Learning a Little Latin

It seems according to Gemini AI, the version I was taught was more gramatically correct (but not omnia rather omnis) ending with the verb "est". But Caesar did not write it that way because he wanted some kind of different emphasis. The teachers of Latin modified it so as to teach gramatically correct Latin.

 

So Gemini knows Latin better than Caesar?

Verb at the end is the default but it's not required, the verb can go anywhere in a clause for emphasis.

 

We are splitting hairs now. Latin as it was taught in my day had the verb at the end. That is why teachers modified Caesar's writing. Caesar used a different construction for a different emphasis and writer's licence. The fact that it is just someone's blog is not the point. That is the version I remember and others too. I can't explain why it would be Omnia but there you go. I can explain why the sentence ended with the verb.

 

I'm not doubting your memory but what's taught in school isn't necessarily correct; if Omnia was indeed used then this would be a blatant example of that.

I also have a personal distaste for when authentic quotes are modified for teaching purposes (nothing to do with anyone here, of course).

 

On a semi related note, while we're on the subject of language learning pedagogy, has anyone taken any of the new immersion type courses? I took Polish a couple years ago from someone who favored this approach and it was horrific. Seemed like a method of equalizing outcomes through terrible methodology. (but everyone had similar grades so yay equality! that means no students were favored! ugh.).

 

I agree. I would never have suspected that we were being taught something that was not the original writing of Caesar. Perhaps this was a botched attempt to adhere to a rigid grammar for pedagogical purposes.

 

In Nomine Iesu, Omne Genu Flectatur -
"In the name of Jesus, every knee shall bend."

 

Larry Learns a Little Latin
(The Cat that lives at 10 Downing Street, UK).

Proximus! - "Next!"

 

A Deo lux nostra —
“Our light comes from God.”

 

Dave, I really enjoy your posts. When I was young, Latin was a given in Catholic education!

 

Thanks Mario, glad you're enjoying them. We had Latin lessons for the first three years of secondary school, which is over 50 years ago now. I didn't remember very much as the years went by but posting these has brought some of it back. I find them enjoyable too.

 

Veritas liberabit vos —
“The truth shall set you free.”

 

"These are hard times.

How can we lift the spirits of a friend—or our own—in Latin when all hope seems lost?

“Collect yourself.”

“Pull yourself together.”

“Summon your courage.”

“Take heart.”

Animum collige! — literally, “Gather your spirit” — is the Roman way."

 

From Ars et Memoria Fb page:

The Latin Puzzle: Why Word Order Is "Optional"
In English, if you change the order of the words, you completely change the story:

"The girl saw the boy." (A nice, normal day.)
"The boy saw the girl." (Now the focus has shifted.)

But look at the puzzle pieces above. In Latin, the words themselves carry their own roles, no matter where they sit in the sentence.

Let's look at our three pieces:

Puella = The girl. Because it ends in -a, she is the one doing the action (the subject).

Puerum = The boy. Because it ends in -um, he is the one receiving the action (the object).

Vidit = Saw.

Because the endings tell us exactly who is doing what, you can scramble these puzzle pieces any way you like, and the meaning stays exactly the same:

Puerum puella vidit. = The girl saw the boy.
Puella puerum vidit. = The girl saw the boy.
Vidit puella puerum. = The girl saw the boy.

The Takeaway
In English, we rely on word order to make sense of a sentence. In Latin, we rely on word endings.
When you read Latin, stop trying to find the "English order." Instead, just look at the endings of the words to see how the puzzle pieces naturally lock together."

 

And, pretty coolly, the different word orders still have slightly different meanings due to emphasizing different things.

Puerum puella vidit. = The girl saw the boy. (And not something else)
Puella puerum vidit. = (It was) The girl (who) saw the boy.
Vidit puella puerum. = The girl (did indeed see) the boy (as opposed to not seeing him)

It’s interesting that the ancient Romans still seemingly had the sense that the first word creates this emphasis, something which I don’t think is necessarily the same in other languages with free word order.

Like with Russian, I think it’s common to put the emphasized word at the end, but to place corrective words at the beginning. There’re probably a couple speakers of such languages on the forum and it’d be cool to hear them opine about this (sorry for hijacking the thread with general linguistics, lol).

 

Thanks ANYW, some interesting clarifications there on emphasis and word order.
No worries about 'hijacking' feel free to jump in anytime.

 

Glory Be

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Amen.


Latin:

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto, sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

 

This was really neat to learn, as I hadn't heard it before. I'm teaching myself Latin right now to try to keep up with my son and be able to explain why when he gets things wrong in Latin class.

 

We are part of the territory of the former Roman Empire. Latin was used here as an official language for over 2,000 years. In the Croatian Parliament, Latin was the official language for centuries. The Church especially, as well as government offices and public administration, used Latin until the beginning of the 20th century, while the Church continued using it until the 1960s.

So perhaps that is why they put us through such intensive Latin instruction. Personally, I find Latin exceptionally difficult...

This is what I meant when I said that Latin was one of the most demanding subjects in our grammar school, which is attended by the top students from the entire county (over 130,000 inhabitants). Croatian, Latin, and most Slavic languages are synthetic (inflected) languages, whereas English is primarily an analytic language. Croatian has seven grammatical cases, while Latin traditionally has six. Cases indicate grammatical functions such as the subject, object, possession, recipient, and other relationships within a sentence. Each case answers a specific question—for example, the nominative answers "who?" or "what?", the genitive "of whom?" or "of what?", the dative "to whom?" or "to what?", and the accusative "whom?" or "what?" for the direct object.

For example, in English you have to say, "The dog bit the man." If you change the word order to "The man bit the dog," the meaning changes completely because English relies heavily on word order.

In Croatian, however, we can say:

Pas je ugrizao čovjeka.
Čovjeka je ugrizao pas.
Ugrizao je pas čovjeka.

All three sentences mean "The dog bit the man." The meaning does not change because the grammatical cases tell us who is the subject and who is the object. Word order is used mainly for emphasis rather than grammar.

Latin works in a very similar way. For example:

Canis virum momordit.
Virum canis momordit.
Momordit canis virum.

All three sentences still mean "The dog bit the man." The ending -um in virum shows that the man is the object, regardless of where the word appears in the sentence.

Now you can probably understand why I said that Latin was exceptionally difficult from a grammatical point of view in Croatia and we have grammatical cases like Latin. You have to learn grammatical cases, noun declensions according to gender, number, and case, verb conjugations, numerous verb tenses, the subjunctive mood, and a relatively free word order. In reality, you do not learn Latin the way you learn a modern foreign language because there are no native speakers. Instead, you spend almost all your time studying grammar, parsing and analyzing sentences, and translating texts, which makes it an extremely demanding subject.

You have to memorize endings such as -a, -ae, -ae, -am, -ā, -ā for the singular, and -ae, -ārum, -īs, -ās, -īs, -ae for the plural. The same ending can have several different meanings, and once you add all the verb tenses, it becomes a complete nightmare.

We started learning this during the very first week of Latin classes. After only two months I was already struggling to keep up, and six months later about 90% of us barely understood what was going on. By the end of the second year, I hardly even knew what was happening in class anymore. Once you lose the thread especially when you're only 14 years old it's incredibly difficult to catch up in Latin...

Of course, nowadays we have tools and AI systems like ChatGPT that can help when you lose track. Back then, it was much harder because once you fell behind, you were simply lost in all that grammar as the course kept moving forward.

Very few people are truly fluent in Latin. I would say that about 95% of those experts are in Church circles, while most of the rest are university professors.

As you probably know, Latin is the official language of the Vatican. They even have ATMs with a Latin interface there. I think I'd end up leaving with empty pockets!