Disputatio:Ministerium Interioris Civitatum Foederatarum

message: The name of this page reads as though it sort of could mean "a part of the interior of the United States": that's why I clicked on it, to find out what on earth it meant. Is "Pars" the best term for a government department? I ask because I honestly don't know :) It will be a term that we need to use quite often ...  Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 19:12, 26 Ianuarii 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Pro tem! Cassell's says a department ("office") is munus and provincia and as a "branch, division," pars and genus. Traupman says a department ("of administration") is provincia and administratio. White's says a department ("sphere of business") is munus and ministerium and provincia. None of them says what an academic department might be, though ordo professorum for 'faculty' is well-attested. Perhaps the most transparent for nonnative speakers would be ministerium. Should a variety of English terms for the executive parts of a government all have the same Latin word? or is a rigorous set of distinctions advisable? One thinks of agency, branch, bureau, council, department, division, ministry, office, service. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:26, 26 Ianuarii 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: :We have used ministerium elsewhere, e.g. Ministerium Rerum Externarum Civitatum Foederatarum for the State Department.  I'd be inclined to generalize that.  A. Mahoney (disputatio) 20:46, 26 Ianuarii 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: ::In this field it probably is more helpful to readers if we generalize a bit. Otherwise they have to guess in two steps: 1. what will that silly little country have called its ministry of internal affairs; 2. what will those silly Latinists have found as an equivalent? In practice we do the same thing with names of recent universities quite often. The result is not necessarily a proper name -- because with relatively recent organizations there just isn't a proper name in Latin -- but a Latin descriptor. Thus your example "Ministerium Rerum Externarum Civitatum Foederatarum" is not a proper name (as the English pagename might be) because there isn't a Latin proper name: it's a descriptor, the ministry of foreign affairs of the United States, and very handy as such.

text: ::So this one might be "Ministerium rerum interiorum/internarum Civitatum Foederatarum" ... But what do you think, Iacobe?

text: ::I should add, just for fun, that the Vatican (which does fix proper names in Latin) calls similar subdivisions of the Vatican bureaucracy by various names including "dicasterium" and "sectio" ...  but I'm not suggesting we should generalise those. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:43, 27 Ianuarii 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: :::A sectio is basically of course 'a cutting' and its result—which, if the dictionaries are to be believed, in classical times most usually meant real estate ('lot') and its purchasing ('auction'). IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:59, 27 Ianuarii 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: ::::Perhaps there was once a sectio dealing with the auction of indulgences. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:43, 27 Ianuarii 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: :::::I changed to "ministerium" because at least it's clearer, but I'm not claiming it's the best answer. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 14:07, 9 Februarii 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  De "parte" 

message: Yesterday I created the Bureau of Indian Education as Ministerium Educationis Indianorum, but note that this phrase is in syntactical conflict with the Ministerium Rerum Indianarum, in that the Indians are a noun in the former but an adjective in the latter (English Indian can work either way). Also, neither uses the classical Indus for the noun and Indicus for the adjective; whether both terms should, as in English, consistently be applied to most (but not all!) of the aboriginal inhabitants of the Americas needs to be determined; certainly Indianus for the American Indians would be more transparent to nonnative speakers of Latin. Vicipaedia has long had the lemma & article Indi Americani. Note, too, that 'Native American' is a term that may be defined by statute & regulation, which therefore may need its own article, perhaps Americani Nativi, though 'native' (noun) is regularly indigena. And whether American means 'of the Americas' or 'of the USA' is always going to present an ambiguity. The National Museum of the American Indian has just finished having a year-long exhibit on Native Hawaiians—who, after all, are Americans [USA-ans], though they're not Americans ['of the Americas']. Perhaps some attestation-giving authorities will have considered these problems. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:20, 27 Ianuarii 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I must say I always use "Americani indigenae" myself. Although there's plenty of precedent for "Indi (Americani)", and I love precedent, I feel that this is so misleading a term that it's better to find a different one; "Indi" having already been, long before Columbus spread his alternative facts, the inhabitants of quite another region of the world.

text: I haven't checked what precedent there is for "Indiani" in this sense.

text: I guess I might have said "Ministerium educationis indigenarum", which has an appropriate aroma of paternalism (to say the least). Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:40, 27 Ianuarii 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: :One problem with indigena is that some (perhaps many) nonnative Latin-speakers take it for an adjective and produce quasi-adjectival forms like indigenorum and indigenos. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:47, 27 Ianuarii 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: ::Search in Vicipaedia for indigenos and you'll get the point. Someone (guess!) has produced the alleged sentence "Hi homines iura aequalitatem et repraesentationes pro indigenos." IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:49, 27 Ianuarii 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Ministerium + Indus, Indianus, Indicus

message: For the KGB ('Committee for State Security'), Vicipaedia has Commissio Securitatis Publicae URSS, whereas both Cassell's and Traupman give 'committee' as consilium. For the FBI, Vicipaedia retains the English name but offers in parentheses 'Officium Investigationis Foederale', whereas Traupman gives 'bureau' as ministerium, and Cassell's has only the primary, untransferred sense, referring to furniture (scrinium). IacobusAmor (disputatio) 13:22, 27 Ianuarii 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: More notes