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I see this use of 'that' in English sentences all the time connecting subordinate clauses and such. I was wondering how'd you say something like "I'm pleased that it is Friday" or "He told me that it will be easy" in latin.

I'm unsure if it uses ut/subjunctive or its unnecessary in this form or something else

MWB_Primus
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1 Answers1

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In general, you cannot translate that one word in English with one word in Latin in all scenarios. Subordination in many languages tend to be very idiomatic, and both English and Latin are no different in that regard. (Think about: why "that" at all?)

Depending on the introductory verb, you typically wouldn't translate it at all. Instead, you use would use the infinitive + accusative construction, what's called indirect statement.

There are many rules around this, dictating e.g. how the tenses work, so you can't do a simple one-to-one with English.

So, for your example sentence, "I'm glad that it's X", you would use placere in the impersonal, the subject goes into the dative, and then you'd have an indirect sentence, just like in this example from Cicero's letters:

Mihi placet, si tibi videtur, te ad eum scribere...
I'm glad (lit. "it is pleasing to me), if it seems good to you, that you write to him...

Other possibilities that eventually took over Latin in later eras are quod and quia or quoniam. The former seemed in earlier Latin to mean more "the fact that" or otherwise used when introducing a factual statement, while the latter originally meant "since" or "because", but by later Latin (and in earlier, uneducated speech), they could both be used to simply introduce an indirect statement. Wikipedia has a quick breakdown.

So using gaudeo (thanks to Cerberus for the suggestion), you could do gaudeo quod..., but in Classical Latin would mean something along the lines of "I rejoice in the fact that...", which is only a short hop away from "I'm glad that...".

cmw
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    How would you phrase "I'm glad it's Friday" using an ACI? Or would you use a causal solution instead? I agree with the answer, but I'm not sure what it entails for the specific example sentence. – Joonas Ilmavirta Apr 28 '23 at 19:54
  • @JoonasIlmavirta I'm not sure about "it's Friday", but I took these as illustrative examples, rather than a desire to know the specifics of these examples. I gave a concrete example though using the construction in the title. – cmw Apr 28 '23 at 20:28
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    This answer is of course correct, but I believe it so happens that (personal) verbs expressing an emotion often do so by means of a quod clause, like gaudeo quod (though an a.c.i. is also possible): "I am glad (about the fact) that". This may be where Mediaeval Latin got its general use of quod for the a.c.i. In addition, some verbs (sometimes or normally) use ut "that" instead of an a.c.i., like various verbs of asking/demanding, happening: peto ut, accidit ut. And of course verbs of fear or prohibition usually use ne for "that". – Cerberus Apr 29 '23 at 00:06
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    @Cerberus I edited it some more. I think the ut clauses after words like peto are often considered purpose clauses. You can also have fac ut. Simply put, there's no one single way to translate that word. One has to do the heavy lifting of actually learning the grammar in toto. – cmw Apr 29 '23 at 00:42
  • Thanks for this breakdown, it makes a lot of sense. There is a lot about languages that is generally idiomatic that I don't notice until I look between them, I find it pretty interesting. I find myself wanting to write subordinate clauses in sentences often and was wondering what that would look like in Latin, this is a great help. – MWB_Primus Apr 29 '23 at 01:27
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    @Cerberus, to add the discussion. Before edit, I actually started writing an answer discuss this issue where ut is an idiomatic choice. like spero ut or vellim ut or the "impersonal" as evenit ut or fit ut. However, as cmw, I feel it is closer to purpose clause or simply a correlative to sometime implied id or hoc (see elusive example: "lex ut".) placere ut is attested but seems only as propose ("resolved to" as opposed to "pleased that") – d_e Apr 29 '23 at 08:24
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    @cmw: Is it, "mihi placet nunc diem Veneris esse."? (I've avoided using "hodie" = "on this day"). – tony May 05 '23 at 13:01
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    @Cerberus: Is it: "gaudeo diem Veneris adesse."? Alternatively, "gaudeo quod dies Veneris adest."? – tony May 10 '23 at 08:00
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    @tony: Yes, I think so. – Cerberus May 11 '23 at 00:33
  • Factual quod after verba affectus is a regular occurrence, and A & G (on the page you linked) translate gaudeo quod as "I am glad that." I believe any reservations around this usage (or it's classical character) are unnecessary. – Sebastian Koppehel Jun 05 '23 at 05:21
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    @SebastianKoppehel I was speaking more to its historical development. I wasn't limiting this to certain types of verbs because that would be taking the OP too literally. I wasn't aiming at a translation, but to explain that in general you wouldn't use quod to translate "that" in any given indirect statement, not only verbs of feeling. – cmw Jun 05 '23 at 12:49
  • (In other words, I'm not disagreeing, just making a different point.) – cmw Jun 05 '23 at 14:03