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

+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

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

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 think he outshines the pythons (which I loved when I was young & went with my brother to see their movie when it came out): he moved comedy along. Brilliant man!

Well, he does like dressing up like women... He could've replaced Terry Jones.

@@sergarlantyrell7847 But does he like to hang around in bars?

@@PrincessPeriodFart 🤣🤣🤣

@@jennyhughes4474 love him, love them :D afaik he learnt a lot from them; standing on the shoulders of giants ^^

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

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?

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.

+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.

It's FULL STOP. Not period. Go learn proper English, American.

Say what !

Just vulgar.

@@PedroMachadoPT I'm American. I love vulgarity. 😁😝

@@Anjalena It makes sense.

@@PedroMachadoPT 😳🤷🤣

+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.

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.

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. 😣

No, he knows his monoglot audience is so ignorant of other languages that they regard his BS as authoritive.

English spelling issues are largely do to all the borrowed words from other languages . It killed any chance of a standard

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.

"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"

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

+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

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 ^

Exactly! Something Mr. Izzard seems to fail to comprehend.

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.

I diiiiieeeeddd

Alex? Is that you?

AlbaFlavius *Quod

4. "I resent the entire english speaking world and this man for criticising latin"

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!

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.

It meas we should kill it with fire.

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

Sid Caesar was the master.

Mark Wrenn there is so much more each nom, gen, dat, acc and abl is used to translate 5 declensions. The there is just a whole bunch of other shit too future, imperfect, pluperfect, past tense, and a tons more just bundled together. It is the worst trying to conjugate verbs, nouns, and any other thing!

Finnish has 16 cases, Basque has 28.

Get out!1!

Homines quem intellegere non possunt saepe odiunt

Quod in orbe pacis vivebamus!

lol

Isthay is unnyfay uffstay.

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.

*quid

@@idk-db6jt *quod

sub-par titles.

Meh it's ok

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.

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

+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.

Sloth from The Goonies really?

Ananda D'Aquino Yeah, I have no idea why.

Sloth from The Goonies I thought it was sexy :(

Ananda D'Aquino "Badass" is a good thing! It means "cool".

Sloth from The Goonies yeah, but russian accent is badass hahahahaha

"Its best" Not "it's". Tut Tut. Language guru Eddie would be SO disappointed!