22.03.24: video; ordinal numbers

[1] numerī ōrdinālēs: ordinal numbers

[2] The presenter says he will give the ordinal numbers with his little brother; note his use of the preposition cum (with) + ablative:

cum frāterculō meō: with my little brother

[3] incipiāmus: 2 points here [i] incipiō, incipere [3-iō]: begin; that verb conjugation has already been covered, BUT [ii] he says “incipiāmus”, which is a very good example of why not to go too far too fast!

The form he uses is the subjunctive and, in an earlier post, I mentioned that this verb type is way, way down the road. There are other concepts that need to be secure before you venture there! And so, for now, just note that this verb form can be used to say “Let’s do something”: incipiāmus (let’s begin).

[4] optimē: very good i.e. very well (done). Again, an earlier post explained (briefly) about adverbs: optimus, -a, -um: very good > optimē: (You did it) very well.

[5] His brother finishes the video by saying:

Cūrāte ut valeātis!

In one of the first posts, the phrase cūrā ut valeās was given. It’s a way of saying “good bye”. Its literal meaning is take care [cūrā] ¦ that you may be well [ut valeās] when you’re talking to one person.

All the boy is doing here is making it plural because he’s talking to all the viewers: Cūrāte ut valeātis.

He began the video in the same way not by saying salvē, which would be to one person, but salvēte because he’s saying hello to more than one person.

Valeās and valeātis are also subjunctives. They’re also way down the road, but cūrā and cūrāte are coming up soon, and so do note -ā [cūrā] and -āte [cūrāte] because they are used when you’re telling somebody to do something.

[6] The video introduces ordinal numbers, which, as the name suggests, refer to order, sequence, position: I won’t tell you a second time. These ordinal numbers are also important in Latin because they are used when telling the time.

The video introduced you to 1st – 10th but, since we are going to look at clock times, I’ll add two (11th and 12th).

[i] Apart from prīmus and secundus, which, like English ‘first’ and ‘second’, have their unique forms, all other ordinal numbers are created from the cardinal numbers i.e. 3, 4, 5 onwards.

[ii] They’re easy to recognise because they are actually 1st / 2nd declension adjectives like any other adjective. 

• ūnus [1] > prīmus, -a, -um: 1st
• duo [2] > secundus: 2nd
• trēs [3] > tertius: 3rd
• quattuor [4] > quārtus: 4th
• quīnque [5] > quīntus: 5th
• sex [6] > sextus: 6th
• septem [7] > septimus: 7th
• octō [8] > octāvus: 8th
• novem [9] > nōnus: 9th
• decem [10] > decimus: 10th
• ūndecim [11] > ūndecimus: 11th
• duodecim [12] > duodecimus: 12th

In the next post, we’ll take a closer look at how Romans expressed the time which, in our fast-moving, “on the dot”, “Why is the train three minutes late!??” world might have been a source of frustration to us!