Learn Latin!

[Anachronist]

Some names that I will use from the book:

Caecilius: a banker, the father of the family.
Metella: the mother.
Quintus: the son
Clemens: the slave
Grumio: the kook.
Cerberus: the dog (cerberus was the dog in the underworld)

Here are some basic sentences:
Caecilius pater est. (Caecilius is a name, and the verb goes last, so this reads Caecilius is a father.)
Metella mater est.
Quintus filius est.
Clemens servus est.
Grumio coquus est.
Cerberus canis est.

Caecilius in tablino est. (Caecilius is in the study.)
Metella in atrio est.
Quintus in triclinio est.
pater in tablino scribit. (The father is writing in the study.)
mater in atrio sedet.
filius in triclinio bibit.

im using the same book in latin I

[arvid_eriksson]

what does "ie jesu domine, donna eis requiem" mean

it's heard in the movie: monthy python and the holy grail

[eran]

Is it important to learn Latin?
Why do you learn it?

[Copperknickers II]

Is it important to learn Latin?
Why do you learn it?

I learn it because I'm good at it and I enjoy it, it gives me a good base for studying classics (which has one of the highest employabilities of any university subject), it helps with languages (English especially) and pretty much every European of note in the past 2000 years has known Latin, from Julius Caesar to William Wallace to Nicolaus Copernicus to Frank Lampard have studied it.

[eran]

Is Latin like a modern language or strange like old English for example or any language from 2000 years ago?

I learn it because I'm good at it and I enjoy it, it gives me a good base for studying classics (which has one of the highest employabilities of any university subject), it helps with languages (English especially) and pretty much every European of note in the past 2000 years has known Latin, from Julius Caesar to William Wallace to Nicolaus Copernicus to Frank Lampard have studied it.

What is "classics"?

[Copperknickers II]

Is Latin like a modern language or strange like old English for example or any language from 2000 years ago?

Surely you know what Latin is? It was the language of the Roman empire, it is the language from which all the Romance languages are descended plus its had a big influence on most of the Germanic and Celtic ones too. Also its the official language of the Roman Catholic church, so it's still spoken in Vatican City as a lingua franca.

What is "classics"?

The study of the Classical Period, look it up.

[DAVIDE]

Is it important to learn Latin?
Why do you learn it?

You can deal with Razinger basically

[Mordhak]

Congratulations on your first post here, Gulielmus, and welcome to our forums!

Thanks for refreshing my memory concerning the -ere verbs... it's been 3 years since I had to quit latin class (too few pupils were interested :angry ).

[Zuwxiv]

This will be hard, please just try to work through it!!!

Some more info about verbs:

Amo: love

Often 4 forms of verbs are written, amo is: amo, amare, amavi, amatus... Forget the second two, the first one means "I love" and the second is "to love".

You add endings onto the verb to change the subject... as in I love, You love, He loves (see, it changes in english too), we love, You (plural, you all) love, they love.

Now here are the endings:

amo
amas
amat

amamus
amatis
amant

The endings are : O, S, T, MUS, TIS, NT

REMEMBER THOSE! Sometimes O is M, but for the most part: O (M), S, T, MUS, TIS, NT. Also, since a verb has a subject in it, a verb can be a sentence on its own. "amo" is a complete sentence. But, if the subject wants to be named, the verb just states the kind of person. so in you want to say Metella is the mother, you say "metella est mater", even though that means "Metella she is the mother) (the redundant she)

amo (I love)
amas (you love)
amat (he loves / she loves / it loves)

amamus (we love)
amatis (you all love)
amant (they love)

Don't quit! This is hard to get used to but it will become much easier!

But why does it go from amo to amam? Where do we get that -a? It is from the second principle part, amo, amare. You drop the -re to get the stem, and then add the rest of the leters. Try another word, Do, dare: to give.

Do
das
dat

damus
datis
dant

And the only really weird verb is the verb "to be." It is weird in english, too...

I am
You are
he/she/it is
we are
you all are
they are

and then there is will be, was, were, ect... Weird in english. At least the latin follows the O (M) S T MUS TIS NT

sum: I am
es: you are
est: he/she/it is
sumus: we are
estis: you all are
sunt: they are

Don't quit! This is hard to get used to but it will become much easier!

The nouns also have forms.

Nominative: subject "___"
Genative: possession, "of ___"
Dative: indirect object, "to ___" or "for ___"
Accusative: direct object "___"
Ablative: lots of uses, mostly with the phrases "by/with/from ______"
Vocative: very rare, don't worry. Same as nominative. "O ___", so if you want to say "O gate, why will you not open?", but who says that?

So just remember the first 5, abbreviated: Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc, Abl. Remember there are plurals, too.

Don't quit! This is hard to get used to but it will become much easier!

If you can't figure out which is which, think about the sentence "

I kicked the ball from the ground to the house of the mother."

I is the subject, nominative.
The house belongs "to the mother", so mother is genative.
The house indirectly recieved the action as the ball was kicked "to" the house. Dative.
The ball recieved the action of kicking. Accusative.
"From the ground" would require the ablative.

It sounds confusing, but think abuot it for a while. Get familiar with the terms. Ask questions!

And nihil is the latin word meaning nothing. From that word we got nihilists, who believed everything was useless and nothing was worth doing... So Nihil being optimistic about something would be an oxymoron sort of thing, kind of redundant. Latin joke. :p

[sabaku_no_gaara]

will you continue this thread? i added it to my favourites. i never knew a word in latin till i visited TWC

[Cleisthenes]

Originally posted by sabaku_no_gaara@Apr 24 2005, 08:59 AM
will you continue this thread? i added it to my favourites. i never knew a word in latin till i visited TWC

Knock yourself out. There is no need to ask here, when a great dictionary exists online.

[mib]

What is the accurate pronounciation of 'dulce', dulse or dulke? While we're on it, what is the accurate pronounciation of 'dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'?

[ParthianWarrior]

Speaking of Latin Class, Today in my class the person behind was trying to translate the sentences in our assingment, But he was butchering the language unmercifully, For example he said "The Boy and the Man Came from the Water" when the sentence meant something else. I almost bursted out in laughter.

[Intru]

Words should mien the same in all languages Dulce is candy in spanish

[Milteades]

"dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'?

It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.

Today in my class the person behind was trying to translate the sentences in our assingment, But he was butchering the language unmercifully, For example he said "The Boy and the Man Came from the Water" when the sentence meant something else. I almost bursted out in laughter.

Romanes eunt domus!


These people called Romanes, they go to the house?

[mib]

Originally posted by Milteades@Apr 26 2005, 11:24 PM
It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.

I know that! How do you pronounce it!

[Zuwxiv]

Originally posted by mib@Apr 26 2005, 07:11 PM
What is the accurate pronounciation of 'dulce', dulse or dulke? While we're on it, what is the accurate pronounciation of 'dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'?

The "c" only makes a hard sound in latin, so you can think of it as a k. The pronounciation would sound something like "dul-kay" (the e at the end makes an ay sound)

Okay, anyone who is reading this should read my post one page back to understand this.

So, you should know something about the declentions and conjugations... To sum it up, nouns have different forms based on how they are used. Verbs also have different forms, depending on the subject (I, you, he/she/it, we, you (pl), they... 3 singular and 3 plural, remember them).

A verb also has different forms based on the tense... "I love" is amo, while "I loved" is amabam. This will sound really complex if you have'nt learned another language, but it gets to make sense. It is actually pretty easy once you get used to it.

So,
amo---------------I love
amas--------------you love
amat--------------he/she/it loves

amamus----------we love
amatis------------you (plural, you all) love
amant------------they love

The endings are: O (sometimes M); S; T; MUS; TIS; NT.
Commit that to memory: O m S T MUS TIS NT

And the "a" from amo to amas is from the second principle part of the verb, amo: to love.

Amo, amare, amavi, amatus

(most verbs have 4, as far as right now is concerned, all verbs have 4 parts)

Now for some tenses.

The first word, in this case amo, is the first person singular present form.
-------------------Singular----------Plural------
First person: ---------I---------------we-------
Second person: ----you-------------you all---
Third person:----- He/She/It--------they----

So it is "I love", because love is in the present tense.

The second part is "to (verb)" so in this case amare means "to love"

If you drop the -re at the end you get your stem, you add all the endings onto that stem, thus amo goes to amas, amat, ect.

The third part is the first person singular perfect tense. Perfect is -ed, so verbs like "climbed" "wasted" and "farted" are perfect, and there are some different ones, like "threw" (I hurled the ball; I threw the ball, same tense). The present forms of those verbs would be "climb" "waste" "fart" and "throw".

So amavi means "I loved"

And forget about the fourth one, that can wait for a long time. A very, very long time. So forget it exists. Just remember the first three.

And for a first conjugation verb, the pattern is -o, -are, -avi. Thats how you know a verb is what is called "first declension"; just a way to seperate verbs from endings. You see, not all verbs have the exact same types of endings, some have small differences. For the most part, verbs are almost exactly similar. Or at least the pattern is similar. But while "amo" goes "amo, amare, amavi" another verb might go "moneo, monere, monui, monitus" You can see the "tus" ending on the fourth is the same, and the "re", and the "i", and the "o". Pretty much the same thing. Just slightly different stem.

So the endings for respective tenses:

Present: happening right now, love, throw, run
-------------------Singular----------Plural------
First person: --------O (m)----------MUS-------
Second person: ----S---------------TIS---
Third person:----- --T---------------NT----

Imperfect: past tense, was loving, was throwing, was running
-------------------Singular----------Plural------
First person: --------BAM----------BAMUS-------
Second person: ----BAS-----------BATIS-----
Third person:----- --BAT-----------BANT------ (Just add a "ba" at the beginning"

Future: future tense, will love, will throw, will run
-------------------Singular----------Plural------
First person: --------BO----------BIMUS-------
Second person: ----BIS----------BITIS---
Third person:----- --BIT----------BUNT----

So,

amabimus: We will love
amabat: He/she/it was loving
amas: you love






Mib: "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"

"dul-kay" "et" "deck-oar-room" "est" "pro" "pat ree ah" "more eee"

I attached a sound clip of me saying it, not high quality but close enough. :p

[Dromikaites]

The "c" only makes a hard sound in latin, so you can think of it as a k. The pronounciation would sound something like "dul-kay" (the e at the end makes an ay sound)

Actually to make the matters even more complicated, there are also linguists who believe that the pronounciation of the Latin words should be like in Italian or Romanian, in which case "dulce" would be pronounced kind of like "doolcheh" by an English speaker. By the way, dulce means sweet also in Romanian (dolce in Italian)

As for the contemporary language closest to Latin well, this is...Romanian even though most people would probably assume it's Italian. Both Romanian and Italian kept most of their words closest to the Latin original while Romanian also preserved a lot of the complicated Latin grammar. In Romanian you can say "I the ball kicked" without sounding Yoda even though most of the people would say "I kicked the ball". The Romanian language was isolated from the Latin/Romance family when all the territories around Romania were settled by non-Latin speakers and this isolation probably caused it to "freeze". Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Rhaeto Rumansh (a Romance language spoken in Switzerland) or Aromanian (a Romance language spoken in the Balkans by the Vlachs) continued to evolve. Another interesting trivia is that the Romanians and the Vlachs are currently the only people which still calls themselves "Romans" (Români = Romanians in Romanian language, Armâni = Vlachs in Aromanian/Vlach language compare it with Romani = Romans in Latin).

[Cleisthenes]

Originally posted by mib@Apr 26 2005, 09:11 PM
What is the accurate pronounciation of 'dulce', dulse or dulke?

dulce: The u is short like oo in good; The ce is like the sound in the beginning of kettle.

It's easier to give the pronunciation of the whole phrase in an attachment. My voice isn't the best for speaking, though.


Clay

(Attachment did not load... Can't upload WAV.)

[Zuwxiv]

Check my attachment above to make sure it is right, I make mistakes. But I'm pretty sure its good. (try compressing your files into RAR, they will upload)

Anyway, if anyone has questions, please post them!