Recently there has been a bit of controversy about our name, Fraters Libertas. According to a noted Latin expert, the title is not a "proper" usage of the language. A noted talk radio host has picked up on this alleged erroneous use of the Latin tongue and hyped it to imply that when it comes to gray matter, we ain't all that.
While two weeks of unchallenged trivia supremacy should be more than enough to erase any doubts about our intellectual prowess, I will also endeavor to explain the roots of our moniker and dispel any notions that it somehow is not correct.
To those schooled in traditional Latin, the name Fraters Libertas would indeed appear to be improper. However, that is due to their limited exposure with the language. These elitist wags in their ivory towers are quite knowledgeable about the Latin that they were taught in their haughty private academies. What they are less familiar with is Latin slang. You might call it "street Latin" or more appropriately for our purposes here "guttural Latin".
Yes, in ancient Rome there was a dialect, much like the lingo that emanates from our urban streets today, used by the masses that was separate but very much equal to the proper Latin spoken by the pointy haired plutocrats. Since most of these common folk were not literate very few records of the vernacular survive today. But suffice it to say that we have it on very good authority that a popular slang expression for a group of freemen who liked to don togas, have a few
It would be a disservice to those who have gone before it we were to abandon it now. That's our name and we're sticking to it.
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