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 [v]

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 [iv]

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

 

28.05.24: follow-up; the Laws of the Twelve Tables

In extract [8] in the previous post, reference is made to the Laws of the Twelve Tables: lēx duodecim tabulārum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Tables...

“Like the Magna Carta, the US Constitution, or the Rights of Man, the Twelve Tables are rightly considered one of the foundational bits of legislation for Western law and legal practice.”

https://historycooperative.org/the-twelve-tables/

It is worth reading a little about this since it provides information about the formation of Roman Law.

28.05.24: level 2; perfect tense [9]

Things to look out for:

4th conjugation verbs with the -v- stem e.g. audivi often lose that /v/; when I’m writing in Latin, I tend to keep it in because it’s a strong marker of the perfect tense, but both occur:

audīvī │ audiī

audīvistī │audiistī

audīvit │ audiit

audīvimus │audiimus

audīvistis │audiistis

audīvērunt │audiērunt

If your aim is to be able to read Classical Latin, the quotations that are used contain verbs that are very common and it’s best to pick up their past tense forms as you go along.

cēlō, cēlāre, cēlāvī [1]: hide

1. At, bona līberta, haec scīvistī et mē cēlāvistī? (Plautus) │ But, my worthy freed-woman, you knew of this, and concealed it from me.

dīcō, dīcere, dīxī [3]: say

2. sed nunc omnia, quae audiit saepe quae dīxit, aspernātur (Pliny) │ but now he rejects everything that he heard and often said

3. rīdiculum: postquam ante ōstium mē audīvit stāre approperat (Terence) │ What nonsense! As soon as she has heard that I'm standing before the door, she makes all haste.

serviō, servīre, servīvī [4]: to be a slave (to somebody; the verb is followed by a dative case)

4. Servīs serviimus (Historia Augusta)│ We have been slaves to slaves.

5. Diū quī domī ōtiōsī dormiērunt (Plautus) │those who have slept a long time at home when not at work

6. Multa enim falsa dē mē audiērunt (Cicero) │ For they have heard many false statements concerning me

7. Illī eum tumulum … magnīs operibus mūnīvērunt (Caes) │ they fortified the hillock with a great number of works

8. From Livy:

sum, esse, fuī: be; fuī: I was

pāreō, pārēre, pāruī [2]: obey (what or whom you obey is in the dative case)

lēgō, legere, lēgī [3]: read

Aemiliō dictātōre, tot cēnsōrēs fuērunt, nōbilissimī fortissimīque virī, nēmō eōrum duodecim tabulās lēgit? nēmō id iūs esse, quod postrēmō populus iussisset, sciit? immō vērō omnēs scīvērunt et ideō Aemiliae potius legī pāruērunt quam illī antīquae.

Since Mamercus Aemilius was Dictator, and there have been all those censors since, men of the highest rank and strength of character, not one of them read the Twelve Tables, not one of them knew that the last order of the people is the law for the time being? Of course they all knew it, and for that reason they preferred to obey [= they instead obeyed] the Aemilian Law rather than that older one

9. An extract from Poenulus (the Little Carthaginian) by Plautus

videō, vidēre, vīdī [2]: see

accipiō, accipere, accēpī [3-iō]: receive

sciō, scīre, scīvī [4]: know

AGORASTOCELĒS: Vīdistis, lēnō cum aurum accēpit? │ Did you see it, when the Procurer received the money?

ADVOCĀTĪ: Vīdimus. │ We saw it.

Agor: Eum vōs meum esse servum scītis? │ You know that he is my slave?

Adv: Scīvimus. │ We knew it.

Agor: Rem adversus populī saepe legēs? │ That it is a thing against the reiterated laws of the people?

Adv: Scīvimus. │ We knew it.

28.05.24: Level 1; Ora Maritima [2](8); ways of learning [iii]

Three in one:

Ex fenestrā meā [ablative singular] │ lūnam [accusative singular] │ et stellās [accusative plural] spectō.

From / out of my window │ I look at │ the moon │ and the stars.

28.05.24: Level 1; Ora Maritima [2](7); ways of learning [ii]

Seeing how the cases are working together in sentences is crucial otherwise the words look random on a page.

When you look at them all – deliberately – put in bold, it seems intimidating, but four out of the five plural case endings for the first declension are in those texts.

____________________

Fēriae nunc sunt. Inter fēriās in villā maritimā habitō. Ō beātās fēriās! In arēnā ōrae maritimae sunt ancorae et catēnae. Nam incolae ōrae maritimae sunt nautae. Magna est audācia nautārum: procellās nōn formīdant. Nautās amō, ut nautae mē amant. Cum nautīs interdum in scaphīs nāvigō.

Ex fenestrīs vīllae undās spectās. Undās caeruleās amō. Quam magnae sunt, quam perlūcidae! Post cēnam lūnam et stēllās ex fenestrā meā spectō. Prope vīllam est silva, ubi cum amitā meā saepe ambulō. 

Quantopere nōs silva dēlectat! Ō cōpiam plantārum et herbārum! Ō cōpiam bācārum! Nōn sōlum nautae sed etiam agricolae circum habitant. Casae agricolārum parvae sunt. Nautae casās albās habitant. Amita mea casās agricolārum et nautārum saepe vīsitat.

____________________

Image #1: Many words in bold – but only four colours.

Image #2: Take a second look. What you need to know at this stage: four endings. For me, I took one example of each so that each ending can be seen in context.

[1] Nominative plural:

Agricolae circum habitant │ Farmers live all around.

[2] Accusative plural:

Procellās nōn formīdant │ They do not fear the storms.

Inter fēriās │ during the holidays

[3] Genitive plural:

Magna est audācia ¦ nautārum │ Great is the bravery ¦ of the sailors.

[4] Ablative plural:

Ex fenestrīs │ from / out of the windows

And once you become confident in the endings and how the cases are used, you can see them working together in the same sentence.

Three in one:

Ex fenestrīs [ablative plural]│vīllae [genitive singular]│undās [accusative plural] spectās.

From the windows │of the house │you look at │the waves. 

28.05.24: Level 1; 10 at a time; places [2]

27.05.24: level 2; perfect tense [8]; 2nd and 4th conjugation (2)

appāreō, appārēre, appāruī [2]: appear

doceō, docēre, docuī [2]: teach

habeō, habēre, habuī [2]: have

moneō, monēre, monuī [2]: warn

videō, vidēre, vīdī [2]: see

____________________

audiō, audīre, audīvī [4]: hear

mūniō, mūnīre, mūnīvī [4]: fortify

sciō, scīre, scīvī [4]: know

sepeliō, sepelīre, sepelīvī [4]: bury

aperiō, aperīrī, aperuī [4]: open

veniō, venīre, vēnī [4]: come

inveniō, invenīre, invēnī [4]: find

There were a few posts recently about the way in which Latin – most often through French – was brought into the English language.

[i] habeō, habēre, habuī [2]: have; that is not from Latin. Engl. ‘have’ is from Old English habban, which can trace its Germanic ancestry back to Indo-European, which is also the original source of the Latin verb.

[ii] Apart from habeō, every one of those verbs above appears in English.

The most important first step is to recognise meaning. Below are English words related to those verbs:

1. What part of a camera is the aperture?
2. An inventor might … a solution to a problem.
3. What does an advent calendar tell you?
4. What is made in a munitions factory?
5. What is the function of [i] audio equipment and [ii] video equipment?
6. A dead body may be placed in a sepulchre.
7. The word science is usually associated with, for example, Physics or Chemistry, but the original meaning of science had a far wider meaning.
8. The word doctor now is most often associated with medicine, but, in Ancient Rome, doctōrēs were not doctors. What job did they do?

Even just a few letters can ‘trigger’ recognition: admonish i.e. caution; warn (moneō)

Verbs are the cornerstone of a sentence; you may not know every word in a Latin sentence but go for the verbs first. In the image match the verbs with their meanings.

• (Apollo) warned
• Apollo came
• Each of them gave [=had] a speech.
• He opened
• He taught (me)
• I buried
• I found
• I knew
• I saw
• Surely you’ve heard?
• The king heard
• They appeared
• They found
• They warned
• We all came
• We fortified
• We saw

27.05.24: Level 1; Ora Maritima [2](6); ways of learning [i]

When it comes to learning the key components of Latin, there are two questions:

[i] Where do you start?

[ii] How do you learn them?

Where do you start? The grammar books and textbooks will prioritise, and they almost always prioritise with the first declension of nouns and the first conjugation of verbs. The little passages so far have done almost all of it.

The grammar books will give you the “tables” and, of course, you need them. But how you approach them can vary. Some people, for example, will recite them, some use flash cards, some write the endings out again and again. It doesn’t matter but I wanted to share how I did it. I used this book and I learned them in the context of phrases and short sentences all of which came from these texts. That way, not only did I learn the endings, I learned the basic functions of the cases.

____________________

1. Quam bella est ōra maritima! Nōn procul ab ōrā maritimā est vīlla. In vīllā amita mea habitat; et ego cum amitā meā nunc habitō. Ante iānuam vīllae est ārea; in āreā est castanea, ubi luscinia interdum cantat. Sub umbrā castaneae ancilla interdum cēnam parat. Amō ōram maritimam; amō vīllam bellam.

____________________

First declension: nouns ending in -a; almost all of them are feminine

[1] Nominative singular: the subject of the sentence

The first sentence in the book …

• Quam bella est ōra maritima! │ How beautiful is the sea-shore!

[2] Accusative singular: [i] the direct object of the sentence [ii] with certain prepositions

• [i] Amō ōram maritimam │ I love the sea-shore,
• [ii] Ante ianuam │ before [in front of] the door

[3] Genitive singular: of

• sub umbrā ¦ castaneae │beneath the shade ¦ of a chestnut tree

[4] Ablative singular: with certain prepositions and this little text gives four of the main ones

• Nōn procul ab ōrā maritimā │not far from the coast
• Cum amitā meā nunc habitō │I now live with my aunt
• In villā amita mea habitat │ My aunt lives in the house
• Sub umbrā │ beneath the shade

The two images show four out of the five singular case endings for this declension. I like the first one because it was created round about the time the author was there.