servanda

[Pianophile]

The EU Commission President used this phrase the other day: Pacta sunt servanda. Contracts are to be protected or honoured would be my interpretation, but not sure.

I take it servanda is related to servo to keep to, follow, protect, but where does servanda come from? I assume it’s a plural form (of servandum if there is such a word?) .

[bedwere]

It’s the gerundive of servō.

[Aetos]

Pianophile,
I don’t know how far you’ve gotten in LLPSI, but you’ll learn about gerundives in Lesson XXXI. You were very close in your translation. The gerundive implies obligation, necessity or propriety, so pacta sunt servanda would mean something like agreements should be/must be/ought to be maintained.

[mwh]

Perfidious Albion comes to mind.

[Aetos]

Perfidious Albion comes to mind.

epitheton illud non modo ad matrem Angliam antea , sed etiam ad multas civitates hodiernas applicari potest!

[Pianophile]

It’s the gerundive of servō.

Thanks, bedwere. Neither Cactus2000 nor logeion (LewisShort) seems to have heard of servanda.

Pianophile,
I don’t know how far you’ve gotten in LLPSI, but you’ll learn about gerundives in Lesson XXXI.

Thanks, Aetos. Just about to start on Lesson XVII.

Perfidious Albion comes to mind.

Wish I could argue with that - alas . . .

[seneca2008]

@Pianophile

Neither Cactus2000 nor logeion (LewisShort) seems to have heard of servanda.

You won’t find it in Logeion if you use it as a dictionary. You need to look at the right hand side of the page and “Consult Μορφώ”.

This will yield the following information:

“Parsed as:
servo
present passive gerundive singular
present passive gerundive plural
present passive gerundive plural
present passive gerundive singular
present passive gerundive singular
present passive gerundive plural”

[Pianophile]

@Pianophile

Neither Cactus2000 nor logeion (LewisShort) seems to have heard of servanda.

You won’t find it in Logeion if you use it as a dictionary. You need to look at the right hand side of the page and “Consult Μορφώ”.

So that’s where I went wrong. Multas gratias tibi ago, seneca

[will.dawe]

There are two online services to analyze Latin words:

• Whitaker’s Words — PPL means “participle”
• Collatinus — type the word into ‘Process a Latin text’ field and press button ‘Analyse’

[mwh]

Planophile, Where you went wrong is not knowing about gerundives, how they’re formed and how they work. Aetos refers you to lesson 31 (or you could look up “gerundive” in any grammar book). Then you’ll be able to recognize at sight the gerundive of any verb at all, without having to search for any particular form that you come across. (And you’ll also be able to understand what the word is doing in its context, and what a sentence such as Pacta sunt servanda will mean.)
With servanda, the -anda ending tells you (1) that it’s the gerundive of a first-conjugation verb, like amo (first-conjugation because it’s -anda not -enda) and (2) that the verb in question is servo, servare.

But perhaps this runs counter to the principles of LLPSI, which I haven’t used myself. Does LLPSI mention such things as verbs and tenses and passives, or does it use no grammatical terms at all, relying instead on the learner’s recognition of analogical structures (which I would not exactly call intuitive)?

[jeidsath]

There was a separate Latine Disco, or student’s manual, which provides the English terms. The Grammar section in the text proper is in Latin, but clear enough if you’ve been going carefully:

There is a slightly more detailed English explanation in the student’s manual. I didn’t have much use for the student’s manual. Coming from Greek, I found it mostly superfluous to material already covered in the text. But I suspect that a student seeing it for the first time will find it terse. Morwood has a “Latin Grammar” that would probably serve as a useful supplement for a self-learner.

The separate Grammatica Latina in the series is really an accidence.

[Pianophile]

deleted

[Pianophile]

deleted - double posting

[Pianophile]

Thanks everybody.

I’m just about to start on Lesson 17, and the gerundive is mentioned in Lesson 31 - so quite a while to go.

I have the Latine Disco, Glossary, Grammar, Exercitium and Teacher’s Material books all of which are a great help. That said there are occasions when I spend hours on just one “problem”. Yesterday I came across “multum aquae” which had me scratch my head for a while - but eventually the penny dropped.

I also have grammar books like Barron’s Latin Grammar, Bennett’s New Latin Grammar, Allen and Greenough plus Wheelock’s. My mistake (due to ignorance) was looking up “servanda” in dictionaries.

[mwh]

If you need a grammar in addition to LLPSI (and I expect you do, even though it conflicts with LLPSI’s pedagogical principles) you don’t need a multitude of them but just one. Allen & Greenough is traditional (access it via the Dickinson College Commentaries) or there’s Morwood’s less antiquated Latin Grammar.

And don’t spend hours on just one problem. Ask here. You’ll get some bad answers but hopefully not too many.

[Pianophile]

Thanks mwh - have listed the grammar books I have above. You are right, a good grammar is essential to make the most of LLPSI. - I have also got the Colloquia Personarum, an excellent supplement for LLPSI, which offers texts that follow the progression of Familia Romana, and offers additional stories about the fictional Roman family introduced in that volume. And support from this forum is of course much appreciated.