Lost explicatum

Lost explained.

Chris Jones notes a Latin exchange between two characters on tonight's episode:

Just when I least expect it, this evening’s episode of the ABC Series Lost features characters speaking Latin to each other; and for the most part the actors try and duplicate a classical pronunciation.

The series is far too complicated to explain, but if you’re interested in seeing a little spoken Latin from primetime US television, you can view this evening’s episode here. The first Latin exchange is at the 14 minute mark:

Other 1: Quare non sunt vestitus eis?

Other 2: Tace!

Juliet: Cognoscitis qui sumus?

I am not a viewer, but I can offer this explanation (via Paul Kedrofsky):

PILOT: So, we have a little time and the auto-pilot’s on. How ‘bout you tell me about the island?

JACK: Well, we lived on the beach, mostly, except for the time we lived in the cave with the skeletons and the time we lived in the secret underground bunker with the lending library and the time we lived in the village built by the scientists that the people who don’t age gassed to death with the help of their leader, my third nemesis, the nebbishy con man with spine cancer, which we took over when the freighter people came to kill everybody. We ate wild boar and fish, and then the supplies stashed in the storeroom of the bunker, and then the scientists who the people who don’t age gassed to death were nice enough to replenish our food by airdrop, but only once, but that was okay, because the people who don’t age had some agriculture that we completely ignored while we stood in front of their refrigerators with the doors open. And I saw my dead dad just hanging around on the island, which I didn’t think too much about because I was preoccupied with the smoke monster and the baby stealing and the mind games with the nebbishy guy and my TOTALLY AWESOME tattoo which got my ass kicked in Thailand and the power struggle with my second nemesis, the formerly paralyzed bald survivalist mystic, who was, frankly, nuts.

PILOT: Nuts, you say?

JACK: Yeah, man of faith, thought the bunker wanted you to punch Hurley’s lotto numbers into the computer every few hours, and I was like, it’s a GAME, you lose, sucker.

PILOT: And?

JACK: So he finally came around after the shipwrecked sailor who lived in the bunker for two years told him that you had to punch the numbers, which obviously meant you didn’t have to punch the numbers. Which, come to think of it, I guess he was right in the first place. Missed the numbers, cratered the whole freaking bunker, knocked the guy who used to live there right into last Tuesday. Literally.

Oh, I forgot to mention that my dead father came back and kidnapped my secret sister.

PILOT: Um, okay. So … happy to be getting back?

JACK: Yeah, you know, I’m looking forward to having the time to grow a beard.