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HELPING

Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 7:59 am
by Ni
Agricola et vitam et fortunam nautae saepe laudat.
Can anyone explain the grammatical structure to me?
Does it means " The sailor often praises the farmer and life and fortune"?
Sound peculiar, Thanks a lot. :D

Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 12:56 pm
by Hu
It means "the farmer often praises both the sailor's life and fortune".
Agricola is in the nominative case, so it's the subject: farmer.

The "et...et..." construction means "both...and...". "Fortunam" and "vitam" are accusative, so the verb in the sentence is doing something to them: Farmer both life and fortune....

"Nautae" could be genitive singular (possession), dative singular (to/for), or nominative plural (sailors). The context shows that it's genitive: Farmer both life and fortune of sailor..."

And of course "saepe laudat" means "often praises". So: Farmer both life and fortune of sailor often praises. Rearrange it into proper English syntax and add articles to get the translation I gave above.

Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 1:53 pm
by bellum paxque
Agricola et vitam et fortunam nautae saepe laudat.
Can anyone explain the grammatical structure to me?
Does it means " The sailor often praises the farmer and life and fortune"?
Sound peculiar, Thanks a lot.
It does sound a little peculiar. I hope that my grammatical explanation will make it clearer. First, your translation puts "sailor" as subject and "farmer" as object. But look again at the sentence:
Agricola et vitam et fortunam nautae saepe laudat.
Agricola (farmer) is in the nominative case, so it has to be the subject of the verb (laudat). Who praises? The farmer praises...

And what is nautae? You'll notice that nautae cannot be the subject of the sentence. The -ae ending in the first declension can mean singular genitive, singular dative, or plural nominative. But the verb we have is singular. Also, agricola is already in the nominative case.

So it has to be either genitive or dative singular. There's no obvious way that the dative works in the sentence, but the genitive is very appropriate. We ask, WHOSE life and fortune does the farmer often praise? The sailor's!

Note that in et vitam et fortunam, et...et are just like "both...and" in English.

Can you get the translation from this explanation? If you need more help, please feel free to ask!

David

Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 1:54 pm
by bellum paxque
Drat...I forgot to check whether someone else had already responded to the post.

-David

Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 4:05 pm
by Hu
Duo capita melioria sunt quam unum.

Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 2:31 am
by Ni
Thanks a lot for solving my problem :D