Word of the Day: et

Today's word of the day in latin is a pretty basic one. 

et, indecl. and

One of the first words you learn studying latin.  An example sentence:  Seruus et agricola habent coronae.  Which translates to, 'the salve and the farmer have garlands'. 

A Word on Declension

I think it's a safe bet that those reading this blog are english speakers.  This is where it's helpful to point out some differences between these two languages.  In english, much of the meaning comes from word order.  In latin, it comes from the endings on words.  If I were to write, in english, 'the slave fears the dog', and I changed the word order to say 'the dogs fears the slave'.  We change the meaning dramatically with this.  In latin we would write 'seruus timet canem'.  If we took this phrase and changed the order of the words, it would still have the same meaning.  This is because of how the nouns are declined.  Seruus is in the nominative, so we know that it is the subject of the sentence.  Canem is the accusative form of canis, which means dog in latin.  Accusative tells us that it's the subject. 

Our verb is timet, which is timere(to fear).  The -t ending means that he/she/it fears.  Translating word for word, it becomes 'the male slave he fears the dog'.  Word order is not important here, only the endings.  If we change things around, and write 'seruum timet canis', it would become 'the dog fears the slave'.  Again you can shuffle those words around as much you wish and the meaning will not significantly change.  It does change the emphasis, the first word being emphasized above the others.  Many writers in latin preferred to put the verb at the end of the sentence, maintaining a sense of suspense until the end.  For those following along at home, seruus is 2nd declension and masculine, canis is 3rd declension and masculine.

Latin Word of the Day: certus

Today's latin word of the day is:

certus, -a, -um,  n. certain, fixed

Certus is an adjective, which is why it has -a -um in it's definition.  An adjective has to agree with the noun in number, case and gender.  If we have seruus certus est, it translates as 'the slave was certain.'  Note that seruus in this case is specifically referring to a male slave.  Certus and seruus need to agree, so they're both nominative, singular, masculine.  Nominative is the subject of our sentence(accusative being the object).  What if a slave woman were to hit our certain male salve?  We would have something like serua verberat seruum certum.  Notice that since seruus certus, our fixed slave, is in the accusative now.  The masculine singular accusative ending is -um, giving us seruum certum.  Nota bene!  This is the same as the singular nominative for the neuter!  You will run in to these overlaps every so often in latin and they can be very confusing.  You will have to intuit and draw clues from the surrounding text to find the intended meaning.  Finally, I give you a link to the Perseus Project page for certus.  It has far more detail regarding the word than what I have already covered.

Greetings, in Latin

One way to greet people in latin is with the phrase, Salve! Quid agis hodie?  Bear in mind, this is the singular.  It's appropriate in addressing only one person.  Translated, salve means hail.  Quid agis hodie in english means "how are you today?"  One can respond bene, for well.  Satis bene means "well enough."  Male means that you are not feeling well.  When greeting a group of people, it changes to Salvete!  Quid agitis hodie?

A few notes on pronunciation.  In latin, v w and u are the same letter.  They are often pronounced with a w sound.  Salve is pronounced sal-way.  The word seruus can also be written as servus, the first u has a w sound, the second is the same as a normal u in english.  Seruus is pronounced ser-wuss.  The accusative form is seruum, pronounced ser-wum.  Also, there is no soft c in latin.  The letter c has a hard sound, like our letter k.  Regarding the letter k, there are very few latin words that actually have this letter.  K comes from the greek letter kappa, and the only times we'll see it in a latin is word is when that word has been borrowed from greek.  Previously, I posted the word cibus.  In latin, the c has a hard sound.  So it's pronounced kibus, instead of sibus.  As an aside, cida in latin means 'cut'.  Sui cido means, literally, "I am cutting myself."  This is the root of the english word suicide.

Conversational Latin

It's easy to see latin as an academic exercise, existing only for intellectual purposes.  A toy language useful only as an exercise of the mind.  In many ways, this is what it is taught as in school.  There's a problem with this perspective, though.  Latin is real, and was real.  People grew up speaking this language.  Beggars in the streets spoke it.  Average people spoke it.  So many people spoke it that it became the lingua franca for centuries to come.  Latin was used for everyday conversation.  If you want to learn latin and become proficient with it, you will need to speak it. 

A question that comes up very early regarding conversation latin is that of saying 'yes' and 'no'.  Things in latin don't really work that way, chiefly due to cultural differences between us and ancient Rome.  In Rome, one would answer yes by repeating the question in the affirmative.  If I were to ask you, "Are you going out for dinner tonight?", instead of saying yes, a roman would say "I am going out for dinner tonight", or he would say, "I am not going out for dinner tonight."  The closest you will get to no in latin is the word non.  This, however, is usually translated more as 'not'.  If we wrote, non seruus sum, it would translate as "I am not a slave." 

Word of the Day

Today's latin word of the day comes from the Textkit vocabulary tool.  This is a great site you'll want to investigate further.  Now, for the word:

dominus, -i. m. lord or master

We see from this that dominus is second declension, masculine and means a lord or master.  -i is the genitive, most easily translated by putting 'of' in front of the word.  If we had seruus domini, we can translate that as 'the male slave of the lord/master'.  Not that seruus explicitly refers to a male slave, serua would be used to refer to a female one.

Latin For Fun and Profit

This blog will cover the joys of latin, and discuss it's most interesting applications. Yes, I know this a boring introductory post:)