Latin books to start on....

A

Anonymous

Guest

Hi everyone, hope you are well,

This is my first post here (well, apart from my introduction one :) ) and I was just wondering if you could point me in the right direction of some Latin texts that would be good to start out on? I'm a total beginner and I know I can get loads of stuff here on the internet but I prefer to read actual books and there are so many of them that I'm not sure which is best to start on.

Anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated

Cheers
Leds
:D

p.s. I saw a sundial inscription that read "sine sole sileo" and i've read this means "Without the Sun, i'm silent" - if you change the "sole" to "luna", would this work in the same way, as in "Without the Moon, I'm silent".....?

Thanks
 
A

Anonymous

Guest

Does it work to change a word within....?

Erm, thanks Errans...i think! ;)

Do you know if it works if you just change the word in a phrase such as the sundial inscription, i.e sole > luna...? Also, I'm interested to know whether the comma is used in the same way - the sundial says "sine sole sileo", and the translation is "Without the Sun, I'm silent" - should it be "sine sole, sileo" or is it right that the comma has been omitted?

Just tryin to get my head round some of the grammar - i have a long way to go!! :dancing:

Cheers
Leds
 

Donaldus

New Member

Nearly, it's sine lunā, which is the ablative case of luna... the ablative case pretty much just means the form nouns take after a few prepositions like sine and in one or two other situations, so approaching it as you're doing by taking a pattern and slotting in different words is a much better way of going about it than memorising the ablative case out of context.

If you look up "sun" you'll find sol,solis (m) and that tells you that after sine you drop the is in the second form and replace by e...

without [the] sun -> sol,solis -> sine sole
without end -> fin,finis -> sine fine

without [the] moon -> luna,lunae -> sine lunā
without water -> aqua,aquae -> sine aquā

There are a handful of other patterns, and there are exceptions to the above rules to learn afterwards, but if you can pick up that pattern you've learnt a lot of grammar!

@Errans... mordebo, I'll bite... the ditch?
 
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