Singular:? ianuam adoperi!
Plural:? ianuam adoperite!
My question mark represents please, because I don’t know what the Lstin word is.
Thanks,
-Jonathan
i’d say:
please open the door, sg 2th, pl 2th:
quaeso ianuam ut aperias
quaeso ianuam ut aperiatis
please close the door, sg 2th, pl 2th:
quaeso ianuam ut cludas.
quaeso ianuam ut cludatis.
an imperative with a parenthetic verb of entreaty strikes me as a more Latinate way of stating the matter, i.e. ostium claude, obsecro (or amabo if a woman is stating it). (any word order of the three, as long as obs. isn’t first position would be fine.)
cludo etc. for claudo etc. is a sign (in Classical times) of lower class or some countrification. the monophthongisation of au to u was generally fought against by the elite class (whose Latin we aim to speak). an amusing example of this is recorded by Suetonius, wherein Vespasian is rebuked by Mestrius Florus for saying plostrum instead of plaustrum: with cheeky hypercorrection the emperor on next seeing M.F. greets him as ‘Flaure’. as a corollary to this, Claudius is said to have pronounced his name Clodius so as to avoid alienating himself from the pop.Rom.
au is, however, regularly weakened to u in composition, e.g. claudo: concludo. as a final note on au, in Imperial times au when followed by a syllable containing u was monophthongised to a, cf. It. agusto < Imp.Lat. agustus < C.L. augustus.
ostium is, like ianua, used especially of external doors into buildings but seems well enough attested to mean the house-internal doors, to which I suppose you are referring.
~D
can’t “door” be “porta, -ae” (in Classics) ?
i know no instance of porta as an internal door, and it is seldom used of doors at all; rather it refers to gates (gen.pl.), literal or figurative.
~D
I agree with Whiteoctave. i have never seen “porta” been used as “door” in that sense, it has rather been used as “gate” or “entrance” (i.e. city gates, Porta Romana). My dictionaries agree with me, although a digital dictionary, “words.exe”, gives:
porta, portae N F
gate, entrance; city gates; door; avenue;
ps. although words deriving from “porta” are in some romance languages often used as “door”.
The door is that of a classroom, or a bedroom or a car door. Would these all be the same word?
I see, thanks for the replies.
Ioannes, about your dictionaries: have you got one that tells the length of all the vowels? I’m really interested in buying one as such.
it does, although it’s a latin - norwegian dictionary =)
what a shame… 