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Reader John Kell, writes in:
"Alea Jacta Est" can indeed be correctly translated as "the die is cast", although rendering the letter i in the Latin as a j in English is rather old-fashioned, and most people just use i nowadays. The phrase "Alae Jacta Est", however, is ungrammatical and does not make any sense: "alae" is the nominative plural of "ala", meaning wing (of a creature or army) or, at a push, armpit, and cannot be used with the participle "jacta", which is either feminine singlar (as in "alea") or neuter plural. If the subtitle did indeed say "Alae Jacta Est", therefore, it was not genuine Latin at all! Sorry, I'll stop now.

By Toutatis! You don't get this sort of communication on the Busted Homepage do you?

posted 21/8/2003 by MJ Hibbett

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