such nonsense into this rather more clever forum, but it got stuck in my mind for years, and there seems to be no reference to it on the worldwide interweb anywhere.

Here's how it sounds when not in faux-Latin:
See Willy der dey go,
Forty buses in a row.
Dem no' buses, dem is trucks,
Sittin' in 'em, coo's and ducks.
Brian   Tue Jan 12, 2010 8:58 pm GMT
Oh, old timer, I think "demis fula" looks much better!

Seems like a got a central lowlands dialect version with free memory lapse lyric changing :).

PS this was moved to Languages Forum, but I posted in English because it's... English. Perhaps shift it back over? Unless faux-Latin is a bona-fide foreign language...
old timer   Wed Jan 13, 2010 1:02 am GMT
Here are other versions:

http://www.ashep.com/archive/loQtus/numbered.html

http://forums.delphiforums.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=dictionary&msg=27860.23

Search for "cousendux" (I think the one I saw on TV long ago had this instead of "cusandux")
allagash hrabash   Wed Jan 13, 2010 1:04 am GMT