Stupid question:

Latin Learning Latin
1

I realise this question is no sign of intelligence, but in my socratic wisdom I hereby declare myself ignorant and will question everything.

Sunday night I watched this show on tv about Napoleon, some mini-series or something of that kind. Now, to make a long story really short, they were going to sound the Te Deum in church. I don’t understand ‘Te Deum’, just those two words. How does it translate? You to God? or is Deum some strange way of vocative, isn’t the vocative of Deus Dee? Yet Dee also looks weird. Me very confused…

2

It’s short for “Te Deum Laudamus”.

3

Vocative of deus is also deus : Te, potentissime deus, laudamus.

4

So “Deum Laudamus” would be “we praise God”, deum being accusative. What is the te for? Either ablative or accusative..how should it be interpreted?

5

it’s an emphatic pronoun

6

Isn’t te second person though? I’m confused. In “We praise god himself”, himself would be third person, no?

I haven’t reached emphatic pronouns yet though :slight_smile:

7

The prayer book translation of ‘Te Deum laudamus’ is ‘We praise Thee, O God’. And in the Te Deum, God is addressed as ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ throughout: ‘te dominum confitemur’; ‘te ergo quaesumus domine’, etc.

chrisb

8

You would think they would use a vocative, but for some reason they chose not to.

9

I thought, it were “we praise you, God” :astonished:

10

Yes, but is that not a direct address?

11

I’m no expert, clearly, but that was my thought too.

te, deus, laudamus would be “we praise you, God.”

So for me the question is “why is god addressed in the accusative (or ablative) case?”

12

accusative because it is the direct object of the verb (to praise)

13

The whole sentence reads :
Te Deum laudamus, te Dominum confitemur
The Dominum is clearly a complement (or should I say a predicate?) of the direct object te : “we recognize you as our Lord”. It could be the same with Deum “we praise you as God”. It could also be considered as a simple apposition : “we praise you, i.e. God.”