Homework Today I participate in athletics

BrianBerbati

Member

Location:
Illinois, USA
Hello, this is Brian. I made three sentences with three different verb tenses (present, imperfect, and future) describing something I did today, yesterday, and what I will do tomorrow. I have a question about my first sentence. I believe athletica is the direct object of the sentence, so it would have to be in the accusative. However, a preposition is present so this is a conflict. Is my presumption of athletica being a direct object correct? Also, as a thought could "hodie ego participo athleticam" suffice as a translation so a Latin preposition would not be included? I believe this would have the same meaning.

Thanks for the help,

Brian

Hodie ego participo in athletica./Hodie ego participo athleticam.
Today I participate in athletics.

Heri ego vocabam amicam.
Yesterday I called a friend.

Cras ego discam Latinam.
Tomorrow I will study Latin.
 
B

Bitmap

Guest

However, a preposition is present so this is a conflict. Is my presumption of athletica being a direct object correct?
It can only be one of the two:
- either it is a direct object, then it is in the accusative case and has no preposition
- or it is a prepositional phrase, in which case the case of the noun is determined by the preposition -- it would not be the direct object in that case, though.

participare is constructed with a direct object, so your second option would be correct: hodie athleticam participo.
I suppose classical Latin would have a more elegant way of expressing this, but for the purpose of this exercise, you can go with that.

The rest is right. Note that you can leave out the ego.
 

BrianBerbati

Member

Location:
Illinois, USA
I see that I can leave ego out since I’m using verbs in the first person singular. Thank you for the clarifications, Bitmap.

Sincerely,

Brian
 
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Matthaeus

Vemortuicida strenuus

  • Civis Illustris

  • Patronus

Location:
Varsovia
Note that you can leave out the ego.
I didn't take the OP to be that arrogant, now...
:D
 
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