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3 answers
What is the most common classical Latin word that we don't understand?
I assume that we do not know the meaning of every single word attested in classical and older Latin (literature, inscriptions, and other material).
If this assumption is false, it makes this question pointless, but a well explained justification of…
Joonas Ilmavirta
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How do you say "yes" and "no" in Classical Latin?
I'm wondering how the Romans would have said "yes" as in "yes please" or "no" as in "no thank you". I don't know if they would have said it exactly like that, but what would they have said if they had to mean something like that?
Landon
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4 answers
What effect should a macron have on the sound of a letter and its word?
Latin makes use of macrons (small lines above letters) to indicate a different pronunciation for that letter.
Exactly what should the macron indicate about the pronunciation of the letter?
Does the macron affect the sound of the containing word in…
ArtOfCode
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Why does Latin have five different noun declensions?
Do they originate in particular dialects or languages that influenced Latin?
Is the question even answerable? With any degree of certainty?
Just curious.
davidrmcharles
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What gender should a predicate adjective be to agree with a series of things with different genders?
I'd like the translate the following sentence into Latin:
Pompeii, Rome, and Herculaneum are visited by the boys.
However, since these three cities have different genders, I'm struggling to choose the right ending to put in the blank:
Pompeii et…
Nathaniel is protesting
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30
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4 answers
When is "diēs" masculine, when is it feminine, and why can this word take different genders?
Wiktionary goes into it a bit:
Diēs is an exceptional case of a fifth declension noun since it is both used in the masculine form and in the feminine form, instead of just feminine like the rest of the fifth declension nouns. The masculine use is…
Jackson
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30
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7 answers
How do you say "please" in Classical Latin?
I'm wondering how to say "please" in Classical Latin like "please" as in "can I PLEASE have that?" or "PLEASE go away" or something like that.
Landon
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30
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1 answer
Why did so many Romans name their children after ordinal numbers?
Why were so many praenomina ordinal numbers or apparently derived from ordinal numbers?
A few examples:
Octavia Minor (Augustus Caesar's older sister)
Octavia Major (Augustus Caesar's older half-sister)
Quintus Aelius Paetus
Sextus Aelius Paetus…
Ben Kovitz
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29
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1 answer
What are the classical names of the letters of the Latin alphabet?
When I refer to letters in Latin, I (sadly) use the English names for them. If I knew the Latin names, I could apply Classical Latin pronunciation rules to say them properly.
So, how was each letter referred to in Classical Latin? How do we…
Nathaniel is protesting
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29
votes
1 answer
Why hippopotamus instead of potamohippus?
Judging by this dictionary entry for hippopotamus, the Romans knew this animal and used the name we currently use in English.
This word has an obviously Greek origin: hippos is a horse and potamos is river.
But is hippopotamus (or -os in a Greek…
Joonas Ilmavirta
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29
votes
4 answers
When is an I not an I?
For whatever daft reason, the current trend in modern Latin orthography is to write consonantal 'i' (IPA /j/) as 'i' rather than as 'j'. How can we then tell whether a given 'i' is a vowel or a /j/, especially considering that many dictionaries…
jwodder
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10 answers
Why speak in Latin in 2020?
I'm a Stack-Overflow user, and usually, there is a sidebar where 'Hot' content from communities is shown.
Today, one of those questions was this: What should the corona virus be called in Latin?
Which linked to a whole Latin-written news site, the…
Nick
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2 answers
When did “c” before “e” or “i” start to be pronounced as [ts] (in contrast to classical [k])?
In Classical Latin, "c" was always pronounced as "k". Since Renaissance Latin grammar reform, the correct pronunciation of "c" before "e" or "i" was codified to [ts]. So in Renaissance the true Classical pronunciation must have been forgotten. My…
Pavel V.
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28
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How to say "every fourth year" in Latin?
My intuition says that "every fourth year" would translate to Latin as "quarto quoque anno".
I read the comic Asterix Olympius in Latin, and on page 11 the druid describes the Olympic games like this:
Certamina sacra, praesidio Iovis tecta, quae…
Joonas Ilmavirta
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28
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4 answers
ATM in Vatican City: "Inserito scidulam quaeso ut faciundam cognoscas rationem"
The automated teller machines in Vatican City show this screen when awaiting a card:
Could someone, quaeso, break this down word by word? There are a number of things here that I find puzzling or surprising:
Why future imperative for inserito? I…
Ben Kovitz
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