I have to analyze this sentence, but I don’t even understand its meaning:
magister usus omnium rerum est optimus.
nom-s, ?, gen-p, gen-p, “est”, nom-s
There’s also “magister usus omnium est rerum optimus” in the text (different word-order).
My guess is “the teacher the experience of all things is the best”, but this does not make any sense.
“magistri usus omnium rerum est optimus” (the teacher’s experience of all things is the best) makes sense to me, but that’s not the way my book tells it.
Good guess. I hope this is the correct meaning, because I can’t think of another good sugestion. I would never guess the meaning were the one quoted above because “magister” and “optimus” are so far apart in both sentences.
If it were “usus omnium rerum est magister optimus” then I would have guessed that too, but it isn’t, so I’m lost.
I just learned something awkward.
My book shows me these lines:
“undae tam altae erant ut mare et terra nullum discrimen haberent.”
“sine amicitia uita tristis esset.”
And then says that “haberent” and “esset” are imperfect subjunctive, but they are to be translated as imperfect indicative and present conditional, respectively.
Could anyone explain to me why is that so?
I’d also like some more help on the sentence in the first post of this topic. Thanks.
Explain why they are imperfect subjunctive or explain why they should be translated in English as imperfective indicative / present conditional (respectively)?
The first sentence is in the imperfect subjunctive because in the first sentence you have a result clause (which governs the subjunctive) and it is set in the past (sequence of tenses dictates that you should use the imperfect subjunctive to describe an action happening at the same time or after the main verb, erant).
The second sentence is a hypothetical statement, “without friendship (if there were no friendship), life would be sad”. A “were… would…” conditional is expressed by the imperfect subjunctive.
Ok, result clauses are governed by the subjunctive. Thanks, I didn’t know that. I guess I have to stop finding similarities between Latin and Portuguese - in Portuguese, result clauses are in the indicative.
Another problem is that Portuguese does not have a “present conditional”, but I’d guess we do it with subjunctive too. I only know “imperfect conditional” and it needs an auxiliary verb to be formed in Portuguese.
I read this sentence differently, as in the second translation of Aemilius: Usus est magister optimus omnium rerum. Practice is the best teacher of everything.
That is without a doubt the best word order for this best suggestion. Thank you very much, I really couldn’t figure it out on my own (we should agree “magister usus omnium rerum est optimus” is a terrible choice of word order )
I would like to know if these are OK, just to check out if I’m doing fine on my homeworks.
(do not warn a friend publicly)
ne admonueris amicum palam.
(do not make peace with vices, nor war with men)
ne pax cum uitiis, nec bellum cum hominibus habueris.
(teacher, do not praise lazy pupils)
magistri, ne laudaueritis pigros discipulos.
(if men had been honest, jupiter would not have devastated the lands with the flood / would not have the lands devastated by the flood)
si homines probi fuissent, ne uastauisset iupiter terras diluuio.
(if deucalion had not understood the oracle, he would not have thrown stones behind his back)
si deucalion oraculum ne intellexisset, non iactauisset lapides post tergum.
)