Table of Contents
1. Intro to Latin (This Post)
2. Pactio (Negima) Post #1
3. Project Listing Post #2
4. Rough cut at at Negima style pactio for members of the Azumanga Daioh cast post #11
Latin is a dead, dead language,
as dead as it can be.
It killed off all the Romans,
and now its killing me.
I'm keeping this short and simple for now. I may revise this to be more comprehensive later, but that isn't needed at this time.
Latin is written with the Latin alphabet. However, it was originally a more primitive form, with cases of single letters where we use two. (Iulius or Julius, for one. Either works, they are said the same.) Also, this was before capitalization, so that matters less. The language can also be used without such things as spaces and punctuation.
I was told to say c hard, like k, and say v like w. Hadrian is Ha dri an. (I do not remember all of the rules exactly, I'm writing this off the top of my head for now.)
English codes some of the meaning by word order. 'That cat ate my dog' has a different meaning from 'my cat ate that dog' or 'that dog ate my cat'. Latin codes these things by modifying the word itself. The word order can be changed entirely, in most cases, and retain the same meaning.
Google translate, as far as I can tell, has major issues with this and should be avoided.
Just the coding for three genders, singular and plural, and IIRC, six or seven cases, works out to something like 36-42 different variations for each word. Throw in voice, person and tense, and it starts to look impossible. Thankfully, there are patterns that most words follow. Even more thankfully, for those that just want to get their toes wet, there are tools that can do most of the heavy lifting.
Nouns are declined and verbs are conjugated. Nouns and adjectives are classified in different declensions, depending on how they vary. Likewise verbs and conjugations. Agricola (singular, nominative) is first declension, but oddly male instead of female.
I use two tools, which have so far been enough for all my translation work. These should be enough for most fanfic applications.
The first is Wheelock's, the famous Latin text. Basically, there are some tables in back and front that are very useful. They may not be needed for everything, but they are useful for things like 'which case is the indirect object' and 'what ending do I need for the right plural of this third declension word?'
The second is William Whitaker's Words. This is an electronic dictionary with a pretty good collection of words. (~E sets it to english to latin, ~L sets it back to latin to english.) I use it to check my spelling, to expand my vocabulary, and to help keep track of all the crazy variations in Latin words. I've just found that he'd died some years back, when I went to check his website, and found it gone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whitaker's_Words
http://archives.nd.edu/whitaker/words.htm
Quick tutorial part two: Type in sanctum, and it will display ADJ in part of the entry. Type in sanctorum, and in the same part of one of the entries, it will display N. This is how you recognize nouns and adjectives in this program.
Cases
Nominative, direct object of a sentence. The dog in the dog at my homework. (In Latin, I might write 'the homework of me', if I can find a word I like for homework.)
Genitive. Shows ownership, almost always translated to English with of. Of men in the master of men would be translated as the plural genitive of man.
Personal note: I wrote a lot of tables when I was studying Latin more formally. This has left me a bit OCD about Latin Grammar.
I also only took the basic stuff. Formal written English is the form of English that has the firmest rules. It is possible that they teach people to be less OCD in the more advanced courses, with reading Caesar and the poets and all that. Thus, some of what bothers me about what I see as incorrect grammar may be due to my limited education.
1. Intro to Latin (This Post)
2. Pactio (Negima) Post #1
3. Project Listing Post #2
4. Rough cut at at Negima style pactio for members of the Azumanga Daioh cast post #11
Latin is a dead, dead language,
as dead as it can be.
It killed off all the Romans,
and now its killing me.
I'm keeping this short and simple for now. I may revise this to be more comprehensive later, but that isn't needed at this time.
Latin is written with the Latin alphabet. However, it was originally a more primitive form, with cases of single letters where we use two. (Iulius or Julius, for one. Either works, they are said the same.) Also, this was before capitalization, so that matters less. The language can also be used without such things as spaces and punctuation.
I was told to say c hard, like k, and say v like w. Hadrian is Ha dri an. (I do not remember all of the rules exactly, I'm writing this off the top of my head for now.)
English codes some of the meaning by word order. 'That cat ate my dog' has a different meaning from 'my cat ate that dog' or 'that dog ate my cat'. Latin codes these things by modifying the word itself. The word order can be changed entirely, in most cases, and retain the same meaning.
Google translate, as far as I can tell, has major issues with this and should be avoided.
Just the coding for three genders, singular and plural, and IIRC, six or seven cases, works out to something like 36-42 different variations for each word. Throw in voice, person and tense, and it starts to look impossible. Thankfully, there are patterns that most words follow. Even more thankfully, for those that just want to get their toes wet, there are tools that can do most of the heavy lifting.
Nouns are declined and verbs are conjugated. Nouns and adjectives are classified in different declensions, depending on how they vary. Likewise verbs and conjugations. Agricola (singular, nominative) is first declension, but oddly male instead of female.
I use two tools, which have so far been enough for all my translation work. These should be enough for most fanfic applications.
The first is Wheelock's, the famous Latin text. Basically, there are some tables in back and front that are very useful. They may not be needed for everything, but they are useful for things like 'which case is the indirect object' and 'what ending do I need for the right plural of this third declension word?'
The second is William Whitaker's Words. This is an electronic dictionary with a pretty good collection of words. (~E sets it to english to latin, ~L sets it back to latin to english.) I use it to check my spelling, to expand my vocabulary, and to help keep track of all the crazy variations in Latin words. I've just found that he'd died some years back, when I went to check his website, and found it gone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whitaker's_Words
http://archives.nd.edu/whitaker/words.htm
Quick tutorial part two: Type in sanctum, and it will display ADJ in part of the entry. Type in sanctorum, and in the same part of one of the entries, it will display N. This is how you recognize nouns and adjectives in this program.
Cases
Nominative, direct object of a sentence. The dog in the dog at my homework. (In Latin, I might write 'the homework of me', if I can find a word I like for homework.)
Genitive. Shows ownership, almost always translated to English with of. Of men in the master of men would be translated as the plural genitive of man.
Personal note: I wrote a lot of tables when I was studying Latin more formally. This has left me a bit OCD about Latin Grammar.
I also only took the basic stuff. Formal written English is the form of English that has the firmest rules. It is possible that they teach people to be less OCD in the more advanced courses, with reading Caesar and the poets and all that. Thus, some of what bothers me about what I see as incorrect grammar may be due to my limited education.