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Post by Tara on Jul 12, 2005 9:37:35 GMT -5
I call this the Latin Pool because this can be a thread where we can put together anything we know about the Latin language. Who wants to go first?
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Post by dianaholberg on Jul 12, 2005 11:56:02 GMT -5
I have been learning the Lord's Prayer in Latin for the past couple of weeks:
Pater noster, qui es in caelis, Our Father, Who art in Heaven
Sanctificetur nomen tuum Hallowed be Thy name
Adveniat regnum tuum Thy kingdom come
Fiat voluntas tua Thy will be done
Sicut in caelo et in terra On earth as it is in Heaven
Panem nostrum cottidianum... da nobis hodie Give us this day our daily bread
Et dimmite nobis debita nostra and forgive us our trespasses
Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris as we forgive those who trespass against us
Et ne nos inducas in tentationem and lead us not into temptation
Sed libera nos a malo... Amen but deliver us from evil. Amen.
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Post by littlepea on Jul 12, 2005 13:45:58 GMT -5
i know a lot about latin as i did 6 years of it in school and got an Advanced Higher A (which is a scottish qualfication roughly equal to an english A-level, if you happen to be more familiar with the english qualifications). i don't know much vocabulary, however, because we were always allowed to use latin dictionaries for translations. the A-level exam didn't let you use dictionaries but the translations were much much simpler - which way's better? who knows, but i know a lot of latin anyway if anyone wants anything explained then i could probably help out
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Post by dianaholberg on Jul 12, 2005 20:05:18 GMT -5
Well, okay I have a question. I know that word order doesn't mean much (if anything) in Latin, but word endings mean a lot.
So how do I know when nos means "we" and when it means "us"?
Like, in the prayer, in the line Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris, they translate nos as "we" but everywhere else it is "us"... ?
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Post by littlepea on Jul 12, 2005 22:25:59 GMT -5
it's to do with what case the noun is. the personal pronoun nos declines like this: nominative: nosaccusative: nosgenative: nostridative: nobisablative: nobisnominative case means it's the subject of the clause, accusative means it's the direct object. so basically nos can be the subject (we) or the direct object (us) depending on the context. that's the answer to your question, but you can read on if you're interested ... sometimes there are different pronunciations: it may be (though i'm just guessing in this case) that the nominative case is pronounced "noss" whereas the accusative case is pronounced more like "nose", but you could only tell if it was spoken (eg. by a priest) or if it was in poetry (ie. it's obvious which syllable is meant to be emphasised).* you may then ask why they use nobis in " Et dimmite nobis debita nostra" ... that's because some verbs are special and make the direct object take the dative case. in this case i would guess that that verb (shouldn't it be dimitte?)comes from the verb mitto which means "to send" - if you send someone something, the something is the direct object and takes the accusative case, the someone is the indirect object and takes the dative case. hence: Forgive ( dimitte - imperative) us ( nobis - dative) our debts ( debita nostra - accusative plural). in the case of debita nostra, that nostra isn't part of the pronoun nos, it's just an adjective meaning "our" ... i had to look up all that vocabulary because it's been a few years since i studied latin properly and even then my vocabulary was relatively poor, but i still know what i'm talking about PS. genative cases of personal pronouns are quite rare, usually the adjective meaning "your", "our", "his" is used instead of the genative case. it's like saying "my ball" rather than "the ball of me" ... some verbs are extra special and make the object take the genative case * an example is the noun villa (or any 1st decelension noun in fact). the nominative and ablative cases are both villa but the a at the end of the nominative case is like the a in "h at", while the one at the end of the ablative case is like the a in "h alve" ... see what i mean? it's relavent in poetry because they often wrote in specific meters (eg. virgil's Aeneid was in dactylic hexameter - and Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter). i've strayed a little from the question you asked, but hey, i can't help it, i like this sort of stuff
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Post by dianaholberg on Jul 13, 2005 6:55:40 GMT -5
so basically nos can be the subject (we) or the direct object (us) depending on the context. that's the answer to your question, but you can read on if you're interested ... Yeah, that's what I figured. Unfortunately it will be awhile before I can glean anything from context in Latin. Yes, it should be. I was typing from memory. I corrected most of my mistakes but somehow missed that one. What you wrote about some verbs taking the dative reminds me of English passive verbs and their objects... you know, "It is moving me" vs. "It is I moving". Nothing wrong with using references! Apparently not in prayers! Yeah... I know how that goes ;D
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Post by littlepea on Jul 13, 2005 7:43:09 GMT -5
actually there isn't any use of the genetive in there, it's all the adjective noster (in english it would be the possessive pronoun "our")
Pater noster - Our Father Panem nostrum cottidianum - our daily bread debita nostra - our debts (our trespasses) debitoribus nostris - our debtors (those who trespass against us)
the ending for noster changes because adjectives change their endings depending on what the sexuality (i'm sure there's a different word in grammar for that...) and case of the noun it describes.
Pater noster - masculine nominative Panem nostrum cottidianum - masculine accusative debita nostra - neuter accusative plural debitoribus nostris - masculine dative plural
if you look up an adjective in a latin dictionary it should be listed something like: bonus -a -um or in this case noster -tra -trum to show the stems for the masculine (noster), feminine (nostra) and neuter (nostrum) parts of the adjective
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Post by littlepea on Jul 13, 2005 7:57:18 GMT -5
although you didn't ask for it, here's the Lord's Prayer in Greek: Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου· ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου· γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς· τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον· καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφελήματα ἡμῶν, ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφίεμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν· καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν, ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ. [Ὅτι σοῦ ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία καὶ ἡ δύναμις καὶ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας·] ἀμήν. i did some classical greek in school (for that i got a Higher A ... roughly equivalent to an english AS-level) and if you gave me a while i could probably translate that too, but this is the Latin pool isn't it these lines are interesting, however: καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφελήματα ἡμῶν, ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφίεμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν· these mean "and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors". unlike latin which uses the adjective noster, greek uses the genetive part of the personal pronoun ἡμῶν ("hémón")
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Post by dianaholberg on Jul 13, 2005 11:36:00 GMT -5
I don't have the right font for the Greek. Some of it shows up as Greek, but about half of it shows up as boxes. See I was thinking the Latin was like the Greek and that the nostris in those lines was genative... it's not? I see where you're going with this, and it comes back to the root of our differences. The subtleties are there for a reason, whether you like the idea or not.
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Post by littlepea on Jul 13, 2005 19:54:06 GMT -5
if i was translating it quickly i wouldn't bother going into such detail, i'd just look at the sentence, see what makes sense and then figure out if there's any reason why it can't be translated like that ... but then again i can get away with thinking like that because i've done 6 years of latin and all the basics are already there. whether nostris etc is genative or an adjective probably wouldn't cross my mind because they both mean the same (and in more complex sentences the endings of some words become practically unrecognisable anyway) ... but i made the effort since i was explaining it to someone else and if i got it wrong it would cause too much confusion.
at the end of the day, the common roman citizen would make mistakes all over the place anyway just like people today make loads of mistakes with their english (like when people say "who" instead of "whom", or end the sentence with a preposition etc.).
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Post by littlepea on Jul 14, 2005 7:46:12 GMT -5
oh yeah, some more info on your original question, seeing as i don't think i answered it fully (instead i just rambled on about other interesting stuff which was completely unrelated). Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris - you can tell that nos is the subject here because of the verb dimittimus. the -mus ending means that the subject is the 1st person singular (ie. we). i think it would be possible to omit "nos" completely from this sentence, but i guess it's put there for emphasis or stylistic reasons. Sed libera nos a malo... Amen - in this clause the verb ( libera) is an imperative, which means that there is no subject (well, it's God, but the subject isn't part of the clause) and the only way that nos can fit in is if it's in the accusative case (ie. it's the object, "us"). the same goes for Et ne nos inducas in tentationem as well. that's all i meant by saying that it depends on the context
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Post by dianaholberg on Jul 16, 2005 8:18:58 GMT -5
How do you distinguish an imperative from verbs with subjects present? I notice the two you mention end in -a and -as... do they always?
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Post by littlepea on Jul 17, 2005 8:42:48 GMT -5
this time it's to do with the stem of the verb ... the first example of an imperative in the lord's prayer is: Panem nostrum cottidianum... da nobis hodie - give us (da nobis - imperative followed by dative) this day (hodie - ablative) our daily bread (panem nostrum cottidianum - accusative followed by two adjectives).
da comes from the verb do, which if you look up in a dictionary will give you the following information: do dare dedi datum (1) followed by a definition.
do is the first person singular, present tense of the verb, which means "i give" in this case. dare is the infinitive which means "to give". dedi is the first person singular, perfect tense (past tense, though there is also the imperfect tense) of the verb which means "i gave". datum is the supine of the verb which is used for certain participles of the verb (including the future perfect tense etc.). it's also a good indication of where we get english words that come from latin, eg. "data", or "dative" even. also if you look up traho you'll find that it means "to drag" and the supine is tractum - from this it's pretty obvious that we get the word "tractor" from this latin word, though you wouldn't necessarily have thought so before you saw the supine. supines almost always end in -tum or -sum. the (1) means that it's a 1st conjugation verb.
the imperative is taken from the infinative except you take the -re ending away (almost all infinitives end in -re) which leaves us with da in this case.
da means "give" if you are ordering (that's what imperative is used for) a singular subject, but if you are ordering a plural subject then you take away the -re ending like before and then add -te. in this case it would give you date (pronounced "da-tay" ... but pronunciation is another subject completely so i won't talk too much about it here).
imperatives won't be found very often in writing unless you're reading a speech which has been recorded (like the lord's prayer) or if you are reading an account of something that happened and it contains some quotations.
an imperative is only an imperative if it's in that form, it's not necessarily an imperative just because you can't see the subject anywhere in the clause. do still means "i give" even if you can't see the word ego anywhere (ego means "I", by the way, and it's really only used for emphasis or in poetry with verbs).
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Post by dianaholberg on Jul 20, 2005 6:47:19 GMT -5
Okay, I had to read that a few times, but I get it.
I can see how the vocabulary could be a killer. After all, you can't look at da and know it comes from do or dare.
When I learned French, everything was taught relative to the infinitive... but in Latin you look at the "stem"? I wonder why they are approached differently...
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Post by littlepea on Jul 20, 2005 8:29:05 GMT -5
yeah, it's a bit strange, and it's the same in greek. if you look up verbs in latin or greek dictionaries they are always listed under the 1st person singular, present tense of the verb with the other parts of the verb after it. so you would find the verb "to give" under do (pronounced "d'oh", like Homer Simpson ) and not dare (pronounced "dah-ray"). it's the same sort of thing in greek too.
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