19.03.25: Follow-up on the previous post; grammatical “curve balls”

Referring to:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/latinforstarters/posts/646798164598122/

Sī versūs hōrum duōrum poētārum neglegētis, magnā parte litterārum carēbitis. │ If you neglect the verses of these two poets, you will miss a large part of literature.

A single sentence can be really useful, especially if you’re “on the way” with Latin. Of course, you can just be content with the translation that’s given, but you can look at it in a little more depth almost as a check-list.

When learning Latin, words and phrases such as “usually”, “most commonly” etc. give you the clue that, while most of the language conforms to very specific rules, there are “curve balls” and this sentence has quite a few of them!

[1]

versus: most nouns ending in -us are 2^nd declension; this one isn’t, which is why dictionaries and vocabulary lists will give a second piece of information i.e. the genitive singular because the genitive singular is different for, in fact, the three declensions that this word could belong to:

hortus, hortī [genitive singular]: garden; 2^nd declension because the genitive singular [-ī] is telling you that

pectus, pectoris [genitive singular]: chest; 3^rd declension [-is]

versus, versūs [genitive singular]: 4th declension [-ūs]

[2]

poeta, -ae: poet; most 1^st declension nouns are feminine; this one isn’t – it’s masculine and belongs to a little group of nouns which, although they have feminine endings, are considered to be masculine in gender owing to their association with “occupations” that were traditionally performed by males, for example:

poēta, -ae [1/masculine]: poet

agricola, -ae [1/m]: farmer

aurīga, -ae [1/m]: charioteer

pīrāta, -ae [1/m]: pirate

scrība, -ae [1/m]: scribe

However, although the nouns decline as feminines, whatever agrees with them e.g. adjectives, are masculine – and that is exactly the same as modern Russian: dedushka (grandfather) in Russian is grammatically feminine, but when you say “my grandfather”, Russian uses the masculine form for ‘my’ i.e. “moj dedushka” (incidentally, ‘man’ in Russian is also feminine: muzhchina!) Therefore, in this sentence:

versūs hōrum [masculine] duōrum [masculine] poētārum [feminine]: the verses of those two poets

[3] Sī versūs hōrum duōrum poētārum [i] neglegētis, magnā parte litterārum [ii] carēbitis.

[i] If you neglect [English: present tense] the verses of these two poets, ¦ [ii] you will miss [English: future tense] a great part of literature. That’s the right translation, of course, but it isn’t exactly what the Latin is saying.

It’s the first part where English and Latin are different. The “if” part of the sentence is known as the conditional clause; in this structure, English most often uses the present tense: if you [i] give [present tense] me the money, [ii] I’ll buy the cake.

In Latin, however, the future tense is used here:

Sī versūs hōrum duōrum poētārum [i] neglegētis [future tense], …

Literally: If you will neglect the works of these two poets,…

[4] … magnā parte litterārum carēbitis │ careō, -ēre [2]: lack, be without; this is one of a small group of verbs that are followed by the ablative case and convey the sense of being deprived of something

You will miss (miss out on, lack, be deprived of) a great part of literature.

A common verb of this type is: egeō, -ēre [2]: lack, want, be without, need

Cicero needs a lot of things in the ablative case…

tamen et ipse egeō argūmentō epistulārum (Cicero) │  still I am in want of subject matter

cōnsciīs egeō aliīs (Cicero) │ I need others as accomplices

egeō rēbus omnibus (Cicero) │ I am in want of everything

tuō cōnsiliō egeō (Cicero) │ I need your advice

But what he doesn’t need …

sed nōn egeō medicīnā (Cicero) │ I don’t need a remedy