Discipulī dīcunt ‘sē laudātōs esse’: “Ā magistrō laudātī sumus.” Pater: “Vōsne laudātī estis?”
I expected “nōs laudātōs esse”. Is this a typo, or am I missing something?
Discipulī dīcunt ‘sē laudātōs esse’.
This is indirect speech. Apparently, the single inverted commas are used for indirect speech; double inverted commas, for direct speech. Direct speech: “A magistro laudati sumus.” Just a typographical convention in this text.
Thinking about this, sē must be a plural third person as well as singular? And in indirect speech, of course the first-person pronouns would become third-person.
EDIT: cross-posted with Hylander.
Yes, se can be both singlular and plural.
Latin, like Greek, can build up long passages of indirect speech transposed nearly word for word, with appropriate changes in the persons of pronouns. I’ve seen other texts that follow the convention of placing indirect speech in quotation marks, single or double, both in Latin and in Greek.
Caesar is particularly rich in these long passages of indirect speech, and that’s one reason why he’s the first author given to students who have worked their way through Latin syntax. In addition, his style is deliberately very unadorned, and his vocabulary is relatively restricted, so it’s easier for students to find their way through the syntactic thickets. Caesar is good for assimilating the syntactic rules and learning to read Latin fluently without the need for constantly analyzing each sentence.
Greek generally doesn’t require an accusative subject pronoun in indirect speech where the subject is the same person as the speaker, but Latin does.
Orberg makes the indirect speech clear enough in this section, but I’m afraid that my ignorance in thinking of “se” as singular made me reach for a plural. Of course, since the plural was already there and I didn’t know it, I incorrectly grabbed first-person one that I knew.
Heh. That one was pretty natural for me, as in “se entienden” - "they understand each other. “se entiende” - “it is understood”.
Paul.
PS: Chapter XXI of llpsi just made me realise the origen of a word used a lot in financial matters “superavit”. In Spanish it is used to mean “surplus”. Every day is a school day 