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Are there any surviving Ancient Greek letters (epistolary)?
I was wondering how the Greeks in the archaic or classical age wrote letters, if there was some sort of convention for them, thus I searched for Ancient Greek letters but found nothing.
Is somebody aware of anything about it?
Alexandre Daubricourt
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What is the difference between "lux" and "lumen"?
Latin has two common words for "light": lux and lumen.
What are the differences between these two words? Are there any contexts in which one would be appropriate while the other would not? It would be particularly illuminating (pun intended) if…
brianpck
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9
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Does Latin have any Portmanteau words?
English has many examples of portmanteau words (e.g. "motel" is a combination of "motor" and "hotel"). Does Latin have any such phenomena?
Eli Seamans
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Did Ovid know of Mt. Ararat?
Here is a passage from Ovid's description of the flood in Metamorphoses 1, 293–4:
occupat hic collem, cumba sedet alter adunca
et ducit remos illic ubi nuper ararat.
"This man occupies a hill, another sits in a curved boat and plies oars where…
TKR
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Subjunctive mood in Latin
Should I say "Velisne/Velitisne panem?" To mean "Do you want/would you like some bread?
Or would I use Visne/Vultisne?
So, would I use subjunctive to ask or the indicative mood?
Quidam
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9
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Difference between dexter/sinister and rectus/laevus?
Is there a difference between the pair dexter/sinister (right/left) and rectus/laevus?
I was only aware of the pair dexter/sinister until recently, when I learned that chiral molecules in molecular biology are labeled "D" and "L" to signify right-…
WillG
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9
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Why distinguish u/v but not i/j?
Latin Wikipedia and many other modern (Classical?) Latin texts use "u" for the vowel /u/ and "v" for the consonant /w/, but "i" for both the vowel /i/ and the consonant /j/. This practice is more common than having both an i/j and u/v distinction.…
mic
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9
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A poem that works in both Latin and Italian
Years ago an old colleague showed me a poem which had a miraculous feature:
it was perfectly valid Latin and perfectly valid Italian.
With clever choices of words one can make that happen, but it also happened to convey a message or tell a story.
My…
Joonas Ilmavirta
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Cibus sanus — healthy food?
The Duolingo Latin course uses sanus as "healthy" in connection with meals.
A healthy lunch would be prandium sanum according to the course.
But I always thought that sanus is only refers to the health of a person or some such entity.
I can see how…
Joonas Ilmavirta
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Word or morpheme for “middle” or “not above or below”, as opposed to “super” and “sub”?
What is a latin morpheme for “middle” which can be used as a prefix, instead of “sub“ and “super”?
The context is the use of such a construct in English. So the following mentions some English examples.
One can say “subscript“ and “superscript”, and…
Guildenstern
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How can I say something is working (as in, not broken)?
For example, this sentence:
My furnace works
would be one of
Furnus meus [some verb]
Furnus meus [some adjective] est (i.e. "my furnace is working")
What could I put in for either the verb or the adjective? Ideally, what word has versions that…
anon
9
votes
2 answers
When can the gerund take an object?
Typically the gerundive is employed when one using a gerund with an object seems possible.
For example, I have understood that aqua bibenda est and rei faciendae causa are preferable to aquam bibendum est and rem faciendi causa.
It seems that one…
Joonas Ilmavirta
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How did "what" become "because"?
Two of the most common words for "because" in Latin are quod and quia, both of which began as neuter forms of quī "who". (At some point quia got replaced with the feminine plural quae, though I don't know the reason for that.)
But this seems like a…
Draconis
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9
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Can 'in-' mean both 'in' and 'no'?
The prefix in- can mean "in" or "into" or similar, as in inire.
It can also mean "non-" or "un-", as in infelix.
Both meanings of the prefix are attested, but I am not familiar with any case where both readings of in- are possible.
Is there a word…
Joonas Ilmavirta
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9
votes
2 answers
How to say "fit" in Latin?
The English word "fit" has a number of different uses, and that makes searching difficult.
I am looking for a verb or phrase to be used in a sentence like this:
The souvenir does not fit in my bag.
That is, I want to refer to having enough space,…
Joonas Ilmavirta
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