BLD: §82 II.2 Problem

Textbooks Latin For Beginners by D'Ooge
1

Greetings!

Many thanks for the BLD answer key. I have been trying to catch up on the forum and am steadily working through the text. I hope that someone can help me over a little difficulty I’m having at the moment.

Here’s my synopsis of the problem:


§82 II (Translate)

  1. My friend is from (ex) a village of Germany, my fatherland.

My version: Amicus mea est ex vicum Germaniae, patria mea.

Key: Amicus est ex vico Germaniae, patriae meae.

I have problems with both translations.

First, mine:

The morphology of each word:

Amicus - nominative singular
mea - pronoun feminine, nominative singular
est - copula
ex - adjective (attached to accusative/ablative)
vicum - noun, masculine, accusative singular
Germaniae - noun, feminine, genative singular
patria - noun, vocative singular

The adjective mea modifying Amicus should be masculine, genative, singular. At this point in the text we have no such vocabulary and are stuck with mea (see §56). Shortly, i.e. §98, we will get how it is declined, but for now we are stuck with the feminine. We do have a model to use in §86 I.6, “patria mea” however, this has matching genders. My guess is that it should be “Amicus meus” but let that go for now.

I’ll pass over the copula and the “patria mea”, other than to ask in passing if this is a vocative case as in §86.6, in which case the “mea” makes more sense (I think).

This leaves “ex vicum Germaniae”. I have to confess that I first translated this as “ex vicum Germanium” (which has a sort of rhythm to it) because it follows the rule of apposition (§81), however strong the tempation to use the genative singular. Germany does not possess the town but describes the town location. However, in the end the genative won simply because word proximity isn’t definative. Still I can’t help but wonder if my friend is from the German village or my German friend is from the village.

I have a proiblem with the key answer because it drops the mea altogther, leaving me with no friends, German or otherwise. Also, the use of the alblative vico seems to leave the sentence in the air as to it’s object. I don’t seem to recall if an ablative can be used in this way. Also it seems a bit redundant to use ex with an ablative and would seem to be the secondary choice from §52. I guess it would have to to express such things as “He hastened from the village.” Properat ex vico.

And lastly, “patriea meae” ??? I don’t get this at all. I can sort of get the declension of mea (because I sneaked a peek ahead in the book) but I just can’t fathom the double genative usage here.

Finally, does anyone know what crop farmer Galba grows? Or is he a chicken rancher?

2

You’re right: it should be meus to go with amicus, but in fact Latin is quite happy to leave out possessive pronouns if it’s obvious from the context whose friend it is. Who else’s friend would it be here?

Have you covered apposition yet? In your sentence my fatherland refers to Germany and it’s not doing anything else in the sentence so they have to go in the same case (imagine a ‘which is’ inserted before the ‘my fatherland’ if that helps).

3

As Bingley said, patria mea must be in the same case as Germaniae, because they are describing the same thing and are doing the same role in the sentence. As you have it, it is in either the vocative or nominative, which does not make sense.

Ex is a preposition that only takes the ablative. The ablative with a preposition has no intrinsic meaning, so there is no redundancy. When you see ex, you will see an object in the ablative.

Since you didn’t have meus at your disposal yet, perhaps you could have changed to feminine amica mea? Of course you might leave the possessive adjective out altogether, but that might be vague in this case.

To my knowledge, there is no such word as Germanium… I think you mean Germanum or something. The genitive was appropriate here however.

Hope that answers all your questions, if not then we can focus in on any other problems. I don’t see any errors in the key from this exercise.

4

Hey guys,

just noticed some talk on apposition and I thought you might like this quote from Cicero’s Pro Archia (w. necessary abridgement), which is always quoted with relish by philologists.

Archias Antiochae natus est, celebri quondam urbe et copiosa

Cicero rightly uses the locative for “in Antioch” (which underwent case syncretism with the genitive in the first declension), but when it comes to putting adjectives in apposition, a locative form of adjectives is wanting, so he has to resort to the good old ablative (celebri and copiosa). In order to retain any sense of apposition (as opposed to ablatives of qualification) he has to throw in urbe to keep a meaningful link.

I know we’re not on the topic of the locative but I felt it was interesting to relate. Can you come up with any more locatival forms (not including proper nouns) alongside:

ruri, ludi, domi, belli, militiae and humi?

I think it’s quite interesting that in Classical Latin you almost invariably need to state place where with ‘in’ + abl., but when using certain qualitative adjectives, such as ‘medius’ and ‘totus’ it is apparently superfluous. Caesar’s “loco idoneo castra ponit/posuit” (e.g. B.G.III.30) also seems to not need ‘in’.

perhaps I shouldn’t find this so interesting!

~dave

5

As always, I did find that interesting :slight_smile:

I am being hurled by poetry into the habit of omitting altogether prepositions, since Virgil etc. seem to easily write what they wish to say using a naked ablative. I know it’s for the sake of the meter and all. There are options that one can take: if the meter needs “in” or “ab” it may be included, if not those little words are left. Or even in prose, especially, I do agree, with “medius” there is just no “in”, but I read it as if there were “in” since that’s what the ablative covers.
Those ablative adjectives in ‘apposition’ with the locative are quite intriguing - showing how a bare ablative eats up the locative. Now another one of my questions has been answered.

6

[This is a summary response to various replies]

This is an exercise I tried:

Galba est amicum Marci.
Marcus est amicum Sexti.

Amicus est ex vico Germaniae, patrea meae.

Which friend comes from the German village? Is he my friend?

Marcus est amicum meae.

Does Mark come from a German Village?

Marcus est ex Siciliam. Galba est ex Germaniam.

In the exercises, the sentence stands alone and is without any preceeding context. So I don’t think we may drop the possessive pronoun here.

I think we are meant to make the appositive association between Amicus and mea. But isn’t mea already in the nomitive singular? So it would result in Amicus mea. Rule §81 doesn’t say that the appositive gender must match; just the case. I gather you should match gender if possible, but it isn’t required.

I didn’t quite pick up on §53 and agree that the ex requires the ablative case for Germania. My “creation” of Germanium was an attempt to form an appositive to agree with the incorrect accusative case of vicum. Mea culpa.

If patriae meae is correct for this case, then §82 I.6, “Rhenus est in Germania, patria mea.” is explained as well. Germania is also forced into the ablative case by “in” using the same rule §53.

So I think I see how it matches up now.

Thanks for the help!

7

Here, amicus should be in the nominative, because the verb est (sum, esse, fui, futurus) cannot take a direct object.

Amicus est ex vico Germaniae, patria meae.

This is a good improvement and the sentence now stands correct.

Which friend comes from the German village? Is he my friend?

Marcus est amicum meae.

Amicus needs to be in the nominative for the same reason as above. There is also no reason to have meae in the genitive - it is an adjective and has to agree with something, but there is no feminine genitive in this entire sentence. Meae should be changed to agree with amicum, if you mean to say “my friend”.

Does Mark come from a German Village?

Marcus est ex Siciliam. Galba est ex Germaniam.

Ex absolutely must take the ablative. It is impossible to have it with the accusative, as you have here twice.

In the exercises, the sentence stands alone and is without any preceeding context. So I don’t think we may drop the possessive pronoun here.

So it would seem, but it is dropped surprisingly frequently. I don’t think that it would be a great choice to drop it here either though.

I think we are meant to make the appositive association between Amicus and mea. But isn’t mea already in the nomitive singular? So it would result in Amicus mea. Rule §81 doesn’t say that the appositive gender must match; just the case. I gather you should match gender if possible, but it isn’t required.

Just as the case and number must match between adjective and noun, so must the gender. If the gender doesn’t match, then neither do the adjective and noun. This rules out the gender-bending amicus mea as a possibility.

I didn’t quite pick up on §53 and agree that the ex requires the ablative case for Germania. My “creation” of Germanium was an attempt to form an appositive to agree with the incorrect accusative case of vicum. Mea culpa.

If patriae meae is correct for this case, then §82 I.6, “Rhenus est in Germania, patria mea.” is explained as well. Germania is also forced into the ablative case by “in” using the same rule §53.

So I think I see how it matches up now.

Thanks for the help!

I hope that clears things up more :sunglasses: Don’t worry about whiteoctave’s crazy locatives yet!