Quick question, just want to clear something up.
Is qui via Appia venit…
Can this be read as “he that comes via the Appia road…”?
More literally it is “he who”.
via Appia is one expression the “Appian road”. via does not mean “via” “by means of”. What case is “via Appia” ? My guess is that its supposed to be ablative from the “Appian Road” ? More context would help.
I realise that via does not mean English via (in my sentence it means by that route). Yes, via Appia is ablative. I don’t know how to do macrons in this editor.
So the “he” really means “anyone”. I don’t think the Romans worried much about PC pronouns 
No “he” doesn"t mean “anyone”. That is “quisquam”. I would expect your sentence “Is qui via Appia venit” to be completed or preceded by some explanation of who "“is qui” refers to - something like “est Iūlius”
I type macrons using the Maori keyboard. On a Mac you type option plus letter to get ā ē ī ō ū. Some perhaps out of date info can be found here on other operating systems.
https://kupu.maori.nz/about/macrons-keyboard-setup
I leave the Maori keyboard on permanently and it doesn’t seem to cause problems this post is typed entirely with that keyboard.
Well, no. It’s from the exercise book without context, so I assumed it was like “he who laughs last laughs loudest”. Could that not be the case?
I type macrons using the Maori keyboard. On a Mac you type option plus letter to get ā ē ī ō ū. Some perhaps out of date info can be found here on other operating systems.
https://kupu.maori.nz/about/macrons-keyboard-setup
I leave the Maori keyboard on permanently and it doesn’t seem to cause problems this post is typed entirely with that keyboard.
My keyboard is Spanish and doesn’t behave like an American one. I believe alt-gr is the wotsit key (on linux) and that gives Ø, Æ etc.
I’m sure there’s a way, I just haven’t found it yet.
I suppose it is an exercise from Chapter VI of the Roman Family, page 44. Medus has escaped, and close to Rome he sees the city walls and the Capena gate. In parentheses we read this clarification “Is qui via Latina venit per portam Capenam Romam intrat”. I think I understand that you speak Spanish, although I don’t translate - I think the idea of LLPSI is to understand in Latin - in this case Spanish comes to the aid, since that type of phrase is used a lot:
EL que viene por la Via Latina entra a Roma por la puerta Capena. O mejor: EL que venga por la vía Latina debe entrar a Roma por la puerta Capena. My point is that at first it seems that it refers to Medus, but being in parentheses makes me think that it is a more general clarification: he, Medus, who enters Rome or Anyone or someone who comes to Rome. In Spanish you can understand both things without problem just by translating it literally.
Sure, I may be wrong, but surely the members of the forum with more knowledge can shed more light on the matter. Saudos!
Erm, I think you just confirmed what I was thinking. The generic “he”. “Whosoever”.
Well my point was that since it’s all about understanding and contextualizing rather than translating, both interpretations make sense. As I said, the author’s intention was perhaps only to refer to “Medus”, but I, as a native speaker of Spanish, have no problem understanding it both ways.
Heh. A constant battle in the translating forums. Without context there is only danger
I dont want to unnecessarily prolong this thread but I wanted to explain that “is qui” refers to a particular individual and therefore the statement that " “he” really means " anyone" " struck me as wrong because there are other ways of expressing “anyone” in Latin. I think maybe Orberg is just using vocabulary which he has introduced up to chapter 6 and that has led to some confusion.
So in chapter 6 (as jarapa) has mentioned we have:
Mēdus prope Rōmam est; iam mūrī Rōmānī ab eō videntur et porta Capēna. (Is qui viā Latīnā venit per portam Capēnam Rōmam intrat.)
I think now it is a strained reading to link “Mēdus” to “is” and that the parenthetical second sentence is meant to be read as generalising “he who”.
I have looked at how Cicero uses this phrase and this seems like a good example (from many)
"Hoc loco percommode accidit, quod non adest is qui paullo ante adfuit et adesse nobis frequenter in hac caussa solet vir ornatissimus, C. Aquilius… (CICERO, Pro Caecina XXVII)
This seems to me to be the most natural use of the phrase “is qui” as it is followed by a reference to who “is” actually is - that is C. Aquilius (further qualified as “vir ornatissimus”).
Latin has many pronouns and perhaps the generalising statement above might have been phrased using quīcumque/quisquis or aliquis. But those relatives are not covered until later on.
As always I am happy to stand corrected.
Thanks. Understood. This thread was started (hell, I’m using passive English!) partly because when I pointed out an error in my exercise book, I was politely reminded that the questions weren’t strictly related to the story. Hence my suspicion that the pronoun may have been generic.
As you have pointed out, this confusion is probably related to the fact that at this stage, things have to be dumbed down a bit to stop us beginners getting confused by concepts not yet understood by us.
End of thread, methinks