Learning is a
personal thing, and the aim of the group is to look at the learning of Latin
from different perspectives:
Post [1] on pets:
focus on vocabulary and meaning
Post [2] on pets: step
up and look at some grammar features which I divided: 2 matter at this
stage
(1)
mihi
est … / habeō…
(2)
1st
/ 2nd declension of nouns
… and one you can
keep on ice for later:
(3)
3rd
declension nouns i.e. awareness at this stage
Posts [1] and [2]
show a gradual, step-by-step approach using
listening, visual association, and minimum interference from English (there is
no English in the video) but, if you want to know more, then explanations and
links are there.
In another FB
group, one member warned a new learner of Latin not to focus only on one
book, and I would agree with that: a language has to be approached in
different ways.
Words are
interesting in themselves,
not simply because Cicero put them into sentences; words have biographies,
origins, and, in post [3], cultural associations. The more you read about
a word, the more it sticks in your head and the more you find out about the
people who used them 2000 years ago.
This post looks
again at derivatives that have frequently come up in previous posts. You can
learn a lot of Latin words by that technique and, in fact, some tricky grammar
as [i] – [iii] below illustrate:
[i] serpēns, serpentis > serpent; (adj.)
serpentine (pertaining to a snake), and that’s not random – there are
truckloads of English derivatives which reflect stem changes in Latin nouns
albeit some of them are rare:
[ii] testūdō, testūdinis: tortoise
From the Oxford
English Dictionary: fewer than 0.01 occurrences per million words in modern
written English – but it’s there:
testudinous:
characteristic of a tortoise; as slow as a tortoise
The noun
‘tortoise’ itself is derived from Late Latin tortūca, -ae [1/f]:
tortoise, turtle i.e. an alternative for testūdō.
[iii] mūs, mūris: mouse > Engl. deriv. murine:
characteristic of a mouse [see also the note below on piscis]
[iv] canis: dog > Engl. deriv. canine
[v] fēlēs: cat > Engl. deriv. feline
[vi] sīmia: monkey > Engl. deriv. simian
(adj. pertaining to apes / monkeys)
[vii] avis: bird > Engl. deriv. avine
(pertaining to birds); aviary; avian influenza (bird flu);
aviation
[viii] passer: sparrow > Engl. deriv. passerine
(scientific name for the house sparrow); it's rare, but it exists
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/passerine
[ix] cattus:
cat; example of a wanderword, the origins of which are unclear, and
variations of it crop in many different languages; one theory is that it found
its way into Germanic from Late Latin (the jury’s out on that one)
[x] La: piscis [piskis];
Old English: fisċ [fish]
We have Pisces [fish
(pl.)] in astrology,
piscine, a rare English adjective meaning
‘characteristic of a fish’
In archaic
English ‘piscine’ is also a straight theft from French piscine meaning
swimming pool.
The English word
‘fish’ is not derived from Latin but takes us back to the time when there are
no written records, i.e. to Indo-European, a reconstructed language
based on the premise that most languages in Europe came from a common source
including early Germanic (proto-Germanic) and Latin (proto-Italic). That’s a
lengthy topic but it’s enough to say that Latin piscis and English fish
both come from that source.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fish
This feature also
applies to the Latin mūs and Old English mūs (mouse); the English
doesn’t come from Latin: they are both from Indo-European, as is the Russian
mysh’ (мышь).
The French for ‘mouse’
(souris) – isn’t from La: mūs, but from Late Latin: sōrex, sōricis
[3/m]: shrew
Roman parrots
never made it into English; there is no derivative of psittacus.
‘Parrot’ is from French perroquet and its origins in French are unclear
although I do like the suggestion that it’s from Italian parrocchetto (literally:
little priest).
Let’s pause: of the words introduced in the first post on this topic, ten
of them exist in some form in English. There are some points to note:
[1] While there are exceptions (cattus > cat; serpēns > serpent) English
derivatives mostly do not have the same meaning as the Latin original, but are related
to it in meaning. When I was learning French, the teacher would remind us of faux
amis (‘false friends’) i.e. words that look the same but the
meanings of which have changed.
canis: dog > canine: (pertaining to a dog)
[2] A Latin word can have several meanings – some of them quite different
from each other – whereas English tends to ‘narrow’ the meaning to a single
idea. A good example of that is La: honestus which, of course, winds up
in English as the very specific honest. However, in Latin, that word had
a far wider range of meanings to include ‘honourable’, ‘worthy’, ‘respectable’,
‘noble’ i.e. just because there is a derivative does not necessarily mean that
the Latin text is expressing the exact equivalent.
[3] The derivatives are most frequently not directly from Latin, but
from the French language after the Norman Conquest in 1066 and, in French,
underwent spelling changes that were then reflected in English. There are
often, however, patterns to those changes which have been discussed in earlier
posts and will come up again when necessary.
[4] Purely out of interest – English displays a feature of two words
co-existing, one of Germanic origin and one from Latin:
feline / cat¦like (from Late Latin cattus + OE: ġelīċ)
canine / doglike (OE: dogga / docga + ġelīċ)
murine / mouselike; mous(e)y (OE mūs + ġelīċ / + -iġ)
piscine / fishy (from OE: -iġ)
aviary / birdhouse
(OE: bridd + hūs)
serpent / snake
(OE: snaca)
serpentine / snakelike
(OE: snaca + ġelīċ)
What this does is
add considerable richness to the English language because they are not synonyms
and can reflect sometimes subtle differences:
canine teeth; dog-like nose
feline features; cat-like tread (i.e.
walking stealthily)
aviary: the large enclosure for birds in a zoo; birdhouse:
the one you have in your back garden
The Serpentine
lake / river in Hyde Park, London takes the name from its snakelike
curving shape.
Your star sign may
be Pisces, but if you’re a deceitful scammer, then you’re very fishy!
