Homework Pronouns

[BrianBerbati]

Hello, this is Brian. I have a few sentences I was tasked with translating. They're quite simple, however I'm a bit confused with sentence two. So far we have not studied personal pronouns so I suppose this sentence does not need to be translated with a pronoun in the sentence. I'm wondering if I'm missing something. Would the translation be something like "puer est discipulus?" Since puer is defined as a boy, this might not be correct since puer is quite specific but that's my best guess.

Thanks for the help,

Brian

1. Hello (to one person). How are you?
Salve. Quid agis?
2. It is sunny and it is warm.
Calet est sol lucet.
3. He is a student.
(Puer est discipulus.)
4. A ruler is on the table.
Regula est in mensa.
5. The good girl is happy.
Bona puella est laeta.

 

[Bitmap]

2. It is sunny and it is warm.
Calet est sol lucet.

et.

3. He is a student.
(Puer est discipulus.)

You don't need a pronoun in Latin. You can just write discipulus est. If you are desperate to put one in, you can write ille est discipulus.

 

[BrianBerbati]

BrianBerbati dixit:
2. It is sunny and it is warm.
Calet est sol lucet.

et.

Whoops, I should've used a conjunction. That was a foolish error.

You don't need a pronoun in Latin. You can just write discipulus est. If you are desperate to put one in, you can write ille est discipulus.

That did not click at first, but it makes sense now. I suppose, since discipulus is a masculine noun, there is no "he" needed to denote the gender of the student. Thanks for the corrections. I really appreciate your assistance, Bitmap.

Sincerely,

Brian

 

[Bitmap]

That did not click at first, but it makes sense now. I suppose, since discipulus is a masculine noun, there is no "he" needed to denote the gender of the student. Thanks for the corrections. I really appreciate your assistance, Bitmap.

Latin doesn't really have personal pronouns in the 3rd person, at least not the way English does. There are demonstrative pronouns that sometimes coincide with our use of personal pronouns (and in Romance languages, articles and personal pronouns developed out of ille/illa), but just like in the first and second person, you usually don't need one.

Note that you didn't need to translate "it" either when you translated "it is warm" as calet (and in this case, Latin wouldn't even have a chance of flicking a personal pronoun in because it doesn't have dummy subjects like English).

Whoops, I should've used a conjunction. That was a foolish error.

I used to make that mistake in French at an amazingly reliable repetition rate.

 

[Quasus]

Calet looks suspicious in the context of weather. Forcellini gives an example of caletur in this sense.

 

[Quasus]

For that matter, I'm not sure if sol lucet is an idiomatic translation of "it is sunny". Caelum est serenum is safer.

 

[BrianBerbati]

Great, thanks for the suggestions Quasus.

 

[Bitmap]

Calet works as well, just as sol lucet is fine.

Don't overcorrect what isn't broken.

 

[Pacifica]

Calet works as well

I would have thought so, but now that I've looked for examples I couldn't actually find any.

 

[Bitmap]

I would have thought so, but now that I've looked for examples I couldn't actually find any.

My dictionary gives

Aktiv unpers., calet (es ist heiß) tamquam furnus, Petron. 72, 3: u. Passiv impers. (vgl. Prisc. 8, 26), quom caletur od. quom caletur maxume, wenn es heiß, sehr heiß ist, Plaut. capt. 80; truc. 65:

 

[Pacifica]

calet (es ist heiß) tamquam furnus, Petron. 72, 3:

That's one possible example that the OLD omits. You can also take it to refer to balneum rather than an impersonal "it", though.

 

[Bitmap]

It's a good enough solution for a beginner's exercise when you (presumably) don't even know the passive, yet.

 

[Pacifica]

Probably.

 

[Quasus]

Don't overcorrect what isn't broken.

It's very hard to demonstrate that something is broken in Latin (and there are different levels of "brokenness"). In any case, this requires an order of magnitude more expertise than I have, because Latin is so varied. So personally, I just prefer to play safe as long as I can. Where do these calet and sol lucet come from? Are they literal translations? If so, they may prove natural phrases to talk about weather by coincidence, or they may not. If calet should be OK but absent from Forcellini & OLD, probably it makes sense to opt for something safer. Frankly, I'm not sure about caletur either. Calere is said of hot things & caletur is an impersonal passive, so it should be something like "every object is hot", which conveys the idea of hot weather, but maybe in a figurative style. The examples are from Plautus.

Here are a few examples from Sprechen Sie lateinisch:
sudum est hodie
caelum est mire (mirum in modum) serenum
caelum serenum est et siccum
neque frigus est neque aestus
caelum est splendidissimum (Die Sonne scheint hell. The sun is shining brightly.)
est ingens aestus
sol urit
caelum admodum pluvium videtur esse
etc.

I'd say, aestus est is safe for "it's hot" & caelum est splendidum for "it's sunny". Caelum serenum is a nice expression for good weather. Maybe sol lucet/splendet is OK.

As for the methodological aspect, I don't want to guess to much. I only apriori assume that if it's a kind of grammar drill, it uses adequate vocabulary & there's a way for the student to figure out needed vocabulary (e. g. a wordlist).

 

[cinefactus]

Interesting. I tried to search for these phrases in phi and the only one I could find which looked reasonable was, caelum cum aequaliter totum erit splendidum articulis temporum

 

[Quasus]

Yes, obviously it's the one mentioned by Forcellini under SPLENDIDUS I 1 (Plin. 28. Hist. nat. 35. 80. (351)), together with the comment sereno, chiaro. He classifies it under the proper meaning of splendidus, which he defines as qui splendet, lucidus, clarus, nitidus. When it’s sunny, not only the sun shines but the whole sky. Thus, semantically, splendidus is a good match for caelum; this combination is attested and even deserved a remark from Forcellini.

Apriori I trust Capellanus. He’s a German and he lived at the time when Latin was a big deal. His book had lots of editions and was traslated into a few languages. Thus, Capellanus knew Latin better than I do and his book must be OK.

 

[Quasus]

As for the methodological aspect, I don't want to guess to much.

However, I find it weird that the sentence "it is warm" fell under the category "pronouns". Not only Latin lacks 3rd person pronouns, but in this sentence "it" is just a formal subject, it doesn't stand for a noun. That is to say, the wording "it is warm" is an English quirk and I don't quite understand what it has to do with Latin. Curiously, its equivalent in Russian (which is as distant from English as Latin is) involves neither pronouns nor verbs, it would be an adverb, who would have thought it?

But that's not my course and not my textbook, so I try not to think about it too hard.

 

[Pacifica]

In French, it makes hot.

 

[Bitmap]

So do you.