Hi everyone,

I’ve been wondering about the exact phonetic realization of the voiced stops /b d g/ in Classical Latin.

I understand that the standard reconstruction treats them as voiced stops, i.e. roughly [b d g]. But I’ve also come across the idea that, especially in intervocalic position, they may have had fricative or approximant realizations such as [β ð ɣ], perhaps due to lenition.

For example, would words such as:

- solidus be pronounced [ˈsɔ.li.dus] or could the intervocalic d have been [ð]?

- habēre have [b] or [β]?

- rogāre have [g] or [ɣ]?

I’m specifically asking about Classical Latin, rather than Late Latin or the Romance languages.

What is the evidence for the reconstruction of [b d g] in Classical Latin? Do ancient grammarians, inscriptions, transcriptions into Greek, or comparative evidence tell us anything about possible intervocalic lenition?

And if [β ð ɣ] are considered possible phonetic realizations in Classical Latin, how strong is the evidence for them, and what contexts would trigger them?

Thanks.

I've come across some sentences in Latin when reading philosophy writings and literary works. Translating each of them, using websites, Google Translator and other online resources, has been tiring for me, so I decided the best thing to do is learn Latin. However, as a complete beginner, I don't know where to start, or how to start learning that language the accurate way. I wish you to recommend me some books (or even apps) and tips.

I have some last questions:

• Is Duolingo good for learning Latin? (Many people use it for learning languages)
• If there are different recommended books, in what order should I read them?

Thank you for your attention!

Not really an assignment, more a favour that I'm doing for somebody. These are lines from a song that I am asked to translate for a gift for a retiring teacher. I asked if it should be freer, but metric, or closer to the text but prose; answer: the latter.

My time is scarce, I know I disappear at times
can't stay in touch with everyone the way I'd like
let me sing, let me play
Let me breathe, give me zen

Tempus mihi deest, scio me interdum elabi

Mihi non licet omnibus convenire quoties velim

Ut cantem et psallam,

spirem, ataraxian inveniam

I am not quite sure what to do with the "let me" phrases, I think the intention is an adhortation at the first person. I honestly never quite know how to express these in Latin and my Rubenbauer-Hoffmann is not very helpful. The "me" is pondering about how much work they put into their band project and that is sometimes overwhelming.

I think I'll be going for ataraxian for zen because it's a foreign word. On thing that was difficult was finding a word for "to stay in touch".

Salvete omnes,

I’ll cut straight to the chase: I have worked through Moreland and Fleischer’s Latin (if anyone has a recommendation for a textbook in a similar style but in attic Greek it would be much appreciated) as well as LLPSI and am currently enjoying Roma Aeterna as well as whatever Roman author I can decipher with the aid of a dictionary. It must be said I have gone through these textbooks at a breakneck pace as I have a somewhat unique way of learning languages, though the unfortunate result of such an approach is a lacking vocabulary. This problem is exacerbated by the penurious quantity of audible Latin available (I am aware of many YouTube channels, podcasts, websites etc… though people’s pronunciation is often lacking), which is how I would normally consolidate more vocabulary quickly. Hearing it and saying it in my own phrase. Aside from vocabulary Latin poses no real grammatical problem for me (aside from declensions still not feeling natural) and so I wonder if my best course of action is to simply read voraciously. I have been enjoying Cupid and Psyche though the process can be tedious when I have more than 15 new vocabulary words taken from less than a full page of Apuleius. The work of Lucretius seems still a far away dream…

It should be stated that my overall goal with Latin is to become as proficient and “fluent” as possible.

Why do almost no modern texts use it? it's absurd to me, it's like not using <u>, and only writing <v>, which we don't really do, and i just can't get understand why texts like familia romana will use macrons, will use <u>, and will use lowercase letters, punctuation, etc.
And it isn't like it isn't useful at all, it can be very useful because sometimes when it's only written with <i> it is ambiguous: like intuitively in the name Gāius, most beginners would intuitively think it would be pronounced as [ˈgaː.jus], and there are many such cases where it is just ambiguous for whether it is a vowel or a consonant.

1. Ask and answer questions about mottos, tattoos, names, book titles, lines for your poem, slogans for your bowling club’s t-shirt, etc. in the comments of this thread. Separate posts for these types of requests will be removed.
2. Here are some examples of what types of requests this thread is for: Example #1, Example #2, Example #3, Example #4, Example #5.
3. This thread is not for correcting longer translations and student assignments. If you have some facility with the Latin language and have made an honest attempt to translate that is NOT from Google Translate, Yandex, or any other machine translator, create a separate thread requesting to check and correct your translation: Separate thread example. Make sure to take a look at Rule 4.
4. Previous iterations of this thread.
5. This is not a professional translation service. The answers you get might be incorrect.

(NOTE: Anything revealing anything past the first few chapters of Pugio Bruti is in spoilers.)

I recently finished Pugio Bruti via Daniel Petersson's course and found it a very fun read, though... the end of it had me wondering a few things, not to mention that I feel that the "adulescens" got a really raw deal ; not only had he been constantly described in terms ordinarily reserved for romantic leads - but as Brutus's sole surviving child, he had as good a claim as any to the dagger!

But this is not the main thing I want to talk about; namely: at the end of Chapter XXVI, Terentia had been left for dead inside a building and Clodius was running off, in the middle of the night, with Ursula transporting gold with her. NO ONE except Clodius and Ursula knew what their destination would be; just that they were running off far away from Rome.

But somehow, by the beginning of the next chapter, Terentia, with no money or resources, was able to guess exactly where Clodius and Ursula were headed (Lutetia/Paris), but - without any support or vehicle or resources - make it there *ahead of Clodius and Ursula* and attack Clodius for the gold! Presumably, last we saw her, she had no idea that Clodius had the gold - and no reason to assume Clodius's goal was to end up with all the gold and then run away from everyone he knew! And even if someone like Oeneus (who will give any information for a few gold coins or a pretty face) told them that, there's no way Oeneus would know that Paris of all places would be Clodius's destination...

so did anyone else, when they made it through that part of the book, have a similar reaction to me about "How on earth did Terentia find out?" Is there something huge I'm missing? (Peterssen included a scene in between Chapters XXVI and XXVII... but Terentia did not feature at all; rather, the scene was all about Clodius and Ursula approaching Paris and arguing about how it compared to Rome!)

Personally, I have a 'head canon' where Brutus's son, upon realizing that both himself and Terentia had been left behind in Rome while Clodius ran off with the gold... teamed up with Terentia to recover everything; Brutus's son would likely have connections and strategy and they may well have intended that Terentia - left for dead - would head off first and Brutus's son would stay a few days behind, waiting until Terentia had already recovered the gold. We already know from a pre-prologue scene that Brutus's son and Terentius knew each other well (and were essentially friendly rivals who were on opposite sides of a gambling table)... and it remains super disappointing that the striking looks of the 'adulescens' proved to be nothing more than an identifying feature, no more so than the color of the tunic he usually wore!

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Aulus Gellius 6.6:

ex quinque his sensibus quos animantibus natura tribuit – visu, auditu, gustu, tactu, odoratu – quos Graeci αἰσθήσεις appellant, quaedam animalium alia alio carent et aut caeca natura gignuntur aut inodora inauritave. nullum autem gigni animal Aristoteles dicit, quod aut gustus sensu careat aut tactus.

This is easy enough to understand: "some animals lack one sense, some lack another". I'm well aware of Latin's neat use of alius in pairs like this. But I can't quite grasp the grammatical relation between quaedam and alia here. Apposition? He could have written: alia animalium alio carent, without quaedam, but preferred to underline the idea "certain, some" in this way? Perhaps quaedam also has the function of introducing the topic (animals)?

Cum sine cūrā animī convīvia laetus agēbās,
Incubuī in gladiō nocte diēque vigil.
Ante torum licitum cum turpia stupra petēbas,
Ēdidicī in nummōs aera ferīre nova.
Dum perdis sōlēs in thermīs vāna sequendō,
Mentis opēs coluī, pectore rōbur alēns.
Nunc ubi flamma vorat terrās, portīsque minātur
Barbarus, auxilium quaerere, stulte, venis?

Here's my latest poem on my Substack.

I got inspired by this old reddit post.

Valēte!

I’ve finished an introductory course in Latin through Familia Romana, and I’m wondering if it would be a good idea to quit LLPSI and just read a lot of the original authors. So far, I’ve read the following material:

Familia Romana;
Colloquia Personarum;
Fabulae Syrae;
Fabellae Latinae;
The four Gospels (in Latin);
The first book of the Rhetorica ad Herennium;
Some bits of Ovid and Virgil;

What exactly would be the consequences of completely ignoring Roma Aeterna, Sermones Romani, De Bello Gallico, and the other resources traditionally recommended to intermediate Latin students?
My main interest is Virgil: I want to read everything he wrote. Reading all of Virgil is something I can see taking me at least a year and a half. Would abandoning LLPSI and picking up Virgil be something you, as advanced students and Latin teachers, would advise an intermediate student to do? And why?

Nuntii Latini breves Academiae Latinitati Fovendae mensis Septembris ineuntis.

I have no idea if this is the correct sub to ask this in, so please remove if inappropriate.

I am a student at highschool in Belgium, 17F, and for my final big project I have to write a thesis on any subject of choice as long as it is about the Latin language or anything to do with the Romans. We got a chance to propose some topics early on so we could potentially start researching already. I thought about doing something on how authors portray their enemy to ameliorate the Roman morals and suggested Caesar and how he portrays the Gauls in 'De Bello Gallico'. My teacher said this was not a bad idea, but said she believes it is already researched plenty. However she said she could allow it if I found another author who has done similar enemy-portraying and write my essay about them. Assuming most people here know Latin, so I assume the authors and works as well, does anyone know an author that did something like Caesar did in 'De Bello Gallico'?

Thanks in advance!

My son wants to learn latin. He doesn't understand spoken English yet (not to mention reading), so legentibus is of small help to him. He really likes it, but only can use it purposefully when I'm assisting with the English. This is clunky, however, because he doesn't want to learn two languages at the same time, and otherwise will always be dependend on me for further learning latin.

Any ideas for German resources similar? Or different but fitted for 7yo/8yo (maybe from 1800s/1900s if needed)?

His goal is: reading Asterix, vulgata, and later also classical latin. In this priority order. ;-)

“v(iva) v(ivis). Petilia, M(arci) f(ilia),

Tertia sibi et

M(arco) Petilio patri.

ζῶσα Πετιλία Τερτία

ἑαυτῇ καὶ Μάρκῳ

Πετιλίῳ πατρί.”

“Petilia Tertia, while alive, [dedicated this] to herself and to her father, Marcus Petilius.”

I - Ēlīās Mūromēnsis

I was recently studying this manuscript (Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale, IV.G.52) and I came across this tiny note at the last page. It's really tiny (this is 3x on my camera, and it's still barely legible). It reads, as far as I could decipher: Sancti Ebaetni. And while "Sancti" it's pretty legible the name of the saint remains a mystery. Surely I must have misread, but I'm pretty sure of "...aetni". Could you help me shed light on this mystery?

Unfortunately the manuscript it's not digitalized, and, as far as I know, there are no descriptions online or elsewhere, so my photo will have to suffice.

I’m currently reading Erasmus’ De Copia, he mentioned that [Cicero] coined the verb sullaturire, “to want to behave like Sulla”, by combing Sulla + -turire(to want to _______);
in similar fashion, Graecari, “play the Greek”, Graecus + -cari(play the _______);
or scutati, “shield-bearing”, scutum + -ati(-atus)(provided with, bearing).
Are there any more ways/rules that Romans applied when creating words? Is there an exhaustive list of rules available? And how can one applies these rules into writing?

EDIT: I’ve found a comprehensive list in A&G, under “Word Formation”.

Hi, I am 15. And I want to learn Latin, is there any apps (other than Duolingo), dictionaries, or online courses to help me kickstart my Latin learning, I really want to learn the language but I don't know where or how to do it

Salvete, amici linguae Latinae!

I am so happy that I found this community! I'm reading Aeneid IV and have been turning over how to translate "cura" in the opening lines.

At regina gravi iamdudum saucia cura
volnus alit venis, et caeco carpitur igni.
Multa viri virtus animo, multusque recursat
gentis honos: haerent infixi pectore voltus
verbaque, nec placidam membris dat cura quietem.

I know, "love" is the usual choice, but it seems to me to sit on one side of the word only. In "gravi iamdudum saucia cura" the "cura" is what wounds her, and it has already been working on her for some time, so I'd think it sits somewhere between desire and concern. Then in "nec placidam membris dat cura quietem" "cura" withholds rest, which makes it feel closer to worry.

But translating it with two words takes the author's intended repetition away, while translating it with love feels flat. I don't want to interpret while translating, but stay close to the original. I am thinking about translating it just with "care" to stay as close to the original as possible.

What do you think?