Questions tagged [word-order]
The word-order tag has no usage guidance.
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How do I properly state that “the time has come to be bolder”?
I am working to poetically convey that “the time has come to be bolder,” and I’ve written “tempus advenit audacius.” I am beginning to question whether a preposition belongs and whether “venit” should ...
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Translation of "Qua de causa"
This is a from the very beginning of the Caesar's De Bello Gallico.
The first question is about its translation as "For which reason". In English, it's supposed to be in a single sentence , ...
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Verb splitting noun and adjective [duplicate]
The concluding prayer of the prime office says:
℣. Dóminus nos benedícat, ✠ et ab omni malo deféndat, et ad vitam perdúcat ætérnam.
Why does the verb (perdúcat) split the noun (vitam) and the ...
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Word order in a sentence with two clauses
I saw a sentence
Tu femina non es, sed puella es.
My understanding is,
Tu non es femina, sed es pulla.
is also a correct sentence.
If I write this as
Tu non es femina, sed puella es.
or
Tu ...
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Which sounds more natural in latin?
I know you can often shuffle the order of words in Latin sentences, preserving the meaning of the sentence if you do it right. Still, there are some things that just don't sound "natural" or ...
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Where does the ablative go in a Latin sentence ? Does it even matter?
I'm learning Latin on my own with the book "Beginner's Latin" by Collar & Daniell, I recently reached Chapter IV where the ablative is introduced with the preposition In, my problem with ...
user10690
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Preposition preceding a verb [duplicate]
i came across this sentence in Orberg's book:
"Quid inest in saccis?"
Or
"Ecce iulius ad villam advenit."
My question is that why there are aditional prepositions, namely another &...
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"Aurea prima sata est aetas" - is there ambiguity here?
I'm (re)teaching myself Latin (I studied at school decades ago), and I've just picked up a book of excerpts from Ovid.
Aurea prima sata est aetas, quae vindice nullo,
sponte sua, sine lege fidem ...
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Why is it "nomen mihi est" for "my name is", but it's "tibi nomen est" for "your name is"?
I understand that there is no strict order, but why is it that this specific order is preferable over something like "mihi nomen est" or "nomen tibi est".
The image below is from ...
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Can I label an admission as an "ex post facto mea culpa" in this case?
I would like to perform a mea culpa and "admit" that I'd given advice that in hindsight might have been suboptimal as it didn't sufficiently address all possible future outcomes. So calling ...
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Word order in Virgil's Aeneid - why so scrambled?
I can understand why Virgil would like to use standard devices like chiasmus and synchysis to create poetic effect in the Aened. But sometimes the word order is scrambled up so much, I can't work out ...
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"From her hands, to life" in Latin
I want to gift someone who is a nurse something with an engraving. I thought about the phrase "from her hands, into life", but in Latin.
Based on what I remember from school, my idea is:
E ...
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Would the meaning change a bit if I changed "mea culpa" to "culpa mea" even if Latin doesn't care about word order?
At a Catholic Mass (Roman rite) people sometimes say (either in vernacular or Latin):
"Confiteor Deo omnipotenti,
et vobis fratres,
quia peccavi nimis
cogitatione, verbo,
opere et omissione:
mea ...
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Positioning 'quoque' in the sentence
Let's take the following sentence Julius is also angry.
One way to say it is Iulius quoque iratus est.
But can we say it like this Iulius est quoque iratus? But if there is the option to put it this ...
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Ethics of Spinoza – About word order
Spinoza, Ethics, De Deo, Appendix:
Si exempli gratia ex culmine aliquo lapis in alicujus caput ceciderit eumque interfecerit, ... demonstrabunt lapidem ad hominem interficiendum cecidisse. Ni enim ...
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Does word order lessen the ambiguity in Accusativus cum Infinitivo?
A question was recently asked about how to say "I thinks he loves me" in Latin, because the most straightforward translation is ambiguous as to who may be loving who:
Puto eam me amare
In ...
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How do I best translate "A big window into history"?
As I've only recently begun to study Latin, I'm not yet sure how to best translate "A big window into history".
First of all, I'm not sure whether the adjective should precede, or rather ...
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On the syntax of 'Cogitate quantis laboribus fundatum imperium (...) una nox paene delerit' (Cic. Cat. 4, 19)
Picking up the thread of analyzing beautiful structures involving participles in Cicero's works (e.g. see this link), I'd like to raise a question about the syntax of the following complex sentence. ...
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To what extent there was a difference between written and spoken Latin?
Particularly in terms of word-order in sentence.
I doubt, for example, if we would hear sentence like this:
"Tarda solet magna in rebus adesse fides" (Ovid)
where we have Tarda and fides gapped ...
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Is there an explanation for this word order?
This website has the Liturgy of the Hours online. The closing prayer for Laudes and Vespers is (line break mine):
Dominus nos benedicat
et ab omni malo defendat
et ad vitam perducat eternam.
...
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Titling texts in Latin
So, I'm puzzling through a grammar structure in Latin, mostly after just cramming a bunch of grammar into my head. I'm trying to concoct the title of an imaginary text.
I'd like to check whether I'...
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Use of the chiasmus in Latin
Was the chiasma common in Latin? Or an uncommon figure of speech?
(Words in a sentence with the pattern ABBA or ABBCBBA, etc...)
Where could we meet the greatest amount of chiasma? In poetry? In ...
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Can you split "natus sum"?
What are the conditions to make a reasonable hyperbate?
Reasonable, I mean, if I don't want to sound to poetical, as I know the word order is more free in poetry, the same rules for word orders don't ...
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Shuffling Latin sentences
So, I have heard an interesting claim about Latin, and I wonder how true it is. The claim is, given that Latin has declensions, you can shuffle words around and keep the sentence's meaning.
Is that ...
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Is Duolingo good for Latin?
On August 28*, 2019 Duolingo announced its Latin course for English speakers.
Out of curiosity, I subscribed, but I'm just starting to peek into it.
My question is (if anyone has tried it in depth ...
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"Per aspera ad astra" or "Ad astra per aspera"?
The title sums it up, but I think this could be a tricky question. I first stumbled upon this expression through a song by the German band Haggard, called "Per Aspera ad Astra" (from an album inspired ...
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The instances where verbs might take the genitive case
In Sixto-Clementine Vulgate we find in Genesis this verse:
poenituit eum quod hominum fecisset in terra (Genesis 6:6)
"hominum" is in the genetive case which I find strange. I try searching for ...
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What is the term for extremely loose Latin word order?
For a Latin-language artificial intelligence called Mensa Latina the user manual will need to discuss and therefore refer to the phenomenon in Latin prose where meaning comes from grammar and ...
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"Semper" in the beginning of a sentence
This is my first attempt at a translation for a motto. My intent is to convey "Always be good" as an advice. I think it is "Semper bonus esto".
A quick digression on the motto
I'm ...
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Latin usage & perfect passive finite verb forms
I understand that a perfect passive finite verb is formed by combining the perfect passive participle with the correct form of 'esse'. My question is this:
Does it ever happen that the second ...
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About the "element + plural verb + et + element" word order
In the "Libera me" prayer, the following verse is said:
Libera me, Domine, de morte æterna, in die illa tremenda
Quando cœli movendi sunt et terra
Dum veneris iudicare saeculum per ignem.
...
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New to Latin—why is the Present Indicative sometimes at the end, and sometimes in the middle of a sentence?
I'm working my way through Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, and I've come across something that's tripping me up when I try to write.
Example: Gallia est in Europa (pardon the lack of accents); and ...
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NSFW - Trying to create a Latin motto for a coat of arms - Edited for clarity
So, I took a couple years of Latin in school, but it's been awhile. I was trying to create this motto, and I'm not sure if I'm declining the nouns properly. Also not sure I remember if word order is ...
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Does -ne affect word order?
My intuition suggests different word orders with and without the enclitic -ne.
For example:
Vir canit. — The man sings.
Canitne vir? — Does the man sing?
I know full well that Latin ...
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Is my translation (to Latin) correct for this burial quote?
Sorry for the vague title but my request is pretty arbitrary.
I'm trying to translate in Latin some kind of poetic quote. I studied Latin in college so I know the basics, but I'd like a confirmation ...
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"Implied Power"
I am looking for a way to say "Implied Power" in Latin.
When I say "Implied Power" I mean to say "Implicit Political Authority."
Here is an example to walk readers through what I am trying to get at:
...
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How do you say "imply" in Latin?
I need to know how to say the present, past and future tense of "imply" in Latin. I don't know much Latin, I just need the grammatically correct way to say: "Implied ______"
For example, for "Implied ...
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Word order in latin
A few days ago, I found the following sentence:
Est mea cunctorum terror vox daemoniorum.
The sentence is readily translated as "My voice is the fear of all demons". But it prompted another ...
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Homo Novus vs Novus Homo
To my surprise, the English Wikipedia article about the concept of homines novi is called Novus Homo, not homo novus as I would expect.
I have been taught that Latin order is almost always ...
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Puella Mea OR Mea Puella?
E. E. Cummings wrote a poem called 'Puella Mea'. A quick skim of the omniscient google suggests that 'Mea Puella' might be more accurate. Which would be more accurate, in isolation, when used as a pet ...
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On the word order of "Sapere aude"
In putting together his dictum, Horace, as a native speaker of Latin, perhaps instinctively chose to put first the word "sapere," and then the word "aude," even if, strictly grammatically speaking, "...
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Corpus analysis of word order frequency
Inspired by an earlier question about Yoda's word order in Latin, I would like to know how common different word orders were in classical Latin.
To be more specific, I would like statistical ...
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Yoda's distinctive speech syntax in Latin, "lost in translation"?
You might be familiar with Yoda's speech style, with phrases like:
Powerful you have become...
Patience you must have...
Wars not make one great...
If ..., only pain will you find.
As Wikipedia ...
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'Conclusio sequitur ex premissis' or 'sequitur conclusio ex premissis'?
I'd like to know how best to translate "the conclusion follows from the premises".
'Conclusio sequitur ex premissis', 'sequitur conclusio ex premissis', or something else entirely?
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Showing which words are emphatic in a Latin sentence
I have the following sentence:
Quis lata in silva habitat? Diana, lunae clarae pulchra dea, lata in silva habitat.
I initially thought these words were emphatic:
Lata, the adjective, because it'...
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Can the adverb nunc be used in apposition?
For a textbook exercise, I translated this sentence from English into Latin.
The terrified Callisto, now a wild animal, avoided men and beasts
(animals).
(Latin via Ovid)
Here's my ...
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Can "si etiam" have the same meaning as "etiam si"?
As is well known, "etiam si" is a Latin conjunction that means "even if." Are there any examples in Classical or Medieval Latin in which reversing the word order and saying "si etiam" preserves the ...
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Word order with relative clauses
Last night I watched the movie Matilda, which I really liked, and I decided to write a few sentences about it in Latin. I was attempting to write a sentence involving a relative clause, when I became ...
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Trying to translate "Best Man, True Friend, Bad Influence" into latin for an inscription
I'm trying to translate "Best Man - True Friend - Bad Influence" into Latin for a gift inscription for (unsurprisingly) my best man.
So far I've got to "Optimum Vir - Verum Amicus - Malum Auctoritas." ...
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Need a Latin backronym for military unit - defensive, national, secret
I came up with legio apsconditus defensorius patriae, but it doesn't really suit my need (and is not quite correct). For certain project of mine it has to be acronymable to "PLDN" (preferred) or "...
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