The Pope sits in darkness in his office in the Vatican. The door opens and a man with a flashlight comes in.
Pope: Has it been fixed?
Swiss Guard Captain: No Holiness, but we have computer techs working on it. It is a highly sophisticated program.
Pope: What was that dreadful noise?
Swiss Guard Captain: Who Let the Dogs Out. In Latin. A female voice is singing it, but the voice has obviously been digitally altered, so we can’t attempt a voice match.
Pope: You can’t just turn it off?
Swiss Guard Captain: No Holiness. This is a highly sophisticated computer program. It not only controls the sound system of the building, but if we try to do anything to it, it shuts down the power grid. The techies tell me it appears to be replicating itself and creating hidden copies of itself within legitimate programs. They could be days digging it out. We recommend you relocate to another building.
Pope: Who is doing this?
Swiss Guard Captain: Not a clue yet Holiness, but they obviously have access to our systems and a lot of skill with computer programs.
Pope: Same person who brought in the mob of Turkeys and planted the glitter bomb?
Swiss Guard Captain: Likely Holiness. These sabotage efforts do not harm anyone, but they clearly are meant to harass and taunt.
Pope: It is the gringos! They are gaslighting me!
Actually, “Who let the dogs out” would be:
“Qui canes solvit?”
Qui is nominitive singular who. Canes is accusative plural. Solvit is third conjugation past perfect tense singular.
But the phrase “Agentibus emissumque canis de?” is confusing to me.
Agentibus is ablative plural and must go with the preposition de at the end. In the plural agentibus means secret police. That’s odd. And de means down from.
Emissumque means sent from and – quite literally that’s what it means. Emissum is the past participle accusative masculine and que means and when it is stuck on the end of a word.
Canis is nominitive singular. If we say “who let the dogs out,” then canis must be accusative plural: canes. And it is not.
The phrase “Agentibus emissumque canis de?” makes no sense to me. Is there a Latinist here who can educate me? Vobis gratias ago.
LQC:
Not “Qui canes solvit?”, but rather “Quis canes solvit?” Quis, not qui, is the interrogative pronoun.
The “agentibus…” sentence seems to be an old joke going around the Internet as a comic translation of “who let the dogs out?”. As you said, the cases aren’t right.
Still, a few nuances: “agentibus” means the persons who do something (in ablative or dative plural) and “de” also means “about”, so “de agentibus” would mean “about the persons who did (whatever)”. That part could be right, even though, in my experience, the “de” would never be put at the end.
Emittere can mean to send, so it could be used to refer to the dogs that are sent, i.e., freed, let out.
But, again, as you said, the cases are not right.
Dec 28, 2021 (Latin is hard!):
https://gloria.tv/post/Ac9MbqnudJYQ3riorYL4pz2BC
https://mundabor.wordpress.com/2021/12/28/latin-francis-must-repeat-the-year/
Jan 6, 2022 (“Faith must not be stuck in a ‘dead language'”):
https://www.romereports.com/en/2022/01/07/pope-francis-on-epiphany-faith-must-not-be-stuck-in-a-dead-language/
Thanks, Bruno. Quis not qui. You’re right.
Thanks, Quotermeister, for that Epiphany quote from the Peronist In Chief. He, like so many who disrespect traditional liturgy, makes the revealing mistake of acting as if it’s the Latin language that is most important to those who love that liturgy, rather than the CONTENTS of the text. It reveals, I believe, his complete lack of understanding of just about everything related to the pre-Conciliar Church. And what he doesn’t understand, he hates. I don’t think that is too strong a word.