Ch 24 Paragraph 2

[RubyJewell]

The Latin text is
"Sed quid rides? Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur!"

My translation is
"But you laugh at what? I change the name, but I have been telling a story about you!"

Benissimus translated it
"But why are you laughing? With a name changed,a story is told about you"

Wait, wait....the "de" is "about" not "but"....I keep getting confused with the greek "de" without even thinking about it.
"Muto nomine" is a ablative absolute and not a 1st person singular....so that makes sense of the end,
but I don't understand "quid" isn't that a neuter accusative?

Thanks for enduring my rambling...

[modus.irrealis]

With a lot of pronouns, the neuter accusative is often used with an adverbial sense and you just have to learn these. So "quid" can mean "why?", and "quod" can similarly mean "because." (Since you're also interested in Greek, this happens a lot in Greek, and in fact τί often means "why?".)

But actually, this is a good case to see how this came about, because there's not much difference (at least to me) between asking "what are you laughing at" and "why are you laughing". But with something like "quid venis?", you'd have to translate it as "why are you coming?"

[phil]

I know this is an old post, but I've just done that bit in Wheelock, so it's fresh in my mind. 'quid' here is the neuter of the interrogative pronoun (quis, quid, who? what? in chapter 19).

The extra optional exercises section at the back for chapter 19 has two sentences: 'quid vos terret?' - what is frightening them? and 'quod periculum vos terret?' - what danger is frightening them? The first is the int. pronoun, the second is the int. adjective.

[benissimus]

Well, the post isn't that old. Anyhow, both readings "why" and "what" are possible. If my key had been designed with learners in mind, I probably would have gone for the "what" translation, which is what the author probably expected the learner to choose. Since, however, I answered the questions with the intent of impressing my teacher, I of course went for the more obscure answer of "why"