Certain individuals in my immediate surrounding are tam pissing me off that I no longer see any option than to make things clear to them:
“When I am king, you will be first against the wall.”*
Of course if I were to state this as such I would be shunned for the rest of my life (miser kasper, desinas ineptire, etc.) and die old, tired and lonely. Hence my desire to say it in latin.
So, “when I am king” is a conditional clause, followed by a result clause. Is that correct?
If I follow the rules in my grammar book, I need to use ubi with future perfect for the condition, followed by a simple future. Therefore:
“Ubi ego rex fuero, primus eris ad murum.”
First of all, is this grammatically correct?
Second, is the idiom ‘ad murum’ correct to convey the meaning of the words?
Third, could I make ‘eris’ into ‘es’ to express a higher degree of certainty that this will indeed be the case?
It looks good to me, the ad murum part I especially like. cum clause would probably be better for an indefinite time, but ubi is certainly correct. I won’t comment on the present es, I haven’t seen it enough to judge its virtue. I would however recommend a simple future over future perfect in the protasis - a future perfect implies that the first condition must be satisfied before the second (in the future). You “being king” and them “being against a wall” are presumably going to occur at the same time. If it were “becoming king”, then I would see the “becoming” as occurring first.
If I have convoluted things you can just check A&G § 516
Cum tuis opinionibus, quae haudquaquam graves sunt.
Quid est? Quid est?
I agree with Benissimus, the “when I am king” clause needs its verb in the futere rather than future perfect. They’re happening at the same time, you see. It’s a “when you are in spain you will see the atlantic ocean” kind of a sentence rather than “when we arm the Gauls we can attack the Germans”.
About you’re third question, you’re already using the form that expresses a high degree of certainty. If you want to suggest less certainty, you could of course use the present subjunctive. But since your event is definitely going on in the future, use the future indicative. I’ve not seen the present indicative used in such sentences - those kind tend to be more along the lines of “if slaves work, they need bread” - stating general conditions of fact; in fact you might almost put a whenever in there. But since you aren’t king yet, there’s no call for the present indicative.
Tout d’abord, you should acknowledge the usage of participles whereof the English might be devoid and prefer a participle, that you may achieve perceptible Latinity. C’est à dire, such fuss and poffywoffle were evitated had you ejected out your Ubi window any subordinate oriented pensées; thus a more succinct rendering might perhaps be thus:
Facto memet rege, primus tu ad murum
Or indeed one could use adversum, and in such a case utilise for effect a postposition implying one’s back to the wall. En fin, do note that conditionals also can be conveniently and artistically avoided with sufficient command of participles and subsequent absolutes therewith.
I totally disagree, I think the future perfect is what we need to stress the aspect, When I have become king, because those two things aren’t happening at the same time, you definitely have to become king first before you start the executions.
I totally disagree, I think the future perfect is what we need to stress the aspect, When I have become king, because those two things aren’t happening at the same time, you definitely have to become king first before you start the executions.
But you definitely are king when the executions are taking place.
The prime meaning of esse is of course “to be” rather than “to become”.
Laniger Episcope, quid est? Tam bene linguam Galliorum ego non intellego ut id quod supra dixeris sciam.
I fully agree that the future perfect needs to be a future. It only makes sense.
As for becoming king or being king, I think it definitely needs to be esse. The event does not take place as such upon becoming king, but being king, and since there is no participle for esse the ubi clause needs to be used.
Then again, seen the previous discussion on Catullus, we could probably use a Greek one anyway. In that case I would also like to apply to ‘epi’ with a dative for ‘against the wall’.
Turpe, it would seem that if a future perfect of esse would be used, this would indicate that the being king has come and gone. Therefore, if indeed fieri would be used, I would agree with you, but in this case I think a future is required.
Frankly, this is way beyond my latin ability. How come the verbs can be left out? Admittedly I had to look up memet and now I understand it and like it a lot. My only problem with it is that there is no future aspect to it. It seems to say that I have already become king and that you are against the wall.
I considered using an ablative absolute when I started this post, but I’m not sure how to make an ablative future absolute, I don’t think I have ever seen one…
Ps. Thanks though, Episcope, since reading the vulgate 6 months ago I had forgotten about the whole -met thing.
I am sure Epi will want to explain his own Latin, but let me just remind that the participles’ tenses are relative to that of the verb in the sentence. There is an implied eris somewhere after the comma. You could translate it literally, recalling the various ways to express ablative absolutes in English: “After I have become king, you (will be) first to the wall.” Since the implied word could be any form of esse, you could also take it as past or present, though I think we all know that you aren’t and never were a king so it has to be future Of course you don’t have to imply it, but Epi likes to be as cryptic as possible.
That that that’s bollocks. The Past Participle has the tense relative to the main verb. Thus in the absolute gramatically unrelated thereto, fact-does translate exactly a future perfect; for if you didotwite knew the sequence of tenses you would know that future perfect is before the future - in this case the implied eris. So, erm, in technical terms, in yo face.
That was but a random piece, now might I hope people to believe that my two first works are better than Cicero. That sounds arrogant but is true in my opinion.
P.S., I get my stuff from reading what we call reading jack - the less one read the less one will adopt the monotony of latin works i.e. Caesar.
aww…you made me CRY son! Perhaps people could imagine some quality in my crazy stories with but a little line such as that causing such a fussy wussy puffy wuffy. yip I’m on creatine.
Of course you don’t have to imply it, but Epi likes to be as cryptic as possible.
aww…you made me CRY son! Perhaps people could imagine some quality in my crazy stories with but a little line such as that causing such a fussy wussy puffy wuffy. yip I’m on creatine.