Hi all.
I asked the forum this question last year.
How to say just a few years old.
The answer I got was paucos annos natus.
A Latin enthousiast told me that this is fine for people, but not for non-living things.
In a sentence like: It’s a big house, just a few years old, could this be rendered as follows?:
Domus magna est, modo paucorum annorum.
That’s how it is done in Romance languages.
Does modo have a genitivie form?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks,
David
Someone else will give a more thorough answer but, in the meantime, Kembreg, I believe you can classically use “paucos annos exstans” for inanimate objects, from the verb ‘exsto’ (‘to be exstant’ in English --obviously itself from the Latin).
Gratia ago Adrianus (e). (Vocative?)
You mentioned inanimate.
What about for animals? Apparently natus is not suitable.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Kembreg
I’m a learner like you, Kembreg, but I can’t imagine why ‘natus’ won’t apply as much to animals as to people. Until somebody wiser says any different, I’m ‘sure’ it does. I do remember that there are single-word adjectives for ‘one-year-old’ and ‘two-year-old’ (and presumably so on) applied to animals in Bible Latin but I can’t specifically remember them and never checked whether they were classical or late-Latin only. I need a few minutes to check so I’ll do that later, unless someone can advise what they are here in the meantime.
I did check and (1) one-year-old (as an adjective) or a yearling (as a substantive) = ANNICULUS; (2) two-year-old = BIMUS or BIENNIS; (3) three-year-old = TRIMUS or TRIENNIS, applied to animals (and people) in the Vulgate. And I suppose you could go on in this fashion but I don’t see evidence. I thought to look in Ainsworth’s dictionary because I had lost exactly where these words were used in the Bible. I remember them in respect to sacrified animals and to King Herod killing one-year-old babies and so on. Lewis and Short says (1) is not in Cicero but frequently in the Vulgate, (2) is in Cicero and Pliny and so on (i.e., definitely Classic), (3) TRIMUS is in Plautus (so classic) and TRIENNIS is more Vulgate (although triennium for ‘a 3 year period’ is in Plautus). I almost forgot another obvious way of expressing age (animate, inanimate, whatever) is “X annos habens” but “exstans” for a house sounds slightly more correct, I think.
A little collaboration by my side: As Adrianus tells, I have also found “postquam iam pueri septuennes sunt” from Plautus’ Menaechmi (“Prologus”, v. XXIV).
Regards.
Great Gonzalo. I now see also in Lewis and Short quinquennis = five-year-old (Plautus, Pliny), quinquenatus (as a 4TH dec. noun in Pliny) = a five-year-old, sexennis (Plautus, PLiny) = six-year-old, septennis (=septuennis) = seven-year-old, and octennis (post-classical) = eight-year-old. So you could say it’s respectable to combine NUMERUS + ANNUS into a third decl. adjective for how old anything is, while the Pliny idea is very clean and clear for nouns (= NUMBER + NATUS as a 4th decl.). I also like the Latin adaption of Greek numbers for dice and playing cards from antiquity to the early modern period that is echoed in our ‘aces’ and ‘deuces’ and ‘terces’. What could be nicer, in a curious way, than “ogdoas” for “an eight”?
Gundisalvus suo praestabile Adriano plurimam salutem dicit,
Nesciebat quod de usu nominum aetatis constat. Bene accipio verba candida ac utilia quae ab te come narrantur. Melior ad aetatem hominum censendam mihi “octennis” quam “ogdoas” placet.
Vale optime et Latine dulcissime fruaris.
Gundisalvo benevolo, Kembreg et aliis salutem plurimam Adrianus dicit.
Curiose modo, non affectate, diligo haec verba tenebricosa, ut octennis ogdoasve. Ea diligo quod admirabilia et adclarantia sunt. Quid est quod adclarant? Adclarant quantam est ignorantiam meam! Mihi autem quoque, primo visu, “ogdoas” minùs mundum apparet ut verbum latinum. Sic verò olim non erat, sed verbum vulgare promiscumque. Dumtaxat ratione (me illud aspernatus esse), demiror utrum probè ‘ogdoas’ sonam, an aliter antiqui sonaverint. Fortassè item complexiones habet quae mihi perditae sunt. Omnis aetas de suis aliarum consuetudines praecedentum judicat. Verba talia, sicut ‘octennis’, ‘ogdoas’, peritiae signa perditae sunt. Ergo ut verbum inusitatum apparet quod anteà commune erat, ità maximè interest, ut opinor. Salvete. [Amabò te, Gundisalve doctissime aut qui velis, quaeso ut latinitatem meam corrigas, si quidem non nugas tantummodo dicem,]
Non sum homo cui labor corrigere nec censare doctorum opera virorum sit. Ab me intelleguntur modo praestabile omnia verba tua et illas bona Latinitate putavi ac hoc tempore aequalem sententiam tibi praepono.
Perlegebam autem mihi peregrinam vocem in epistula tua, quae nugare est. Meum Latine glossarium esse verbum deponens nugari (nugeris) pro nugere (nugas) censat, si vis enarrare facta quae risibilia sive iocantia tibi essent.
Cura ut valeas, mi diligentissime Adriane.
P.S.: Tibi magis me corrigere oportet quam mihi te emendare: Tam tutê stultus sum ut rectum esse tibi pro te ad auctor factorum scribendum credidi. (Ab tibi, ubi te decet).
Clarissimo Gundisalvo salutem. Rectè censes “nugas” et “risibilia” verba conjuncta esse. “Nugas” nomen est accusativo casu dictionis “nugae”, quae solùm pluralem numerum habet. “Ineptiae” synonymum est. Anglicè “balderdash” vel “nonsense” vel “jokes”, apud dictionarium Lewis & Short saltem. Aetate classicâ provenit. (What I meant was I hoped you or someone might correct my Latin where my mistakes were at least comprehensible. It’s hard to ‘correct’ incomprehensible rubbish.) Bene valeas, amice care.
using the genitive of quality is good style. modo is an adverb, meaning “only,” so it does not inflect. You could also use an ablative of quality, i.e. “domus paucis annis.”
With annos being in the accustive, I would have thought too that viginti would be in the accusative.
However, Wheelock’s has Viginti annos natus.
Any comments would be appreciated.
Kembreg
Viginti is indeclinable, as are the majority of cardinal numbers from 4 on, so it is in the accusative in your example, you can say. Have a look at this site for numbers: http://www.informalmusic.com/latinsoc/latnum.html
It’s interesting to me that the author (after Postgate’s New Latin Primer, London, 1891) illustrates the use of distributive numbers with this example (referring to more than one person or thing): “pueri denum annorum,” (where denum is another form of denorum)—boys of ten years old, i.e. boys each of 10 years old. I will try to remember (but no doubt I’ll forget).