I have begun both transcribing and retranslating the Vestibulum of Comenius. The translation of it into English is pretty decent, but at other times is archaic and unhelpful for its purpose. I have finished the first chapter of the Vesitibulum and need your guys’ help, if you are willing, to correct my mistakes and give information I am lacking.
First, I am including macrons to indicate vowel quantity. Most of these were easily available to me through several sources, viz. Wiktionary and Perseus. However, many, most likely because they are not extant in to classical corpus, are not available in a dictionary easily available, or if they are, they only give a definition and no vowel quantity. I indicate the words via parentheticals that I either couldn’t find meaning or the vowel quantity. Many times if I indicate I did not find the latter, I also did not find the former.
Thinks for the corrections. Do you recommend I just get rid of all of the quirks of the renaissance script such as oe, ae, and ē all being equivalent? It doesn’t matter as much for me since I use ecclesiastical pronunciation. However, if some one uses classical this would be a stumbling block to pronounciation.
Also, to which word does stagneus refer to in my document? And do you have any idea what scammum (scamnum?) means?
Classical orthography, including getting rid of the letter j, would indeed make it more readily useable, but would it be true to Comenius, a Renaissance writer? I don’t quite know.
stagneus “made of stagnum”; stagnum is a metal, an alloy of silver and lead, later used to mean “tin” (cf. French étain)
As you wrote, scamnum means “stool, bench”; C. may indeed have meant this.
Also, aēnum is glossed as something made of copper, but so is cupreum. Is there anyway in which it could mean kettle? Otherwise it is copper copper, which cannot be the meaning.
Edit: And thanks for the suggestions. As for as the word document goes, I want it to be as universally acceptable as possible for Latin learners and for it to be as didactically useful as possible, and so I am going to take your suggestions, including swapping the j’s for i’s.
I may have been too concise within my list above. The adjective has two forms, aēneus and aēnus. Think of aēnum uās “bronze vessel”, which becomes shortened by dropping the noun uās: now the original adjective aēnum will be regarded as a noun, meaning in itself “bronze vessel, kettle”. After that all kettles may be aēna, regardless what they have been made of. And so we have in Comenius aēnum cupreum, with the adjective cupreus “made of copper” < cuprum “copper”, the classical equivalent of which is the very aes (meaning both “copper” and “bronze”) from which aēn(e)us is derived.
Updated edition. Still not complete. I had been busy with school.
Whoever can please continue to help provide corrections. I really appreciate it. Especially when I indicate I could not find it in a dictionary (if you are able, provide vowel quantity and definition [I don’t always trust the English translation given]).
Excellent! I have found Comenius’ works provide a great boost to my vocabulary.
As for a dictionary that works well for Latin from all time periods, my go-to is http://logeion.uchicago.edu/index.html. It has the standard Lewis & Short (where you can get your vowel quantities), the Dictionary of Medieval British Latin Sources for medieval uses (albeit only from British sources), as well as DuCange for Renaissance-era words. Best of all, you only have to do one search, and results pop up from all of these dictionaries. There’s even an app for iOS!
— Excels should be excelsus I think.
— Longa in ināne.
— Add the longae of pāvō.
— For amarārum read amārum.
— Sāl is rather masculine than neuter, though I do know that this very word has some vacillation between these two genders.
— Fēter tēter is rather foetor taeter as I wrote in my earlier post.
— Isn’t “We clothed go” (‘walk’ is also possible translation, but choose what you consider best) somewhat strange English?
— It should be anōmala (from ἀνώμαλος 2), though this adjective is also often in the Greek form anōmalos, anōmalon with no separate feminine form as in Greek. Thus either anōmala comparātiō or anōmalos comparātiō (your choice I think).
— Pārus has a longa. This word is very rare. From parra we see that parrus may be considered a more correct form.
— Isn’t “a gold ducat”, “a silver dollar”, “a copper kettle/pot/cauldron” better English? You could probably erase the “(?)” after kettle. It means either kettle, pot or cauldron—choose the word you regard as the best one.
Here and there the English is slightly singular, but I dare not really comment (except in a few places above!) as I’m not a native speaker.
Thanks for your corrections, Timothee. Some of them are definitely my fault. Unfortunately, autocorrect likes to mess things up sometimes . Anything that you think will make it better let me know. I’ll work on these corrections.
Edit: Some questions regarding my mistakes:
— Excels should be excelsus I think.
Where do I use excels? I use escelsa turris, but I believe turris is a feminine noun.
— Longa in ināne.
I have a macron on the a already. Are you sayig to remove it.
— Add the longae of pāvō.
Same as above. As I’m seeing my document, I have both longae.
— For amarārum read amārum.
I don’t see amarārum at all.
Give me a page on the word documents if you really are seeing them. Perhaps I’m just blind.
As to the somewhat stilted English at time, I’m trying to mimic for the most part the Latin syntax to help learn the Latin; it prevents the confusion of words with others, and there are a couple other benefits, I think.
My notes are in the order of your document. Do we read the same text? I used the link in your message starting “Updated edition. Still not complete” from 30th December.
Yes, excelsa. Excelsus was a shorthand for adjective excelsus excelsa excelsum. It should’ve been directly excelsa to avoid confusion. In the text stands “turris excels”.
I can see no longa in “Forāmen est vacuum (inane)”, nor in “Pavo est fōrmōsus”. Then you have “Fel amarārum”.
If necessary, I can send you an e-mail if you PM your e-mail address to me. But somehow I feel we are not reading the same document.
Timothee, thanks so much! That is definitely not the document I am reading. I am like 3x as far. I’ll try to post the updated one; I thought I did but I guess not.
I meant hoc tempore in contrast to illo tempore, i.e., the last time I had not uploaded the right document and so my requesting help was in vain. Would this be right?
Significo “hoc tempore” iuxta “illo tempore”, id est, priore tempore rectum textum non imposui itaque auxilum precari meum frustra erat. Recte feci?
. Anything that you think will make it better let me know. I’ll work on these corrections.