Latin

[Kobito-sensei]

In addition to being an English teacher, I am also able to teach Latin. I got a 247 out of 300 on my Michigan Test for Teacher Certification in the Latin subject area (220 is the pass grade---and let me tell you, its a difficult test), which is my minor. So far, I haven't had a chance to do anything but observe a real high-school level Latin class, since there are so few schools that have programs, but I am still fairly confident in my abilities. So, ask away!

Also, if you decide to use this time for chatting with your friends or trying to text someone while you think I'm not looking, I won't hesitate to send you to the Student Responsibility Center. Don't think I won't do it! I will! I'm crazy like like that!

[Shoddragon]

"May I touch your titties", translated into latin please. seriously. Trying to learn how to say it in many different languages. don't ask me why.

[E∂ward]

Are you trying to be funny?!

[Kobito-sensei]

Oh! To the SRC with you!

But if you want to read rather adult Latin, you should try Catullus. Your phrase, frankly, lies outside my area of expertise.

[E∂ward]

You better be talking to Shoddragon, right?! :pek

[Kobito-sensei]

Oh, yes. Sorry.

Well, why don't I do a little introduction to certain things about Latin. The thing that separates Latin (and Ancient Greek and Old English as well) from modern languages is that it is highly inflected. An inflection is the part of the word that shows its relationship to the other words in the sentence, and is usually marked by a case ending (such as -us, um, or -a"). In addition, inflection is also determined by the number (singular or plural) and gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter) of the word. There are still many inflections in the Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, etc.), but nowhere near as many as there are in Latin, in which every word except a preposition is inflected in one way or another.

In English, we have substituted word order for inflection to illustrate meaning. Consider, for example, the sentence

The girl holds the rose.

makes sense to us because it follows the Subject-Verb-Object order inherent in modern English. This is to say that, in an English sentence, we know which noun is the subject (the actor) because it comes before the verb and which noun is the object (the thing acted upon) because it comes after the verb. Because of this, a statement with the same words in a different order means another thing entirely:

The rose holds the girl.

In this case, the rose is the subject (actor) and the girl is the object (thing acted upon), which gives us this somewhat absurd meaning. However, in Latin, this is not the case. These sentences, although their word order is different, have exactly the same meaning:

Puella tenet rosam. (The girl holds the rose)
Rosam tenet puella. (The girl holds the rose)

In this instance, the case ending -a (nominative feminine singular) indicates that the noun "puella" is the subject of the sentence, whereas the case ending -am (accusative feminine singular) indicates that "rosam" is the object of the sentence. In order to make the absurd sentence we indicated before, we have to switch the case endings instead of the word order, like so:

Rosa tenet puellam. (The rose holds the girl)
Puellam tenet Rosa. (The rose holds the girl)

All this simply goes to show that, in Latin, word order is not (usually) related to meaning (it sometimes is, but those are subtler nuances that you can't grasp without a year or two of study under your belt). We could rearrange the order even more and still get our original sense:

Tenet puella rosam. (The girl holds the rose)
Tenet rosam puella. (The girl hold the rose)
Puella rosam tenet. (The girl holds the rose)
Rosam puella tenet. (The girl holds the rose)

Basically, a Latin speaker could do what he or she liked with the word order and still be understood. True, there were certain conventions of order, but these were stylistic instead of meaning-based. For example, while someone writing a treatise on medicinal herbs would probably used a standard, prosy word order, a poet could do whatever he liked with word order, and really had to in order to make his poems fit into classical meters and sound generally very pretty.

Well, enough for today. I'll continue introducing inflections next class.

[AmatorPlatonisCatullique]

I'll be happy to answer questions and/or take some of the explanatory work off the OP's back if he doesn't object; I'm currently reading for my Classics degree, so I'm pretty much steeped in this stuff night and day.

Also, I second the recommendation of Catullus for dirty Latin. Martial and Ovid are gold mines as well.

[Back-side Attack]

the magic of Catullus 16

Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,
Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi,
qui me ex versiculis meis putastis,
quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum.
Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est;
qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem,
si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici,
et quod pruriat incitare possunt,
non dico pueris, sed his pilosis
qui duros nequeunt movere lumbos.
Vos, quod milia multa basiorum
legistis, male me marem putatis?
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo.

Btw what makes latin hard is poetry where poets make up words to fit in meter and your subject is modified by a verb five lines below it....

[.44]

"May I touch your titties", translated into latin please. seriously. Trying to learn how to say it in many different languages. don't ask me why.

tangam tuas papillas?

:wink

[Blackpretzel]

You has a life outside NF? :argh

[Back-side Attack]

A life outside of NF is like a girl on the internet; it just doesn't exist.

[AmatorPlatonisCatullique]

the magic of Catullus 16

Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,
Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi,
qui me ex versiculis meis putastis,
quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum.
Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est;
qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem,
si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici,
et quod pruriat incitare possunt,
non dico pueris, sed his pilosis
qui duros nequeunt movere lumbos.
Vos, quod milia multa basiorum
legistis, male me marem putatis?
Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo.

Btw what makes latin hard is poetry where poets make up words to fit in meter and your subject is modified by a verb five lines below it....

Ah, Catullus. That example is, of course, one of his most vulgar and hilarious, but I find that he can also be heartbreaking. Poem 70, for example:

Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle
quam mihi, non si se Iupiter ipse petat.
dicit: sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti,
in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.

[Evangeline]

Wow, I'm glad to see Latin here at NF.

I've taken Latin in high school, and got a 5 on the AP test. I'll probably continue taking Latin in collage.

I always liked prose better than poetry, Catullus never stuck to me like Cicero did, and I didn't like Ovid or Virgil.

[Back-side Attack]

Anyone here ever play Certamen?

[.44]

Wow, I'm glad to see Latin here at NF.

I've taken Latin in high school, and got a 5 on the AP test. I'll probably continue taking Latin in collage.

I always liked prose better than poetry, Catullus never stuck to me like Cicero did, and I didn't like Ovid or Virgil.

I recommend taking Apuleius in college if you can. He writes in a poetic prose style, so you should like it. Also, he's pretty clever and funny at times. The difficulty isn't really much different than Catullus/Ovid/Vergil either.

Anyone here ever play Certamen?

I played on your team :wink
(and I'm better)

[KunoichiLouis]

I had latin last year, and to tell you the truth, I really blew it up..
so I could'nt take it again this year.

Marcus et lucius in forum ambulat
(even this sentece could be wrong. I don't remember all the grammar)

[.44]

I had latin last year, and to tell you the truth, I really blew it up..
so I could'nt take it again this year.

Marcus et lucius in forum ambulat
(even this sentece could be wrong. I don't remember all the grammar)

You probably meant:
Marcus et Lucius in foro ambulant
(Marcus and Lucius walk in the forum)

But what you said, can still work if read poetically:
(Marcus walks into the forum, and Lucius walks into the forum)

[Back-side Attack]

I played on your team :wink
(and I'm better)
We weren't the same subject :(

[.44]

We weren't the same subject :(

Not my fault you only had one subject :LOS

[Back-side Attack]

Not my fault you only had one subject :LOS

I blame everything on kirin

[Fongie]

Btw what makes latin hard is poetry where poets make up words to fit in meter and your subject is modified by a verb five lines below it....

I second that 10000 times
Damn poets think they can do whatever to the language. :notrust

[Zetta]

I'm a 6th year latin student.

Currently we're doing... err,what's his face... Tacitus. His tekst on Nero killing Britannicus. Lovely piece,though his meter pisses me off.


Also,personally, I have a dislike for Catullus. We were forced to translate a piece of his where the first verses are about all the thousands of kisses he'd send to his love. Not that bad per se,but far too difficult for a second year latin student I daresay.


Well, enough for today. I'll continue introducing inflections next class.
I don't disagree with what you say,nor is it my place to correct a magister while I am still a mere discipulus but don't most sentences (especially the long ones) try to put the verb near the end? That's what I've noticed during my six years. Usually the verb is somewhere in the back and unless you find which word it is,you'll fail at translating the sentence.


Personally,I'm more one for proza rather than poetica. Cicero is just too epic.

Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quamdiu etiam furor iste tuus nos1eludet? Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia? Hihilne te nocturnum praesidium Palati, nihil urbis vigiliae, nihil timor populi, nihil concursus bonorum omnium, nihil hic munitissimus habendi senatus locus, nihil horum ora voltusque moverunt? Patere tua consilia non sentis, constrictam iam horum omnium scientia teneri coniurationem tuam non vides? Quid proxima, quid superiore nocte egeris, ubi fueris, quos convocaveris, quid consili ceperis quem nostrum ignorare arbitraris?

Cicero pretty much just handed Catilina his ass on a silver platter. Loved it.

[Kobito-sensei]

Yes, it's true that the verb is often found at the end of the sentence...but this is a matter of style, not meaning, so prose writers, like you say you're familiar with, will often do that. But in poetry, which is more of my thing, keeping the meter is the writers chief concern, so they have to fiddle with prose rhythms.

Ahem...so, inflections. In Latin, just about every word (except participles and some other exceptions) has an inflection that shows how in fits syntactically into the sentence. Today, we'll just cover noun inflections.

There are five noun inflective cases---every noun written in Latin is in one of them. These are the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative cases.

Nominative
The subject case; the "doer" or "actor" in any sentence; for example, in the sentence "Puella rosam habet" ("The girl has a rose"), the word "puella" is in the nominative case.

Genitive
The possessive case (though not exactly); has the basic meaning "of x" or "belonging to x"---for example, in the phrase "rosa pueri" ("the rose of the boy" or "the boy's rose"), the word "pueri" is in the genitive case.

Dative
The "receiving" case, in a way; has the basic meaning of "to/for x"; for example, in the phrase "rosa puellae" ("a rose for the girl"), the word "puella" is in the dative case. The dative is a bit more tricky than this, but it's a good way to approach it at the beginning.

Accusative
The object case; the thing acted upon in the sentence; "Puella rosam habet" ("The girl has a rose"), the word "rosam" is in the nominative case

Ablative
This is the trickiest case of all; it has vague idea of "with (or) by (or) from x", though this is a huge simplification. As an example, in the phrase "puella rosā" ("a girl with a rose"), the word "rosā" is in the ablative tense.

In the next lesson, I'll give you a basic rundown of the "declensions".

[Suzuku]

Really old thread, but I'm going to revive it anyway. I'm a first year Latin student and we're currently going into Relative Clauses and Pronouns. I'm having a bit of trouble translating them. Also, I'm having a problem with declining third declension and third declension i-stem nouns and adjectives. Help anyone?

[Salvete]

If you post your questions here, I could probably help...

[Mider T]

Can I get this translated? "Time to have some sexy fun"

[.44]

Can I get this translated? "Time to have some sexy fun"

tempus est habendi ludos carnales. :jk

"It is time for (literally: of) having bodily games."

That's the best I can do.

[Cinna]

Need some help, can someone translaze this for me:

"Heart in a cage"

Thanks in advance