New answers tagged classical-latin
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Palatalising /ki/ and /gi/ is physiologically unavoidable if the vowel is to be front/palatal, because /k, g/ are back/velar consonants, and the two places of articulation are incompatible: either the consonant assimilates to the vowel or the vowel to the consonant. In the latter case the vowel becomes velar, which sounds like this. In the former, the ...
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Well, actually™ it's not true that perception verbs are normally used with the Present Participle. This is the natural home of the Accusative with Infinitive (AcI), while Present Participle (AcPP) is less frequent in this use, although its use expands in Late Latin to cover even indirect quotations, previously the exclusive domain in the AcI. Pinkster's 2021 ...
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Ad 1: when the main verb expresses sensory perception, such as hearing or seeing, the construction used is normally a participle:
Te tibiis canentem audivi. (canentem agrees with the object te of the finite verb)
Ad 2 and 3: these both have optional that in English, which is a sign that they are to be rendered as an accusativus cum infinitivo, the ...
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I get the sense you are most interested in unusual linguistic features of Latin, which I'm not qualified to talk about.
It's also worth noting that 'why study Latin' is a well-addressed question in general (often aimed at the perspective of high school or college students choosing courses); Googling it will get you lots of results.
But besides this, a few ...
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In general, verbs that equate two things put the same case on either side of the verb. For example, vocāre "call" in the active can equate two things in the accusative (i.e. two direct objects), and in the passive equates two things in the nominative. For a few examples from Ennius (since he shows up first in my corpus search):
Istic est is ...
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Besides "to be", another verb that acts this way is videor, "to seem" or "appears", which does work as a translation to "looks like" depending on how you use it. (It looks like a dog = I'm not sure what it is but it looks like a dog = It appears to be a dog).
Cicero's De Officiis provides a nice example of this usage:
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Well, for the latter example, the Carmen Saeculare was indeed sung. From here:
Sacrificio perfecto puer. [X]XVII quibus denuntiatum erat patrimi et matrimi et puellae totidem|
carmen cecinerunt; eo[de]m modo in Capitolio.|
Carmen composuit Q. Hor[at]ius Flaccus.|
After the sacrifice is completed, 27 boys for whom it had been made known that their parents ...
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The Latin word amare, which is of course the root of Spanish "amar," can be freely used both of people and things. When talking about people, it can refer to romantic love, as in the famous line:
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus
(Catullus, Carmen 5)
Or it can just refer to general affection, or inclination towards a person. In that meaning it is ...
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