Accent marks

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone and anyone!
I am getting a tattoo of my family motto. The motto is
"Malo mori quam foedari", I was wondering if there is any accent marks over any of the letters. Basically I just want to know how to write it correctly. If anyone could help me or point me in a direction that would be great.

Thanks a whole heap!
~Jake~

 

[Bitmap]

Re: Accent mark question

It's fine as is. There are unfortunately no accent marks in Latin, so you don't need to put any.

If you want your tattoo to look Roman, you can also spell it in majuskles and replace the u with a v:

MALO MORI QVAM FOEDARI

 

[scrabulista]

Re: Accent mark question

I think Jacob is asking about macrons.

Allen and Greenough have macrons over the a and o of malo ("I prefer")
perseus.tufts.edu has 2 listings: one has macrons over the a and o of malo, and the other just over the a.

A&G have one over the i in capi (passive infinitive in 3rd-io, so I'm guessing there's one over mori)
Then A&G have them over the 2nd a and i of amari (passive infinitive in 1st, so I'm guessing there should be macrons over the a and i of foedari).

 

[Bitmap]

Re: Accent mark question

Yes, that would be Mālō mŏrī quăm foeděrārī, but macrons are just used to show how the word was pronounced. You don't find them in actual texts (except textbooks )

 

[Matthaeus]

Re: Accent mark question

Can you tell me, Bitmap, how do you get macrons on the keyboard? What program is used?

 

[Bitmap]

Re: Accent mark question

I just used the character map of my Windows

 

[Decimvs]

Re: Accent mark question

I will have to learn how to do that as well.

 

[Chamaeleo]

Re: Accent mark question

It's fine as is. There are unfortunately no accent marks in Latin, so you don't need to put any.

Untrue. Read up on the apex.

I also think that the first thing that anyone asking for advice about tattoos should be told is “don't permanently write something on your skin that you don't understand.”

 

[Matthaeus]

Re: Accent mark question

I agree with you a 100 % on that statement!

 

[Chamaeleo]

Re: Accent mark question

Can you tell me, Bitmap, how do you get macrons on the keyboard? What program is used?

I'm running Ubuntu Linux. I chose the “US International with AltGr dead keys” keyboard layout. It's a standard layout, but lets me press the AltGr key to get special characters.

AltGr + apostrophe + vowel gives me an acute accent or apex: áéíóúýÁÉÍÓÚÝ.

AltGr + shift + 3 gives me a macron: āēīōūȳĀĒĪŌŪȲ.

e.g. MÁLÓ·MORÍ·QVAM·FŒDÁRE.

I can't get accents on capital V, unfortunately.

This page explains all possible accents.

You can probably do similar things on that crappy Bill Gates operating system too.

 

[Matthaeus]

Re: Accent mark question

So let me get this right. Both apices and macrons are used to denote long vowels? What's the difference between a long vowel and a long syllable? If there is a long vowel in a syllable, then it goes without saying that the entire syllable is long, so what am I missing here? Chamaelo seems to know his stuff.

 

[Cato]

Re: Accent mark question

So let me get this right. Both apices and macrons are used to denote long vowels? What's the difference between a long vowel and a long syllable? If there is a long vowel in a syllable, then it goes without saying that the entire syllable is long, so what am I missing here? Chamaelo seems to know his stuff.

Long syllables are strictly a distinction of Latin metre, i.e. a syllable that is found to be "long" does nothing to alter its pronunciation, whereas there is a difference in pronunciation between malus and mālus. In fact many instructors prefer calling syllables "heavy" or "light" because (1) using the same term for vowels and syllables confuses students, and (2) the pronunciation of a "long" syllable isn't always a matter of time, but rather how the mouth "closes" when the syllable is spoken. For example in the word teneo the first e is short and the follow-on n is associated with the second e; the natural rhythm of the word is te-ne-o. But in the associated participle tentus, the n is a natural part of the first syllable--ten-tus--and the follow-on t forces the n to be more firmly pronounced (try pronouncing the two words quickly; when you pronounce the n, it's quite easy to avoid touching tongue to palate in teneo, but nearly impossible in tentus). The presence of the n in tentus can be thought of as either lengthening the time it takes to pronounce the syllable or forcing the speaker to lend it a little more weight in pronunciation (this "weight" is one reason why accent normally follows syllable quantity in Latin). Either way, we say the first syllable of tentus is long (by position).

Because we are not native speakers we don't have the same feel for syllable weight as the Romans did, so we often rely on general rules: A long syllable is one that either (1) contains a long vowel, or (2) contains a short vowel followed by two consonants (h does not count as a consonant, but x and z are almost always double consonants, and there is some flexibility if the second consonant is a liquid l or r). Note that this lengthening of a syllable applies even if the second consonant appears at the start of a following word: The final syllable in laudat contains a short a, but in poetry that final syllable lengthens if the next word is, e.g., canem.

There are a host of other details reagrding syllable quantity--synaresis, diastole, and we haven't even talked about elision--that seem odd until you understand their roots in the spoken language.

 

[Quasus]

Re: Accent mark question

So let me get this right. Both apices and macrons are used to denote long vowels? What's the difference between a long vowel and a long syllable? If there is a long vowel in a syllable, then it goes without saying that the entire syllable is long, so what am I missing here? Chamaelo seems to know his stuff.

Why don't you like to adopt the customary definition:

An open syllable containing a short vowel is short; all other syllables are long.

I remind that a syllable is called open if its last sound is a vowel. If two consonants meet (not muta cum liquida), then the boundary is between them (cap-tus, ej-jus), so the definition that I cited coincides with that of Cato.

Chamaeleo states that there are two conventions about Latin prosody, and the for the older the length of syllables and not of vowels is relevant. It's quite sensible and it's supported by some old grammars. But I've never read in a book that primarily macrons are not intended for marking vowel length (although they are indeed at times used to mark the quantity of syllables rather than vowels). Anyway, e.g. in Allen & Greenough the macrons mark long vowels, so this use of them has a long tradition.

 

[Matthaeus]

Re: Accent mark question

Thank you both for the clarifications, but what about the apex vs. macrons? I read the article and it states that the apex has fallen into disuse, and modern dictionaries don't differentiate between the two.

 

[Chamaeleo]

Re: Accent mark question

Thank you both for the clarifications, but what about the apex vs. macrons? I read the article and it states that the apex has fallen into disuse, and modern dictionaries don't differentiate between the two.

In disuse? Let's revive it then! Latin has fallen into disuse too, and that's not stopping us reviving it!

I find apices/acutes clearer, easier to type, present in more fonts, present in more character encodings, and more authentic. I therefore use them and advocate them. If you prefer the macrons you see in your dictionary, that's fine. The important thing, I think, it that long vowels should be marked whenever possible. Textbooks that lack this imformation do the student a disservice. After all, if you don't care about vowel quantity, you can just ignore the diacritics. But if you do care, and they are not marked, what are you supposed to do?

 

[Matthaeus]

Re: Accent mark question

I think all decent beginner Latin textbooks should include macrons/apices. How else would the student know how to correctly pronounce?

And yes, I'm all for reviving Latin, including diacritics and all. As long as people are interested in this language, how it be called 'dead'? It all depends on your definition of this word 'dead'. But this was discussed in another topic.

 

[Quasus]

Re: Accent mark question

Chamaeleo, I fully agree with you that long vowels should be regularly marked (my laziness is the main reason why I hardly ever do it when typing ). It seems to me that the choice between macrons and acutes is a minor question. The former are more customary for a lot of people and vowel length indicated with macrons is quite common in linguistics; but at present this choise is rather a matter of personal taste, dé gustibus autem nón est disputandum.

But I'd like to ask another question.

Chamaleo, from your posts I can see that you distinguish between u and v and at the same time you reject U, j, J. It seems to me inconsistent, but apparently you have grounds to do so. Could you reveal it?

As for myself, I think that the use of both u and j makes the writing more adequate. (For example, I doubt how to write subjicere without j. Subicere? But then there's an ambiguity in reading for a person who is not acquainted with this word). To my mind, rejecting j while preserving u as well as capitalization and punctuation marks (quae antíquí ignórábant ) is inconsistent.

I'd be pleased if anyone shared his viewpoint.

 

[Chamaeleo]

Re: Accent mark question

Hi, Quasus.

There is no letter J in Latin. Latin for “justice” is “iústitia”. Sometimes an “I longa” was used, to mark a long I (instead of using an apex) or semi-consonantal I. This could look like our letter J. I occasionally use a J to represent this, on a whim. The point is to understand that it is not a separate letter, but a graphical variant of I. “Iústitita” is properly ordered under the letter I in the dictionary, whether or not you make it long. Both my textbooks and two of the three dictionaries I have recognise this.

It is quite possible to have two I's next to each other, where one is a semi-consonant and one is just a vowel. “Subiicere” is an example of this. However, it is slightly hard to say, and so one I tends to get lost in pronunciation (and therefore then in spelling).

There is no distinction between U and V in Latin either. There is a vowel (which has a semi-consonant allophone), written V in capitals and u in lower-case. “Vbí” and “uerbum” both start with the same letter, and should ordered as such in dictionaries.

I am consistent in recognising these facts for both I and V. Curiously, it seems to be the norm these days to be inconsistent. Although most modern books recognise that J is not a letter, most maintain the fiction that there is a separate U and V. This is the case for two of my dictionaries, and one of my textbooks.

Another fact you mention is that Latin originally had no lower case letters. Indeed, I normally use capitals for writing Latin for my own purposes (see my sig, or my username). However, Internet etiquette says that capital letters are SHOUTING, so I use lower case here, lest any of you get angry with me.

As for punctuation, I do make a bit of a special exception. Unlike all the other things mentioned, omission of punctuation makes a considerable negative impact to the clarity of a text. Despite even this, however, I do sometimes drop all modern punctuation and spacing, and use only the mid-dot to separate words. See above, where I wrote “MÁLÓ·MORÍ·QVAM·FŒDÁRE”. It's nice to go oldskool sometimes.

 

[Chamaeleo]

Re: Accent mark question

The Collins Gem Latin Dictionary, 2nd Edition, has a section on poetic metre. Here's one extract, demonstrating proper use of macrons.

Note how the closed syllables get a macron, even if the vowel is short.

 

[Quasus]

Re: Accent mark question

Thanks for the answer, Chamaeleo. It's extremely interesting to learn your point of view because you seem to have developed it rationally.

Note how the closed syllables get a macron, even if the vowel is short.

Still it's doubtful (for me) that macrons were primarily used for marking long syllables rather then vowels. At that, in Greek they are sometimes used so as to denote long vowels and not syllables.

There is no letter J in Latin... There is no distinction between U and V in Latin either.

I am consistent in recognising these facts for both I and V.

This is consistent indeed. As for your manner of writing, I based on the following sentence from another post:

Cur mundus est sævus?

But then the V in sævus must be a typo. By the way, why haven't you marked u in cur as long?

And I'm curious if someone can present valid arguments for the i/u/v system.

As for me, generally I agree with the following arguments:

We consider that our spelling usages were developed through millennia according to criteria of utility and clarity, which it is as absurd as it is unnecessary to renounce. Even if some certainly rude spirits could consider giving up aesthetic developments like the distinction between capitals and lower case, it seems absolutely preposterous to eliminate usages that reflect better the pronunciation of the language and help reading, like the letters j and v for the semivowels, the ligatures æ and œ for the diphthongs, the use of the apex for vowel quantity, the spaces between words or the punctuation signs. It is absolutely unnecesary to give up all this spelling lore, on any grounds; and we advocate the full reinstatement of our century-long, sensible spelling tradition. Certainly, it’s mainly a debate between the traditional i/j/u/v and the aseptic i/u options, as only a numb mind can really find an excuse for the lame i/u/v system.