h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Latin - The Language - A2255591
Author: ThinkSoft --==Death to Homework==-- - U209470

Basic latin info page, it would be good to know if/what people think I should add.

I'll have a look at this later. But one thing jumps out:

English is NOT a Romance language. It does not derive from Latin, although many of the complex words in English do. English is a Germanic language.

Interesting. Gaius (Caius) was a title? Is that where we get "guy"?

About the ablative: I wrote my first limerick for the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form on this word, and my research turned up the singular fact that this case (or at least the name for it) was introduced to Latin than none other than Julius Caesar, who was a grammarian when he wasn't pursuing Gauls or Pompey.

However my point is, it is not just a ragbag; the ablative has a definite sense to it. Nobody ever told us in school that the word "ablative" meant anything, but it struck me many years later that it means "taking-away", just as "dative" means "giving-to". So here's the lim:

Those Romans weren't crazy, you know;
Their ablative case went to show
How something had gone:
By, with, from, in, or on.
The reverse of the dative? Quite so.

http://www.oedilf.com

Gnomon: You're absolutely right, I finished my polishing of this entry this morning at 3AM.

Recumbentman: I will look into that! Also, I think that limerick is going in!

I didn't know that about Julius, as my class has been much more translation than culture, let alone info about the language.

Thanks for the feedback.

Also, yes, it was a title, some notable Romans (Romanae notae) were Gaius Julius Caesar and Gaius Vallerius Catullus (a poet). On http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cache/perscoll_Greco-Roman.html if you scroll down to the C's, under Caesar's De Bello [Gallico|Civilo], you can see Valerius Catullus listed as both C. Valerius and Gaius Valerius.

Part of wedding solemnities in ancient Roman society included the bride saying "Where you are Gaius, I will be Gaia." Which is pertty much "Where you're mister, I'll be your missus"

I have absolutely no idea if that led to "guy."

Or maybe it's a first name... I was rather certain it was a title, but there seem to be many sources saying it's just a very common first name.

I believe that Gaius is a common first name. "Where you are John, I will be Johanna."

This is an interesting start of an entry about Latin, but I think there is much more you could say while still keeping it as an overview. You've mentioned the cases of Latin, but there was a lot more to the language, such as the different tenses of verbs (also using elaborate endings) and an interesting fact that, like modern Finnish, there were no words for "a" and "the".

Keep working on it and you'll make something really good.

Now for some comments about the content:

You need to say right from the start that Latin was the language of ancient Rome and that the Romans spread the language all over Europe. Then go on to the sentence which starts "The story or Rome".

You say "Where languages like english have only a plurual and singular form for nouns (e.g. 1 singular: dog; plural: dogs) latin has the singular, the plural, and five different ways to say both of them" but English does in fact have a genitive case, in both singular and plural: the dog's back, the dogs' backs.

"five different ways to say both of them" -- it should be six since you give six cases later on.

I've already pointed out about English not being a Romance language.

"The vowels a, e, i, and o are used in Latin, along with b, c, d, e, f, g, h, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, and x." -- this suggests that v is a consonant. It'd be better as:

The vowels a, e, i, o and v are used in Latin (v was just the Romans' way or writing a u), along with b, c, d, e, f, g, h, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, and x.

"Also, V makes the same sound as an English W, and C the same sound as an English K." -- you should perhaps say that V makes the English W sound when it comes at the start of a word, before another vowel. You also should add that G is pronounced as in English Get, not English Gentle.

I've already mentioned that I think Caius/Gaius is a name not a title.

You list the cases as Nominative, Vocative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative, but I think a more normal ordering is Nominative, Vocative, Accusative, Genetive, Dative, Ablative.

"the name my Latin teacher gave me, Matius, would become Mati (I feel it is important to note my name is Matt, so my name was no stretch of the imagination on her part). " -- you're not supposed to mention yourself in Edited Entries, as it is supposed to read like the collective knowledge of the whole community, so you should reword this to something like:

so, for example, the name Matius (a Latinised version of Matt) would become Mati.


"this all probably seems rather complicated. This was intentional. Rome was a perpetually aristocratic society, and there is nothing to seperate those who can afford an education from those who are bought and sold as slaves like a really complicated language." -- while this may be amusing, it is completely untrue. Firstly, all European languages of the time, including Celtic, Germanic and Greek, did similar things, and secondly, native speakers did not find such complexities difficult at all. English is complex in many other ways.



Some formatting, spelling and grammar:

Change the "Rome wasn't built in a day" header to a quote:


Rome wasn't built in a day.


by it's fall --> by its fall (there's no apostrophe in that sort of its)

"They'd been around back at the founding, and it really wan't Romulus who started the place," -- change the double quotes to single quotes

it really wan't --> it really wasn't

the upshoot of --> the upshot of

during it's lifetime --> during its lifetime

remeniscient --> reminiscent

and it's adjective --> and its adjective

Good entry, just a few niggles.

I wouldn't say the vocative was the least common case used in Latin, at the time it probably would have been one of the most-used cases, just very few inscriptions were written using it.

Also, the house style of writing doesn't have Entries starting with a header, an opening paragraph is usually needed

You're welcome to the limerick! Thanks for offering it a home.

Alas, OED says that "guy" is derived from the Old French word "guie" meaning "guide".

Winston Churchill's first encounter (at the age of seven) with Latin: http://www.brianmicklethwait.com/education/2003/11/winston_churchi.php

Excellent link. The horror of education as it was given to us: the explanations that are more abstruse than the thing explained, even though that itself is a mystery: exactly what Illich attacked in "Deschooling Society".

There are shining exceptions: the Montessori Method, and the Kodály method (music), where a new term is not mentioned until the notion it that it names has been thoroughly absorbed and digested by practical use.

You're speaking my kind of language there, R. People often think my writing is childish and simple, probably because they understand it all. Later I hope they realise that they now understand something that they didn't before.

I hate abstruse articles on a topic that are only intelligible to someone who already understands what they are trying to explain.

Gnomon:

Thank you for all of the grammar and pointers, I haven't written in a while, and you're a marvellous editor.

As to the order of the cases, I was taught them in the order Nominative, Vocative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative. I made a sort of neumonic for myself because we always did it in the same order and I could never remember it (No Very Good Dentist ACcuses Alchemists).

And the only other thing is that V always makes a W sound, it's not just at the beginning of words, it's pronounced the same way in vinci and ambulavi (weenkee and amboolawee, respectively), and never appears before consonants, so I think the present description of it is adequate.

Recumbentman:

I certainly understand that literally "Ablative" means taking-away, but the fact is that it's not only used for that, nor is is mostly used for that. In fact, there is a grammatical construct called the "dative of disadvantage" that is used for taking things away from people.

By far, I think, the Ablative case is used more for a means of doing something, or a place or time of happening. But that's just in my experience...

I'll start patching in the verbs (and declensions too, I think) today. I think I corrected the gammar and spelling.

The w pronunciation for v seems to be an exclusively English thing (fair enough, this is a UK site). Here (Ireland) we learnt to say it as v always.

We used English text-books (Latin For Today) which gave the cases in the order Nom Voc Acc Gen Dat Abl.

My ablative limerick was based on the tag our teacher used for the Ablative: "By, with, from, in, or on".

Amazingly, after forty-odd years, I can still remember the list of prepositions governing the ablative:

A, ab, absque, coram, de,
Palam, clam, cum, ex or e,
Sine, tenus, pro and prae;
Add super, subter, sub and in
When rest, not motion, 'tis they mean.

Fat lot of use it was to me once the exams were over; I don't suppose I ever knew what coram, palam, or tenus meant.

Well, two Latin translators on the web could make nothing of 'coram' but the others are:

palam: openly, publicly, (+abl.) in the presence of
clam: secretly, in secret.
tenus: (prep. with abl) as far as, up to, to, down to.

-- I always supposed 'clamming up' had to do with shellfish.

Here (Germany) the order is Nominative, genitive, dative, akkusative, ablative. No idea where the vocative fits in

OK, I can accept that you were taught the cases in a different order from me. I'm sure your order is just as good as mine.

But you are wrong about V. The Romans wrote the letter U as V, and it was pronounced "oo" most of the time, as in the name of the famous Roman IVLIVS. There the V is pronounced as a "U", not a "W".

In The Life of Brian they came up with one I hadn't heard of: the locative (which looks like a roundabout way of saying you can omit "ad").

What's this, then? 'Romanes Eunt Domus'? 'People called Romanes they go the house'?
It-- it says, 'Romans, go home'.
No, it doesn't. What's Latin for 'Roman'? Come on!
Aah!
Come on!
'R-- Romanus'?
Goes like...?
'Annus'?
Vocative plural of 'annus' is...?
Eh. 'Anni'?
'Romani'. 'Eunt'? What is 'eunt'?
'Go'. Let--
Conjugate the verb 'to go'.
Uh. 'Ire'. Uh, 'eo'. 'Is'. 'It'. 'Imus'. 'Itis'. 'Eunt'.
So 'eunt' is...?
Ah, huh, third person plural, uh, present indicative. Uh, 'they go'.
But 'Romans, go home' is an order, so you must use the...?
The... imperative!
Which is...?
Umm! Oh. Oh. Um, 'i'. 'I'!
How many Romans?
Ah! 'I'-- Plural. Plural. 'Ite'. 'Ite'.
'Ite'.
Ah. Eh.
'Domus'?
Eh.
Nominative?
Oh.
'Go home'? This is motion towards. Isn't it, boy?
Ah. Ah, dative, sir! Ahh! No, not dative! Not the dative, sir! No! Ah! Oh, the... accusative! Accusative! Ah! 'Domum', sir! 'Ad domum'! Ah! Oooh! Ah!
Except that 'domus' takes the...?
The locative, sir!
Which is...?!
'Domum'.
'Domum'.
Aaah! Ah.
'Um'. Understand?
Yes, sir.
Now, write it out a hundred times.
Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar, sir.
Hail Caesar. If it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off.
Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar and everything, sir! Oh. Mmm!

Can anyone tell us if the changes have been made to make this pickable? I just wanted to bump it up becuase we don't have a 'proper' Latin Entry at the moment.