Kevin's Watch

As you may or may not know, one of my hobbies is learning (or trying to learn) new languages. Over the years I have dabbled in Latin, with the result being that my vocabularly is richer than before. However, I am far from fluent in Latin. Nonetheless, I thought it might be fun and enlightening to share a small bit of Latin on a regular basis. Perhaps some of our Latin scholars here on the Watch will come out of the woodwork and weigh in!

This is a thread for all people. . . no prior knowledge of Latin is necessary. And as I said, if you are an expert. . . I may draft you for an expert appearance! Anyhow. . . enjoy!



The first offering:

Amor animi arbitrio sumitur, non ponitur.

We choose to love, we do not choose to cease loving.

(Publilius Syrus)


The bolded line is the Latin phrase. The italic line is the translation of the Latin. The name in parentheses is the author's name, and in the future should include attributions as well.

From my meagre store of Latin, I will share that the Latin word for love is amor.


Okay. . . that is all I have for today. Anyone else have something to add?


~Lyr, hopeful

Well six years of latin at Boston Latin High School and all I remember is:

Omnia Gaulia in tres partes divesa est. (Sp?)

I'll let you do the translation!

I've got a Latin grammar book lying somewhere around the house.

Here's an easy one.

Festina lente

Make haste slowly - a favorite saying of Augustus

When I have a little more time I'll put up a quote from Horace that caught my eye recently while reading a biography of Augustus.

Could we have pronounciation keys with each line, Lyr, or is it pretty phonetic? I'm bad at saying things correctly

(Cool idea, btw!)

Creator wrote:Well six years of latin at Boston Latin High School and all I remember is:

Omnia Gaulia in tres partes divesa est. (Sp?)

I'll let you do the translation!

Er, Creator, sorry, but that should really be:

Gallia omnia divisa est in partes tres...

From Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico. It's the opening sentence, which is translated as: "All of Gaul is divided into three parts..."

Waddley, Latin pronunciation varies a bit from country to country because it's hard to know exactly how the ancient Romans pronounced each word. In Italy, we use more or less the same pronunciation we use for Italian, except for a couple of special rules: for example, "ti" would be pronunced "zi" (I think the closest English equivalent to that pronunciation would be "ZEE"). "Ae" and "oe" are read as "e" (like the "e" of "ever"). This is especially important when using declinations for nouns: for example...

1st Declination (desinence -a, plural -ae)

Nominative (subject): Rosa (singular), Rosae (plural)
Genitive ("of the rose"): Rosae (singular), Rosarum (plural)
Dative ("to the rose"): Rosae (singular), Rosis (plural)
Accusative (object): Rosam (singular), Rosas (plural)
Vocative ("O rose!"): Rosa (singular), Rosae (plural)
Ablative (several different situations): Rosa (singular), Rosis (plural)

Xar is indeed correct. . . and he did well to point out declensions. Personally, I began by learning the verb declensions. I will share what I learned:

Definitions:
A verb expresses an action (e.g. kiss, dress, run) or state (e.g. be, wait).
When you list the parts of the verb (I run, you run, he/she/it runs, we run, you run, they run), you conjugate it.

'I run' is called first person singular (noted as 1s), 'you run' second person singular (2s), 'he/she/it runs' third person singular (3s); 'we run' is called first person plural (1pl), 'you run' second person plural (2pl), 'they run' third person plural (3pl).

The tense of a verb is the time it refers to: I run (present tense), I shall run (future tense), etc.


Now to the real Latin!
Most Latin course start with the present tense of the verb amo, "I love." This type of verb is called first declension. [Note from Lyr: this means that all verbs that are first declension verbs will follow the same pattern, so pay attention! You will need this later!]

1s am-o "I love, I do love, I am loving"

2s am-a-s "you love, you do love, you are loving" (singular)

3s am-a-t "he/she/it loves, he/she/it does love, he/she/it is loving"

1pl am-a-mus "we love, we do love, we are loving"

2pl am-a-tis "you love, you do love, you are loving" (plural)

3pl am-a-nt "they love, they do love, they are loving"


from my Latin book:

Record this in your notebook as follows: am-o 1v [1(st conjugation) v(erb)] ama-re, love. All first conjugation verbs end in -o with infinitive in -are. Record the Latin verb on one line, and the meaning on the line below. There will be more of the Latin verb to insert later on.

Sample notebook entry:

am-o 1v ama-re: love

Back to the book:

The stem am- means "love." The next letter -a- is the key vowel (interestingly, am-o was once am-a-o!). The various endings indicate who is dong the loving [-o =I", -s="you" (s), -t= "he/she/it", -mus= "we", -tis= "you" (pl), -nt= "they"]

Note:
(i) Latin does not need to use "I", "you", etc., as English does.
(ii) each person has three possible meanings e.g. amo "I love, I do love, I am loving."
(iii) the infinitive, amare, is a fixed form: it never changes.

By the way, why "conjugation"? Latin coniugo 1v, to yoke (iug-) together (con-) the various parts of the verb. The phenomenon of changing the endings of a word to express meaning is called "inflection." Latin is a highly inflected language. In addition to verbs, nouns and adjectives also are inflected.

Note that in the (Latin) end is your beginning. We say, "I love"--Latin says love (am-) I (-o). So "watch your ending" is the best advice to give the Latin beginner.


Whew! Still with me? Good! Now I will give you another Latin saying to think over.

Ars longa, vita brevis.
Art is long, life is short.
(Seneca Philosophus, De brevitate vitae)

Aelyria Mireiswen wrote:Declensions

For some reason I always thought the English term was "declination"... Weird

In any case, for those still with us, just as an overview: nouns have five declinations, while verbs have four conjugations (in the Latin courses we take in Italy, verbs are said to have conjugations, not declinations. This is probably because we use the same distinction in Italian).

We probably should define whether we want to use the term "declination" also for verbs, or if we want to use "conjugation" for verbs... just so people don't get confused.

Aelyria Mireiswen wrote: Now to the real Latin!
Most Latin course start with the present tense of the verb amo, "I love." This type of verb is called first declension. [Note from Lyr: this means that all verbs that are first declension verbs will follow the same pattern, so pay attention! You will need this later!]

1s am-o "I love, I do love, I am loving"

2s am-a-s "you love, you do love, you are loving" (singular)

3s am-a-t "he/she/it loves, he/she/it does love, he/she/it is loving"

1pl am-a-mus "we love, we do love, we are loving"

2pl am-a-tis "you love, you do love, you are loving" (plural)

3pl am-a-nt "they love, they do love, they are loving"


from my Latin book:

Record this in your notebook as follows: am-o 1v [1(st conjugation) v(erb)] ama-re, love. All first conjugation verbs end in -o with infinitive in -are. Record the Latin verb on one line, and the meaning on the line below. There will be more of the Latin verb to insert later on.

Sample notebook entry:

am-o 1v ama-re: love

Back to the book:

The stem am- means "love." The next letter -a- is the key vowel (interestingly, am-o was once am-a-o!). The various endings indicate who is dong the loving [-o =I", -s="you" (s), -t= "he/she/it", -mus= "we", -tis= "you" (pl), -nt= "they"]

Note:
(i) Latin does not need to use "I", "you", etc., as English does.
(ii) each person has three possible meanings e.g. amo "I love, I do love, I am loving."
(iii) the infinitive, amare, is a fixed form: it never changes.

Incidentally, Italian follows a very similar conjugation method. So, by learning Latin, you might learn a bit about Italian, as well. To show you the similarities, here is the Italian present tense for the verb "amare" (to love):

1s Io amo - I love
2s Tu ami - You love
3s Egli ama - He/she loves (italian has no neuter gender)
1pl Noi amiamo - We love
2pl Voi amate - You love
3pl Essi amano - They love

See the similarities? By the way, both Latin and Italian can use verbs alongside with "I", "you" and so on, as English does; however, differently from English, most of the times it is enough to just use the verb, since the verb's desinence already conveys information about the person you are talking about (if I say, for example, "Amano?", you don't need me to say "Essi amano?" to know I'm using the third person plural). However, Italian (and Latin, at least as we studied it) use the pronouns "I", "you" etc when writing down the conjugations for grammatical purposes. So, in the example of Italian present tense above, "Io" means "I", "Tu" means "You" (singular), "Egli" means "He" (the feminine is "Essa", "she", but it's not used during conjugations), "Noi" means "we", "Voi" means "You" (plural) and "Essi" means "They".

Aelyria Mireiswen wrote:By the way, why "conjugation"? Latin coniugo 1v, to yoke (iug-) together (con-) the various parts of the verb. The phenomenon of changing the endings of a word to express meaning is called "inflection." Latin is a highly inflected language. In addition to verbs, nouns and adjectives also are inflected.

This is something which Italian heredited from Latin... German also uses declinations and inflections for adjectives, nouns and articles.

Just to mention a difference in Latin courses - in Italy, all Latin courses begin with the first noun declination, and only afterwards do they start with verb conjugations.

Interesting, but not surprising, that verb endings in Latin are so similar to those in Spanish. Present tense endings for infinitives that end in -ar:

I = -o
you (singular informal) = -as
you (singular formal), he/she/it = -a
we = -amos
you (plural informal) = -ais (accent on the "a")
you (plural formal) = -an

Spanish also has verbs that end in -er or -ir, and their endings are a little different, but you get the idea.

(I had to look up the ending for you-plural-informal, as it's not used much in Central and South America so we didn't really learn it. I guess it's more commonly used in Spain.)

I'm told that Czech has only three verb tenses (compared to, oh, 21 or so in Spanish) but their rules for declining nouns are miserably complex. I'm hoping to take Czech next year; I'll keep you posted....

Xar wrote:

Creator wrote:Well six years of latin at Boston Latin High School and all I remember is:

Omnia Gaulia in tres partes divesa est. (Sp?)

I'll let you do the translation!

Er, Creator, sorry, but that should really be:

Gallia omnia divisa est in partes tres...

From Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico. It's the opening sentence, which is translated as: "All of Gaul is divided into three parts..."

...

Where were YOU when I needed someone to do my Latin homework for me?! Or whisper the answers to test questions!!

Creator wrote:

Xar wrote:

Creator wrote:Well six years of latin at Boston Latin High School and all I remember is:

Omnia Gaulia in tres partes divesa est. (Sp?)

I'll let you do the translation!

Er, Creator, sorry, but that should really be:

Gallia omnia divisa est in partes tres...

From Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico. It's the opening sentence, which is translated as: "All of Gaul is divided into three parts..."

...

Where were YOU when I needed someone to do my Latin homework for me?! Or whisper the answers to test questions!!

Not only are there similarities between Italian and Latin (obviously) which make the task of learning Latin easier for us, but those of us who go for a more complete education (old-fashioned high schools rather than technically-oriented ones) receive a 5-year-course in Latin, which includes at least two years of grammar and three of literature. Of course, school being school, most people dislike learning Latin, but I find it a fascinating language, and it is a birthright of all Italians, after all

As we should have already pointed out, the major world languages that are descended from Latin are known as Romance Languages. These languages are: Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, etc. Since they derived common, or Vulgar Latin, they all have some resemblance to it, and thus, Classical Latin.

Case in point: French. French uses the declension concept in verbs, though it is known as conjugations--just as Xar said Italians call it. For fun, I have constructed a chart of French articles and conjugations. French has 5 types of verb conjugations. This is the first, and most common one--the ER conjugation. I have conjugated the verb AIMER (to love) for you below.

Singular Plural
1st person je -e nous -ons
2nd person tu -es vous -ez
3rd person il -e ils -ent

Thus to conjugate aimer, you would remove the infinitive ending to find the radical aim- and then add the appropriate endings:

AIMER

Singular Plural
1st person j' aime nous aimons
2nd person tu aimes vous aimez
3rd person il aime ils aiment

___________________________________________________

After some careful thinking, I have decided that I would like Xar to be the one to continue with the illumination. While I barely have mastered the most basic concepts of Latin, he clearly is an expert. Xar, would you please do us the honor of continuing our Latin education?

I would like to continue to add in bits of interesting things about culture, reading, or saying, and I invite all to do the same. As I have said, I want this to be a thread for everyone. Even if we never become masters of Latin, I believe that we can enjoy it and learn as well. So to that end, today's Latin quote:


Bene qui latuit, bene vixit.

One who lives well, lives unnoticed.

(Ovidius, Tristia)

I shall watch this topic with interest. Anybody doing French lessons?

Vain wrote:I shall watch this topic with interest. Anybody doing French lessons?

Je parle un peau français. Parlez-vous français? Non? Je vous donnerai une leçon.




(Translation: I speak a little French. Do you speak French? No? I will give you a lesson.)

I don't know about my efficacy as a language tutor over the internet, but I will see if I can get you going in the right direction. Plus, my French could use a workout. When I go back to Paris I want to be more confident.


~Lyr

Thanks for the torch, Lyr, but I think you should be the one who continues with the Latin education... this is Latin with Lyr, not Latin with Xar after all. I wouldn't want to steal your thunder, so to speak If you don't mind, I'll just chime in with comments every now and then, but I really think it would be more fair if you were the teacher.

Now, if enough people are interested in learning something about Italian, we can always start the Italian with Xar thread... and then if you start the French with Lyr thread, we might start thinking about a subforum on world languages

I think of all the foreign languages I've wanted to learn, French is the one I've wanted most. So, a French with Lyr thread would be great because then I could stop hijacking this thread

No fair, Vain! I hijacked it before you did!

Vain wrote:I think of all the foreign languages I've wanted to learn, French is the one I've wanted most.

Yech. French is dull.

I want to (and hope to) learn Welsh.

Xar wrote:Thanks for the torch, Lyr, but I think you should be the one who continues with the Latin education... this is Latin with Lyr, not Latin with Xar after all. I wouldn't want to steal your thunder, so to speak If you don't mind, I'll just chime in with comments every now and then, but I really think it would be more fair if you were the teacher.

Fairness doesn't figure into this at all. . . it is rather like this: I can maybe give them the information needed to build a raft, when you can teach them to make a yacht! My ego doesn't figure into it at all. But if you do not want to, I understand. I will proceed, but it is likely that I won't focus too much on grammar.

Xar wrote: Now, if enough people are interested in learning something about Italian, we can always start the Italian with Xar thread... and then if you start the French with Lyr thread, we might start thinking about a subforum on world languages

I'll consider doing a French thread. . . and I'm totally interested in watching a Italian thread! It would be cool to end up with a learning forum. .

CovenantJr wrote:

Vain wrote:I think of all the foreign languages I've wanted to learn, French is the one I've wanted most.

Yech. French is dull.

I want to (and hope to) learn Welsh.

From all accounts I hear, Welsh is a dying language. I applaud your desire to learn it--each candle helps to hold the darkness at bay.

But I think French is a lovely language. . . Italian as well. Both are very musical and are beautiful beyond the context of their meaning.
Every language has its own charms.

~Lyr

It could be that I think it's dull because it's taught in every school in the country, and France is just over there >>>>

Welsh is dying to an extent, but it'd take quite some killing off in north Wales. They resent having to speak English, and occasionally I meet someone who can't.