si placet

BadButBit

Member

Location:
Moncton
hi,
I'm watching an old episode of Lost where Juliet says 'please' in latin. It sounds like 'si placet' which can either be 3rd p.sg. present active indicative of placeo, -ere(if it pleases' or 3rd p.sg present subjunctive of placo, -are(if it should soothe?). was 'si placet' a normal Roman expression similar to 'amabo te' ? or should it really be 'si places'(2nd person singular present active indicative) ?

BadButBit
 

Chamaeleo

New Member

Location:
Melbourne
Sī placēs would make no sense. Sī [tibi] placet makes perfect sense. It exactly mimics the way ‘please’ is said in French and Catalan, for example.

I have not personally come across it before in Latin.
 

BadButBit

Member

Location:
Moncton
"s'il vous plait" in french translates literally to 'if it pleases you' but when I suggest 'si places' I'm thinking of the english expression "if you please" which is what that is supposed to mean.
BadButBit
 

Iohannes Aurum

Technicus Auxiliarius

  • Technicus Auxiliarius

Location:
Torontum, Ontario, Canada
Yes CHAMÆLEO, but you might have forgotten about something called the T-V distinction. This meant that the Latin usage Sī [tibi] placet does not exactly mimic the way it is said in French.
 

BadButBit

Member

Location:
Moncton
actually the French commonly use both the "S'il te plait" (T-form, singular & informal) and the "s'il vous plait" (V-form, plural or formal) but the tv-joke was not Lost on me.

but why does "si places" not make sense? if you please.

BadButBit
 

Chamaeleo

New Member

Location:
Melbourne
BadButBit dixit:
"s'il vous plait" in french translates literally to 'if it pleases you' but when I suggest 'si places' I'm thinking of the english expression "if you please" which is what that is supposed to mean.
BadButBit
I knew that’s what you were thinking of. But why on earth are you trying to translate word-for-word an English expression rather than the meaning conveyed by an English sentence? This is the first thing to be learnt on any translation course.

The English expression ‘if you please’ came into the language as an over-literal calque of ‘s’il vous plaît’. It is rather distorted English grammar (by modern standards, at least). It would perverse to go one step further and deliberately say the nonsensical sī placēs on the basis of something that doesn’t make much sense even in English. How does English usage have any bearing on how we speak Latin anyway?

S’il vous/te plaît means ‘if it pleases you’.

So, I repeat that sī placēs (‘if you are pleasant’ / ‘if you are liked’) is not a sensible way of requesting something. Sī [tibi] placet (‘if it is agreeable [to you]’ / ‘if you like’) is appropriate.

Iohannes Aurum dixit:
Yes CHAMÆLEO, but you might have forgotten about something called the T-V distinction. This meant that the Latin usage Sī [tibi] placet does not exactly mimic the way it is said in French.
Stop attempting irrelevant displays of knowledge, John. It’s an epic fail when you are wrong. I speak the language fluently and can pass for French. I haven’t forgotten anything. Sī tibi placet is exactly the same as s’il te plaît. Deferential and plural forms are not under discussion.
 

BadButBit

Member

Location:
Moncton
i see what you're saying : the french is an evolution of the latin, the english is a failed copy of the french and my attempt to translate the failed copy of the evolved latin back into latin 'makes no sense'.
but my dictionary defines 'placeo, -ere' as "to please, be agreeable to, acceptable to" and so 'places' can be interpreted to mean "you please" or "you are pleasing" and so to say "if you are pleasing" may not translate to "s'il vous plait" but can still have meaning in latin.

si hunc intellego,

BadButBit
 

Chamaeleo

New Member

Location:
Melbourne
Indeed, it could make sense in a certain context — just not here.
 
 

Matthaeus

Vemortuicida strenuus

  • Civis Illustris

  • Patronus

Location:
Varsovia
CHAMÆLEO dixit:
Stop attempting irrelevant displays of knowledge, John. It’s an epic fail when you are wrong. I speak the language fluently and can pass for French. I haven’t forgotten anything.
LOL :D Chamæleoni, tibi omnino assentior :D
 

Imber Ranae

Ranunculus Iracundus

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Grand Rapids, Michigan
BadButBit dixit:
hi,
I'm watching an old episode of Lost where Juliet says 'please' in latin. It sounds like 'si placet' which can either be 3rd p.sg. present active indicative of placeo, -ere(if it pleases' or 3rd p.sg present subjunctive of placo, -are(if it should soothe?). was 'si placet' a normal Roman expression similar to 'amabo te' ? or should it really be 'si places'(2nd person singular present active indicative) ?

BadButBit
The second interpretation is impossible because placo cannot be used impersonally like placeo can be.

Si placet, like si libet, does not appear to have been used for making requests in classical Latin, though it may have been used this way in later Latin. Where it does occur it just means "if you like", a polite suggestion, as in de Re Publica II, 70:

Sed, si placet, in hunc diem hactenus; reliqua—satis enim multa restant—differamus in crastinum.'

"But, if you like, we'll only go so far today; the rest - for indeed quite enough remains - we'll defer till tomorrow.

Quaeso/quaesumus "please, I pray thee" is by far the most common way of making a polite request in classical Latin. It is also very formal, which probably explains its prominence in the literature. Amabo te "I'll love you", being colloquial and familiar, is found almost exclusively in the early dramatists and Cicero's personal letters.

Iohannes Aurum dixit:
Yes CHAMÆLEO, but you might have forgotten about something called the T-V distinction. This meant that the Latin usage Sī [tibi] placet does not exactly mimic the way it is said in French.
Classical Latin doesn't have T-V distinction.
 

BadButBit

Member

Location:
Moncton
hi,
thank you for your response.
do you know a lot of these exceptional verbs like 'fero, ferre' aside from adfero(affero), offero, refero, confero & differo?

BadButBit
 

Quasus

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Águas Santas
BadButBit dixit:
do you know a lot of these exceptional verbs like 'fero, ferre' aside from adfero(affero), offero, refero, confero & differo?
They are but very few: sum, possum, volō, edō and their compounds. All the rest verbs are conjugated regularly, even though their main forms can be irregularly built. Some verbs have minor pecularities, e.g. dare has a short a and still belongs to the first conjugation.
 

BadButBit

Member

Location:
Moncton
ok,
I wasn't aware of 'edo' but the others, with the exception of 'differo' which you used in an earlier post, are all listed in my Latin textbook. I have been writing a computer program which conjugates/declines ~all~ the words in a latin/english dictionary and chapter 31 in Wheelock's Latin introduces the 'fero, ferre' and the other cast of outcast verbs that are exceptions but unlike sum or possum. next month they promise to talk about nolo, volo, malo, fio & eo which all sound like dwarfs in a cartoon animation to me right now.

thanks for your input
BadButBit
 

Chamaeleo

New Member

Location:
Melbourne
Are you duplicating Whitaker’s effort?
 

BadButBit

Member

Location:
Moncton
I've never heard of Whittaker but I can say that I've developped this program entirely from scratch by myself over the last three years by first typing a dictionary "Cassell's Latin/English Dictionary" (circa '73 or so?) into my computer via a database I wrote using Microsoft's Visual Basic. I then wrote the conjugation/declension of whatever chapter I happened to be studying at the time and over about two years built a patchwork program that worked haphazardly and was in dire need of repair. at that point I switched to Microsoft's Visual C# software development language and rewrote the whole thing in under a month making it much much more concerted, simple to debug & fast. the hardest part was figuring out what kind of word 'noun', 'pronoun', 'verb 1st conjugation' ... when loading the entry from the dictionary and having spent over two years constantly reworking the one function that figured that out in the original version I wrote a program to rewrite the entire dictionary to include that program's findings making the re-writing of the actual program-proper much simpler. also, by then, I had a bit of a clue about what latin was though now i almost entirely rely on this program that my actual latin-learning is limited to constantly checking my program, I lean far-too much on it to do any actual learning.
I've offered it before on this forum and had no takers if you're interested in reading more about it I made mention in two articles I wrote on TheCodeProject website : http://www.codeproject.com/KB/edit/Textbox_with_spell_check.aspx" titled "spell weller, but grammar's up to you" & a more recent english-language dictionary that works similary http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/GCide_Dictionary.aspx" titled "GCIDE: A Complete English Language Dictionary".
This latin program allows me to high-light text off this page, 'copy' it to my computer's clipboard where it is then retrieved by the program, gets searched in the "Look-Up Table" and then replies with all the possible word sources & the various ways which that particular spelling can be derived, from this I can ask it to show me the entire declension/conjugation or just give me the definition(and there I can ask it for any conjugation/declension for that word). its a pretty good program and if latin were marketable I'd be rich, but alas ....
 

BadButBit

Member

Location:
Moncton
ok,
its pretty good but it doesn't tell you the type of solution (e.g. 1st pers. pl., Present Subjunctive Active) and the text-interface is less than optimal. but for the cost and file size you can't complain.
if I were to go to a previous post in this forum and highlight the word "differamus" and copy it to my clipboard my program tells me the derivation, definition and even shows me the entire conjugation with the option of popping-up any other form for that word. its really very good.
here's a screen capture :

the command was "differamus", the first form to appear is at the top of the screen from there any of multiple results(there was only the one for this particular command which tells you the specific form that word has taken to produce this particular spelling, in this case : "differo, differe, distuli, dilatum Conjugation Present Subjunctive Active, First person, plural") can be selected, pressing F1 gives you the dictionary form with its definition and the option to decline/conjugate the word any way it can be declined/conjugated or helpful study topic links from Wheelock's Latin Textbook relevant to this word can also be prompted. from the original form pressing F3 gives you the conjugation (or declension if that be the case) for the original word will appear with an option to view a no thrills extra definition
 

Chamaeleo

New Member

Location:
Melbourne
It doesn’t give grammatical information such as person and tense? Yes, it does. The text interface is fine too. I’m glad I can just run it in Yakuake without it opening its own window or suchlike. The problem with Words is that it does not give vowel lengths, and it is only Latin–English, and not really the other way around.
 

BadButBit

Member

Location:
Moncton
wow,
Whittaker's is pretty good then, I'm impressed with the file-size because my program is huge. and in my opinion, looks and interfaces much better and does keep track of the long/short vowels. the look-up table finds all the long/short vowel variations of any given spelling and lists them in the results, e.g. here's a screen capture of the results for 'placet'.
there are three of them and their definitions all appear in the same capture here top to bottom. I'm using the french accent 'accent-circonflexe' to keep track of the long vowels but in another project in which I do my latin exercises, a latin-centric bit of code, these accents are replaced by macrons via lines drawn graphically onto the screen. There's probably a character set i could use instead of the french-accents but I just haven't bothered looking for it.
BadButBit
 

Quasus

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
Águas Santas
BadButBit dixit:
There's probably a character set i could use instead of the french-accents but I just haven't bothered looking for it.
Indeed such a set exists and is called Unicode. ;) As to you programme, it looks quite impressive! It's most appropriate to give citations.

As to the lengths, you may want to check them in DELL. For example, does your dictionary give māximus?
 
Top