29.05.24: level 2; a side note

One of the quotations in the previous post is from Cicero’s speeches against Verres, the latter on trial for the mismanagement of Sicily. Cicero was the prosecutor.  If you’re already reading some of the literature, there’s an important feature in the complete quotation.

Etenim [1] quam tu domum, [2] quam urbem adisti, [3] quod fanum denique, quod non eversum  atque extersum reliqueris?

In truth, [1] what house, [2] what city, [3] what temple even have you ever approached without leaving it emptied and ruined?

This is called a tricolon, a series of three parallel words or phrases or sentence clauses which are identical, or almost identical, in structure. Note how Cicero leaves the most dramatic one until last: not only does Verres ruin [1] houses and [2] cities, but [3] even disgraces the gods. The translator well conveys that with “what temple even”.

Cicero makes extensive use of the tricolon, and it is still used today:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired (President Eisenhower)

And when the night grows dark, when injustice weighs heavy on our hearts, when our best-laid plans seem beyond our reach (President Obama)

You are talking to a man who has laughed in the face of death, sneered at doom, and chuckled at catastrophe. (The Wizard of Oz)

And from Dorothy Parker:

I require three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/nov/26/barack-obama-usa1

I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that quotations are only posted if they’re relevant. In the next post on the perfect tense, the most famous tricolon of them all is relevant.

vēnī, vīdī, vīcī

29.05.24: level 2; perfect tense [11]: eō, īre, iī / īvī; go [2]

[1] Find the Latin; focus on the verb

(the ambassador) approached

All … perished

He crossed

He returned

He went

He went under

They all went out …

They all went away

They crossed

They returned

____________________

Ad suās domōs numquam rediērunt.

Domum rediit. 

Ex Belgiō trānsiērunt.

omnēs deinde abiērunt

Lēgātus eius P. Scīpiōnem adiit.

Mercuriō obviam iit.

Omnēs nōbilēs periērunt.

omnēs statim exiērunt.

Rubicōnem flūmen, quī prōvinciae eius fīnis erat, trānsiit.

Umbram ipse subiit.

[2] Below are examples from Plautus and Cicero. Match the translation with the sentence and note the verb:

Have you two now come to [returned to] a reconciliation?

(but the door is opening) from where I’ve often come out drunk to excess.

I went away from here to Ephesus.

I went to (approached) the ploughmen’s huts.

In truth what house have you ever approached …?

We, wretched creatures, are undone [have perished].

____________________

Adiī casās arātōrum. (Cicero)

Hinc in Ephesum abiī. (Plautus)

… unde saturitāte saepe ego exiī ēbrius. (Plautus)

Etenim quam tū domum … adistī (Cicero)

Iam vōs rediistis in concordiam? (Plautus)

Miserae periimus. (Plautus)

 

29.05.24: level 2; perfect tense [10]: eō, īre, iī / īvī; go [1]

Take some time with the perfect tense of this verb:

Image #1 shows you the way it was formed in Classical Latin.

Image #2 shows an alternative form (īvī); the alternative form with /v/ in the stem appears very occasionally in Classical Latin, and some forms don’t appear at all (Wiktionary, for example, only lists the ones shown here). Nevertheless, they do occur in later Latin, and some textbooks will use them. However, the one on which to focus is noted below.

What’s happening in this verb?

The verb is eō, īre, iī.

The stem for the perfect is i-, one letter, and to that letter the perfect tense endings are added, but note the spelling changes marked by an asterisk (and marked in green in the first image).

iī: I went / I have gone

*īstī: you(sg.) went / have gone [stem i + istī > īstī]

iit: he / she / it went / has gone

iimus: we went / have gone

*īstis: you (pl.) went / have gone [stem i + istis > īstis]

iērunt: they went / have gone

As with all other tenses of this verb, if it has a prefix, the same endings will apply:

rediī: I returned

adīstī: you (sg.) approached

exiit: he / she / it went out

trānsiimus: we crossed

abīstis: you (pl.) went away

periērunt: they perished

29.05.24: useful quotations

Every welcome message says that the posts are not random, and neither are the quotations. Here are some quotations that introduce the second declension of nouns. Avoid the minefields: there’s no need to go into deep analysis – there’s one language point to note (in bold) in every one of them, and there’s no need to have endless FB debates about who said it, when they said, if they said it or whether it was translated from another language or what the deeper philosophical meaning is, or whether a different word order appeared in Instagram. It is enough to say that every ending of the second declension is in them – in order singular and plural. A couple of them are adjectives but acting as nouns; that doesn’t matter – the endings are the same and so is the usage.

[1] Deus ex māchinā

[1] Verbum sapientī satis est.

[2] Dā pācem, domine, in diēbus nostrīs

[3] Vōx populī

[3] Exemplī grātiā

[4] Vae miserō mihi!

[5] Philosophum nōn facit barba.

[5] Ad īnfīnītum

[6] In vīnō vēritās

____________________

[1] Caecī caecōs dūcentēs

[1] Verba volant, scrīpta manent.

[2] Rōmānī, īte domum!

[3] Stultōrum īnfīnītus est numerus.

[4] Vae victīs!

[5] Fortūna amīcōs parat, inopia amīcōs probat.

[5] Sīc ītur ad astra.

[6] Quod nōn est in āctīs nōn est in mundō.

[6] Ex librīs

29.05.24: learn any way you want - as long as it suits you

The video shows you a fourth way of learning those endings in the previous post!

29.05.24: Level 1; Ora Maritima [2](10); ways of learning [iv]

The image shows you the same information three times. Some people do ‘match up’ exercises or flash cards or stick them on post-it notes on the fridge. It doesn’t matter. For me:

[i] Table #1: I’m a Russian speaker and so the case names – and I’ve deliberately abbreviated them – were familiar and many of the uses match. If you haven’t dealt with a language with cases before, then those terms will mean nothing. It’s really important to see them in the context of reading which is why recent posts have focused on that.

[ii] Table #2: I doubt it will tell you much more; that’s why I sometimes mention that it’s there for reference i.e. get to grips with the cases and the endings first through practice.

[iii] Table #3: See them in context, and pick up a few short and memorable quotations on the way. Now you can see the endings at work.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Latin_for_beginners_(1911)/Part_II/Lesson_VII

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Latin_for_beginners_(1911)/Part_II/Lesson_VIII

29.05.24: gentle reminders

When I started doing notes on Ora Maritima, I referred to the fact that this little book was written in a gentler age. Some of the phrases I’ve used to illustrate the case usage, I think, reflect that:

Sub umbrā castaneae │beneath the shade of a chestnut tree

Ex fenestrā meā lunam et stellās spectō. │From my window I look at the moon and the stars.

And:

Cūra columbārum Lȳdiae magnam laetitiam dat.  │ Taking care of the doves gives great happiness to Lydia.

29.05.24: -ae! -ae! -ae!

 

This is why, I think, it is good to learn these endings in some sort of context:

-ae, -ae, -ae!

Genitive singular: -ae

Dative singular: -ae

Nominative plural: -ae

OK, they can sit there in the table or, I think better, I would learn three sentences or phrases which show what case they are and why that case is being used.

And this is where useful quotations can step in; I learned them this way because they give the endings and the uses are clear in translation.

Here are the cases that were discussed in the previous text.

[i] Vocative: Et tū, Brūte (Shakespeare) │You too, Brutus.

[ii] Nominative plural: quot hominēs tot sententiae (Terence) │as many men, so many minds

[iii] Genitive singular:  Historia, … magistra vītae (Cicero) │ history, the teacher of life

[iv] Dative singular: nōn vītae sed scholae discimus (Seneca) │we learn not for life, but for school, and that phrase is – quite rightly - commonly inverted to:

Nōn scholae sed vītae (discimus) │(we learn) not for school, but for life

29.05.24: Level 1; Ora Maritima [2](9); ways of learning [iii]

The translation is in the comments again although I looked at this passage in an earlier post.

Lȳdia quoque, cōnsōbrīna mea, apud amitam meam nunc habitat. Lȳdia columbās cūrat: cūra columbārum Lȳdiae magnam laetitiam dat. Tū, Lȳdia, cum apud magistram tuam es, linguae Francogallicae et linguae Anglicae operam dās; sed ego linguīs antīquīs Rōmae et Graeciae operam dō. Saepe cum Lȳdiā ad silvam vel ad ōram maritimam ambulō. Interdum cum nautā in scaphā nāvigāmus. Quantopere nōs undae caeruleae dēlectant! Lȳdia casās agricolārum cum amitā meā interdum vīsitat. Vōs, fīliae agricolārum, Lȳdiam amātis, ut Lȳdia vōs amat. Ubi inopia est, ibi amita mea inopiam levat.

[1] Again, the author shows the cases of the 1^st declension but adds a little more so that the entire declension is complete:

[i] Vocative: the case used when talking directly to somebody in the same way that we might say “Hi, John”. However, this is not a big issue: almost every noun in Latin has a vocative case which is the same as the nominative. Because of that, almost every post in this group does not list the vocative because that would give the impression that there is an entire set of case endings to be known. That is not what happens.

Nominative: Lȳdia … apud amitam meam nunc habitat. │ Lydia now lives at my aunt’s house.

Vocative: Tū, Lȳdia, cum apud magistram tuam es …. │You, Lydia, when you’re at your teacher’s house …

Nominative: Nōs undae caeruleae dēlectant! │ The blue waves delight us!

Vocative: Vōs, fīliae agricolārum, Lȳdiam amātis. │You, the daughters of the farmers, love Lydia.

The only time there is a difference is with nouns that end in -us or -ius:

Mārcus > Ō Mārce! The ‘ō’ in Latin is commonly used to attract somebody’s attention or starting a statement that is directed towards that person.

Fīlius meus > Filī mī! Oh, my son!

The famous line – which Caesar never said but Shakespeare thought he might have done:

Et tū, Brūte?  You too, Brutus?

[ii] dative: this indicates the indirect object of a sentence. I give the book │to the boy. It is also used to express for in the sense of doing something for the benefit of somebody.

Cūra columbārum ¦ Lȳdiae ¦ magnam laetitiam dat. │ The care of the doves gives great happiness to Lydia.

Linguae Francogallicae et linguae Anglicae operam dās │You give attention to the French language and the English language [that’s rather literal; you focus on … would be a less stilted translation]

Ego linguīs antīquīs ¦ Rōmae et Graeciae ¦ operam dō. │I give attention to the ancient languages ¦ of Rome and of Greece

____________________

[5] Lydia, my cousin, is also now living with my aunt. Lydia takes care of the doves: the care of the doves gives great happines to Lydia. You, Lydia, when you are with your teacher, give attention to the French language and the English language; but I give attention to the ancient languages ​​of Rome and Greece. I often walk with Lydia to the forest or to the seaside. Sometimes we sail with a sailor in a boat. How the blue waves delight us! Lydia sometimes visits the farmers' cottages with my aunt. You, daughters of farmers, love Lydia, as Lydia loves you. Where there is need / scarcity, there my aunt relieves (their) need.

29.05.24: Level 1; 10 at a time; animals