Ch 24 PR prose comp 17

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RubyJewell
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Ch 24 PR prose comp 17

Post by RubyJewell »

Another question (by the way thank you so much everyone for helping me out! I was supposed to be in a latin class, but it got dropped because of lack of enrollment, so before I found all of you I was doing this on my own...its so much better to learn a language in community!)

The sentance to translate is
The leader, having been driven out by both the free men and the slaves, could not regain his command.

Benissimus and I have very differnt translations, I'm not sure if this is just inevitable variation or if I am making mistakes I can't find,

Mine:
Dux, ab et liberis et servis expellundus, eum imperium non recipiebant.

His:
Expulsus a liberis et servis dux imperium recipere non poterat.


thanks

modus.irrealis
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Re: Ch 24 PR prose comp 17

Post by modus.irrealis »

RubyJewell wrote:Another question (by the way thank you so much everyone for helping me out! I was supposed to be in a latin class, but it got dropped because of lack of enrollment, so before I found all of you I was doing this on my own...its so much better to learn a language in community!)
Yeah, communities like textkit here are the best when you're learning a language on your own. I've gotten so many questions answered, whether they're big questions or really trivial ones that for some reason bother me until I get an answer, that I can't imagine I'd know as much without them.

On to your translation... you explicitly translated the "both" but the word order would be "et a liberis et a servis" and as far as I can see you have to repeat the "a" in this construction because both "et"s have to be followed by the same construction.

With "expellundus", the gerundive would be "expellendus" but you can't use that here. "having been driven out" refers to an event that occurred before the main verb, so you have to use the perfect participle "expulsus."

With "eum", if you want to use "is" to translate "his" you have to to use the genitive "eius" -- "is" (together with "ille" and "iste") work differently from the personal pronouns which have possessive adjectives that agree with the noun they're modifying. But... "eius" doesn't work here because "eius" means "his" referring to a him that's not the subject. To refer back to the subject you need to use the possessive adjective "suus" -- e.g. "librum eius cepit" = "he took his (someone else's) book" and "librum suum cepit" = "he took his (own) book." But "suus" emphasizes the "his" so when there's no emphasis, Latin lets you drop the "his" entirely.

About "non recipiebat" vs. "recipere non poterat" (you had the 3rd pl. "recipiebant" but that looks like a typo), the latter is more explicit with the "could not". The imperfect can have the sense of "could" in the right context, but with a contextless sentence like this it's better to be explicit. Your sentence would probably be understood at first as "the leader was not regaining his command" (whether he was trying to or not).

RubyJewell
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Re: Ch 24 PR prose comp 17

Post by RubyJewell »

Thank you so very very much. That was so very helpful, I can't thank you enough...

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