Lesson in Latin

Scribal: VIVERIVNIVERSVMVISVSVICI

Modern: Vi Veri Universum Visus Vici

Vi - Abl. of vis (force, power), Veri - Gen. m./n. of Verum (truth), Universum - Acc. m./n. of Universus (whole, generally), Vivus - Nom. m. (alive, living), Vici - Per. Act. of Vincere (to conquer, overcome)

Lit.: From power of truth the whole alive I conquered

Usu.: By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe

Pers.:By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered all

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Can you imagine reading page upon page of scribal script, all capitalized and unspaced? Note that there are no "u"s until later Latin...Fortunately, there are no "w"s and no "j"s.

Ex nihilo nihil fit.

Reus Per Cruor Pro Vita!

Boss's is well known, and literally means "Out of nothing nothing is made." Only thing that gave me trouble was not knowing that fieri ("fit" = "- is made") was the passive of facere (to make, do, manufacture).

Fallen's has me utterly confused; "The accused through blood on behalf of life" was my first thought. Thinking about it, it's not Classical Latin. "Per" always takes an accusative, but "cruor" (gore, blood) is nominative (accusative would be cruorem).

However, I think this was a failed attempt to make one of B3's saying's in Latin "Bound by Blood for Life." It's an awesome idea Fallen, and will be covered in the next lesson...

Well you got it at the end , thank you. I in all honestly dont know any latin but thought id contribute to the topic and went to an online translator , hehe , they usually dont give accurate saying out but i thought you might get it.

And ill give one that i know by heart thats Latin and has great meaning , "Semper Fi" aka "Semper Fidelis".

No one forgets the forever faithful.

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Scribal: LIGATVSSANGVINEADVITAM

Modern: Ligatus Sanguine ad Vitam

Lit: "Having been tied by Blood toward life"

Pers: "Bound by Blood for Life"

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Ligatus Sanguine - [LS]

Wouldn't be too bad of a clan tag

P.S. Cruor works too: Ligatus Cruore. Sanguin is what I'd use for "bound by blood-oath" and Cruor is what I'd use for "Bound by the blood we shed together" (i.e. the blood we make others shed, the literal gore that we together cause).

Yeah mine is common I just like that saying I use it as a name for mmo characters and other accounts occassionally. But that is all the latin I know. I think it is a cool language though.

It may be too cool; I'm considering switching from Engineering to Latin.

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If, perhaps, you are wondering where the "by" comes from in "Ligatus Sanguine = Bound by Blood," it must be understood that Latin is a case-based language.

English used to have more cases, but today, all that really remains are the nominative/vocative and (loosely) the genitive, singular and plural. The genitive is best thought of as the possessive case:

The book of God. = God's book. (Liber Dei)

The book of the gods. = The gods' book. (Liber Deorum)*

The application of the 's morphs the noun into a (loosely) genitive or possessive form, with plural being represented with s'.

Latin has additional forms of nouns that mean different things. The word "by" in the translation of Ligatus Sanguine comes from Sanguine being in the Ablative case.

The ablative is used for many things, but can be summarized as expressing location, separation, or association. Thus it often comes translated with an additional English preposition such as "from" or "by" (as in the first lesson: Vi = Abl. of Vis = "from power"). Other examples:

Roma venit. = He came from Rome. (with macrons: Rōmā vēnit.)

Gladio pugno. = I fight with a sword. (Gladiō pugnō.)

interfici gladio = to be killed by sword (interficī gladiō)

Dominus cum servo venit. = The master came with a slave. (...servō vēnit) - Note how there IS a preposition in the Latin here. "Cum" (hahaha, okay; pronounced with the u as in "put") means "with" and appears here because the Ablative expresses accompaniment (hence, the Ablative of Accompaniment).

in oppido = in the town (...oppidō)

ex patria = out of the country (...patriā)

Compare some of these with genitive examples:

viri oppidi = men of the town (virī oppidī)

vis gladii = power of the sword (vīs gladiī)

Dominus servi = Master of the slave = The slave's master (...servī)

A generic Latin noun has forms corresponding at least to 6 cases: Nominative/Vocative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative (the Nom./Voc. are usually the same). Cities, large islands, and some nouns (domus, rus, humus, militia, and focus) have Locative (a seventh case) forms that function exactly as the Ablative of Place Where for other nouns (domī = at home, Rōmae = at/in Rome are Locative formations and in oppidō = in (the) town is an Ablative formation).

Nominative is what we use most in English, and is the general noun, used for the subject of sentences and their predicates. For example:

The boy is a slave.

Both "boy" and "slave" would be in the nominative case in Latin because they are the same object. The nominative is often translated from Latin with the articles a, an, or the.

Thus:

Puer servus est. = The boy is a slave.

The Dative case is most often used to express indirect objects; in English, indirect objects are often introduced by "for" or "to," like:

The boy gave a book to the girl.

"to the girl" would be represented by one word in Latin: puellae.

Note that that sentence also needs a direct object; that is, the thing being transferred to the indirect object, the book. "a book" would be represented in Latin with the Accusative case. The accusative always functions with an idea of "towards." Thus it can be used for direct objects (things to which an action is done) and with prepositions, indicating motion towards (going TO a place, opposite the Ablative, which expresses being in a place or going away from it, i.e. separation).

Thus,

Puellae librum puer dēdit.

Literally: To the girl a book the boy gave

Puellae = Dat. of Puella, Puellae f.

librum = Acc. of Liber, Librī n.

Puer = Nom. Sing. of Puer, Puerī m.

(Note how morphology is often presented from the nominative singular next to the genitive singular, with a letter for the gender [masculine, feminine or neuter]; puer is already in a standard form. Also, consider that, when learning Latin, this information has to be memorized for every noun)

There are many other more specific uses of the cases of Latin nouns, but they are too numerous for me to list here; the most general ideas have been given, however, and I hope that you've gotten a broad taste of why random words such as "by" and "to" or "for" can come out of nowhere in translations of Latin phrases.


*Note also that Latin lacks articles such as "the" or "a, an."

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Next will be how to pronounce your favorite Latin phrases as the Romans would have (which is significantly different from modern Church Latin!).

You know alot of effin latin , hats off to you , lol

It's cool!

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The alphabet:

The oldest Latin doesn't have W,w; U,u,; or J,j.

So what you get is that V,v and I,i work as both consonants AND vowels. If you've ever seen Jesus written IESVS, you now know why.

Most people use u as the vowel and v as the consonant these days just to make Latin easier to read; some people use J,j as well, but it's most common to leave I,i as both the consonant and the vowel.

Now, Classical Latin pronunciation as best as scholars know it:

The consonants are largely the same as English actually, but here are some exceptions:

bs and bt are pronounced as ps and pt as in "taps" and "apt."

c is ALWAYS pronounced like k. There is no "soft" C.

g is ALWAYS pronounced as in "get." It's NEVER silent like in "though."

h is ALWAYS pronounced as in "hat." It's NEVER silent.

i, when it represents a consonant (J), is pronounced like y. "Iesus" -> Ye-sus

r was probably rolled like in Spanish.

s is always as in "serpent."

v is pronounced like w.

z is pronounced like dz.

ch as in "character."

ph as in "people."

th as in "tea."

Vowels:

5 vowels with long and short variants:

a as in "await."

ā (long vowels are presented with macrons over them) as in "father."

e as in "pet."

ē as the a in "fate." (EYYYYYYYY)

i as in "fit."

ī as the ee in "feet."

o as in "soft."

ō as in "hope."

u as in "put."

ū as the oo in "fool."

qu, su, and gu are as in "quick," "perSUade," and "anGUish."

So, the famous phrase "VĒNĪ VĪDĪ VĪCĪ" = "I came, I saw, I conquered" is pronounced WAY-NEE WEE-DEE WEE-KEE.

"Ligatus Sanguine" is pronounced LIH-GAH-TOOS SAHN-GWIN-EH.

im going to end up learning latin by the end of this!

This is actually cool that your doing this here. I appreciate the dedication to anything even as small as this to this clan seeing as you have been here such a short time.

^^^^^^^^ Agreed

I'm greatly reinforcing my own learning at the same time, so it's good for all!

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Pronunciation part two:

There are special combinations of vowels called dipthongs that appear not only in Latin, but in other languages, including English (e.g. the -oy in boy).

The Latin dipthongs and their pronunciations are:

ae as the i in "high."

oe as the oy in "boy."

ei as the ay in "day."

ui as the wi in "twin."

au as the ow in "how."

eu as a combination of e + u (imagine Elmer Fudd saying "very"; the ew of his "vewy" would be this sound).

Now, as I said, dipthongs are important for pronunciation on their own AND for syllabification, and syllabification is important because Latin has innate stresses on it's words determined by the syllable placement. Syllabification is similar in Latin to that of English, but a thorough review is good idea:

Remember that there are NO silent letters in Latin words.

Now, a Latin word has as many syllables as it has nouns/dipthongs; solo consonants go with the following vowels:

anima a/ni/ma

aurum au/rum (note the dipthong au!)

gladius gla/di/us

If you've got two consonants in a row, only the LAST consonant goes with the following syllable:

imperium im/pe/ri/um (note how the m stays with the i)

sānctus sānc/tus (both n and c say with the ā, but the final consnant in the nct train goes with u)

virumque vi/rum/que (remember that qu, gu, and su are single consonants as in the previous lesson)

puella pu/el/la

Now, this last rule's a little tougher: if you have a two consonant combination where one is a mute, then the two are kept together. A mute is a consonant that requires a stoppage of breath; this is hard to conceptualize, so I'll just give a lot of examples for these.

Examples are like "tr," "pl," "gr", etc. It's usually a c, k, t, p, ch, th, ph, g, d or b, followed by either l or r. So like the tr in triple (or the pl in triple), or the br in bright, or the gr in grip. In English itself, these are treated as a single consonant. It happens in Latin too:

patria pa/tri/a

agricola a/gri/co/la

impleō im/ple/ō

christus chris/tus

Note the tr, gr, chr, and pl.

Now, every Latin word has a stress or accentuation on the second to last or third to last syllable (the second to last is called the penult, and the third to last is the antepenult; of course, a single syllabe word has no special accenting).

If a word has only two syllables, the penult is stressed:

tamen

cōnsul

mūtat

opus

The bold parts are stressed; stressing doesn't change the pronunciation of a vowel, you just WEIGH heavily on it in speech. Think about saying "Oh really" sarcastically: you put a lot of WEIGHT on the oh: "ohh really." The pronunciation of oh is no different, you've just added emphasis with tone change. This weighted tone is what stressing is.

Now, if a word has more than two syllables, then go by this rule:

If the penult has a long vowel or dipthong, then it is stressed. If not, the antepenult is stressed.

Now, a vowel can be long by nature (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū), or it can be long by position. Vowels that are long by position are vowels written short that are followed by two or more consecutive consonants. This can be hard to conceptualize, so see the examples.

PENULT STRESSED BECAUSE VOWEL IS LONG BY POSITION

ocellīs -> o/cel/līs -> ocellīs

Don't be confused by the ī in the last syllable; the last syllable is never stressed, and doesn't matter for stress determination. /cel/ is stressed because it is the penult and the e is long by position because it is followed by two consecutive l's.

contactum -> con/tac/tum -> contactum

/tac/ is stressed because it is the penult and the a is long by position because it is followed by two consecutive consonants, c and t.

magister -> ma/gis/ter -> magister

expressit -> ex/pres/sit -> expresit

intellegenda -> in/tel/le/gen/da -> intellegenda

cōnferrī -> cōn/fer/rī -> cōnferrī

PENULT STRESSED BECAUSE VOWEL IS LONG BY NATURE OR THERE IS A DIPTHONG

figūra -> fi/gū/ra -> figūra

The /gū/ is stressed because it is the penult and there is long vowel, ū. Also, note that gū is different from the single consonant gu.

persaepe -> per/sae/pe -> persaepe

The /sae/ is stressed because it is the penult and there is a dipthong.

perpauca -> per/pau/ca -> perpauca (Dipthong)

patiēmur -> pa/ti/ē/mur -> patiēmur (Long by nature)

poēta -> po/ē/ta -> poēta (Long by nature)

ANTEPENULT STRESSED BECAUSE THE PENULT IS SHORT

tempora -> tem/po/ra -> tempora

/tem/ is stressed because it is the antepenult and the o in the penult /po/ is neither long, followed by two consecutive consonants, nor part of a dipthong.

aequora -> ae/quo/ra -> aequora

The /ae/ is stressed because the penult /quo/ is not long in any way.

cēperis -> cē/pe/ris -> cēperis

mediocriter -> me/di/o/cri/ter - > mediocriter

The /o/ is stressed because the penult /cri/ is not long in any way.

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I wrote this myself, but I took a lot of good examples from the book.

That's it for pronunciation! The only thing i could do next would be to start teaching a class.

This is amazing looking back on it

Tempora bona

Good times

fuck rosetta stone when you have LOVE! thanks man i learned more from this one thread than i have the past 3 years of high school!

Wow people other than Boss and Me look at forums !!!! Good to know

I check them everyday, multiple times.

Same, nice to know someone does as well

Eh activity is pretty null lately with the majority either way.

True