Question: Conjunctions in Latin: ac, atque, et and -que

[Andy]

O! Sapientes Fori! Could you please explain to me the difference between:

1. ac
2. atque
3. et

and when it is possible to use -que?

I know that ac is the result of shortening atque, but is there any difference in usage?

And when I say, I went to the store and bought apples, grapes and bread, would the appropriate Latin be: I went to the store atque bought apples, grapesque breadque.

Or: I went to the store boughtque apples ac grapes ac bread.

My best attempt at this is:

Ad macellum ivi emique poma ac uvas ac panes

macellum, macelli N N [XXXDX] lesser
provision-market;

So, yeah, anything you know about these conjunctions, I would appreciate if you could post it.

Thanks in advance!

 

[deudeditus]

atque (ac) and et mean both pretty much the same thing. I always got the impression that, in classical latin, as I know very little of ecclesiastical (or the differences between the two), atque is a bit more emphatic than et. atque always confused me too, but because it appears to be at (but) with -que affixed. it may or may not be the case, but it confused me.

Your sentence seems fine to me, though, as ic mentioned above, ac seems to me a bit more emphatic than et, so I would, personally, change all the acs to ets. In lingua latina, -que is often used to join two separate but related phrases, rather than a list of items (pomaque uvasque panesque), but I don't know if it's improper or not.

Wait for someone else to comment to formulate any solid conclusions, though. hope I helped a little though.

-Jon

 

[QMF]

I don't believe -que is used with verbs. I believe it's exclusively used to tie together nouns and therefore phrases...although I am not sure. It is often used in lists of two, especially if one verb acts on two objects (e.g., I bought a cow and a bird=bovem avemque emi).
Just today I learned about a special use of ac that is EXCLUSIVELY ac: aeque...ac is translated as: as...as... (equally...as...) etc., and I thought it was pretty interesting. Then again I also nearly vomited when I learned a series of things about the word scortum, namely that it is neuter (obvious but you'll see) and means skin, hide, etc., but it is also the word for "whore". Therefore Romans thought of whores (this is the more blunt word, the less blunt is feminine) as mere flesh. Rather similar to the American viewing of slaves, is it not? But I digress.
Atque, at least in what I've read, is rather uncommon, and in fact so is ac.
One HUGE difference (for Latin poets) between them is their metrical usage. Ac is a long syllable (I think), atque is two shorts (which is...odd, since there are two adjacent consonants) et is one short, and -que is one short (which is often elided).

 

[Cato]

And when I say, I went to the store and bought apples, grapes and bread, would the appropriate Latin be: I went to the store atque bought apples, grapesque breadque.

My best attempt at this is:

Ad macellum ivi emique poma ac uvas ac panes

I think deudeditus and QmF pretty much have the differences between the three, though I'd say -que is used for single words or short phrases rather than to lead off a clause.

But let's take a closer look at your sentence. Classical Latin is much bigger on explicit subordination than modern English, so I would expect something different than to have the two parts of the sentence joined by et. This could be a hidden purpose clause, making for a more accurate:

Ad macellum ivi ut pomas uvasque panesque emam.

But if no purpose is implied, Latin prose might use a participle or an ablative absolute to separate the thoughts and keep the time relationship intact (you went to the store before buying anything):

Macello visitato, pomas uvasque panesque emi.

 

[QMF]

Of course, in using an ablative absolute construction, be sure to note that it is pretty much BY DEFINITION not a literal translation from English into Latin, as we never would say "With the store visited" (it sounds very strange) but Latin would in fact say that.

 

[Marius Magnus]

All things considered, ablative absolutes are actually not so uncommon in English. The ablative case long since deprecated, they can be harder to identify. But I've just used two.

Old English had an instrumental case, but not an ablative case proper (or, in reality, it is Latin that lacked an instrumental case proper, and subsumed its responsibilities under the dative and ablative cases). I don't know, however, if the instrumental case was used to make these "ablative absolute"-style phrases originally.

I do know that the Old English instrumental was used for phrases such as "the more, the merrier", for correlating two comparatives. Modern German has a similar construction ("je mehr, desto besser"), but uses the words "je" and "desto" in place of the usual German articles (which are, presumably, derived from the instrumental articles in some ancestor of German).

 

[Cato]

With the discussion taking such an interesting turn (looks like I got an abl. abs. in as well Marius ), I thought I'd comment further.

I think Marius would agree that the usage is far more common in classical Latin than modern English. Often when I introduce students to the abl. absolute, I use a rather bookish formula for translation: "with <the noun> <the participle", e.g. Duce interfecto - "With the leader having been killed". Usually one or two point out that sticking this in an English sentence sounds weird or old-fashioned, and I agree.

QmF's point is well taken; it's almost always better to avoid this exact construction in modern English. For Duce interfecto, try something like "After the leader was killed", or better yet link it to the main clause (technically this is a no-no--the grammar is called "absolute" because the noun in the clause should have no grammatical relationship with any part of the main clause--but it is much more natural sounding in English). Duce interfecto, milites ploraverunt. - "The soldiers wept for their slain leader." A little free, but tolerable.

 

[Marius Magnus]

Or even, "Their leader slain, the soldiers wept." It sounds a bit poetic that way...and sure, maybe a little old-fashioned.

Wasn't Classical Latin a rather stylized, oratory language in the first place? It seems appropriate enough to translate it into what is, basically, Classical English (a literary English which we can understand but do not use on a day-to-day basis). Didn't I read somewhere that Cicero himself lamented that he talked like a plebs?

 

[QMF]

Oratorial language, by what I've seen in Martial (which is VERY little) and Catullus (which is a bit more) is certainly not the entirety of Latin. When I found the definition of the word moechis in Carmen XI, for instance, I literally had to put my book down. Reading the poem, I had no idea that he was going to mention...well, look it up for yourself