Okay, so I’m doing Chapter 14 and I come across this translation:
“His wife was standing there with her own friends and doing that with patience.”
Okay, simple enough. I got this:
“Uxor eius ibi suis cum amicis stabat et ____ patientia cum faciebat”
I know that in the blank goes either Illum, Illam, or Illud, but it seems it refers back to her standing, which as far as I can tell doesn’t have a gender. What do I do when demonstratives refer back to actions?
Um I’m assuming that the rolleyes is some sort of arrogant zinger and I commend you on your masterful use of emoticons in showing off to someone on an internet forum, but I still don’t know. Common sense says Illud but I need certainty.
err.. are you sure it’s not the object of faciebat that is missing? That’s what I would put there
(as you may have noticed I am hijacking your question threads to ask mine too 
)
brilliant! 
fierywrath ain’t learned yet how distasteful and crude sarcasm is (there’s a big difference between good-natured irony and malicious sarcasm; perhaps one day that will impress itself on fierywrath).
Try:
uxor eius suiscum amicis ibi stabat et id/illud (or ea/illa) cum patientia faciebat
patientia goes after cum; only when you have an adjective too can you put the adjective in front of the (monosyllabic) preposition, the noun comes after (in prose):
magna cum patientia or cum patientia; not *patientia cum
‘suiscum’ is because you can attach pronouns to ‘cum’.
Don’t worry about referring back to the action. That’s another problem with grammarspeak: when you first start out, you start confusing everything and having adjectives modify verbs etc. At least I did, and I think almost anyone does, just that most don’t wanna admit it. Anyway it’s just a stage; it goes away (then you see how little grammarspeak is actually good for).
So:
His wife was standing there with her friends;
She did it/that [whatever ‘it’ or ‘that’ is; could be the washing of clothes, shooting her husband with a bow and arrow, etc] with patience.
‘with patience’=patiently; ablative of Manner = adverb. This is what is meant by ‘ablative of manner’: whenever you have an ablative noun modifying the verb directly, i.e., functioning as an adverb, it’s an abl. of manner. That was incredibly repetitive.
Yes, I think I occasionally get carried away with the flexible word order. I didn’t know that though, that the presence of an adjective allowed the sandwiching of the “cum”. Also, could the “ibi” not be after “eius”?
‘with patience’=patiently; ablative of Manner = adverb. This is what is meant by ‘ablative of manner’: whenever you have an ablative noun modifying the verb directly, i.e., functioning as an adverb, it’s an abl. of manner. That was incredibly repetitive.
Yeah. Doesn’t ablative of manner use “cum” and the ablative however? I put the ablative patientiA before the preposition by accident, but I meant them to go together.
Sure, I suppose it could be anywhere. Putting it right before the verb is more standard Latin prose.
Doesn’t ablative of manner use “cum” and the ablative however? I put the ablative patientiA before the preposition by accident, but I meant them to go together.
Ablative of manner uses ‘cum’ when the noun is on its own. When there’s an adjective too, it can either use or omit ‘cum’:
cum patientia
magna cum patientia
magna patientia
all of these are ok. But not *patientia alone for an ablative of manner.
(Though the Romans are great at breaking the rules posterity’s created for them)
Illud since it virtually means " do THAT THING"
Also, are you sure you are not missing a “faciebat” there?
Isn’t suis an adjective and therefore not able to attach to the cum?
yer right, silenus. I’d stupidly confused the reflexive possessive adjective with the reflexive pronoun. Not the first or last time I make an obvious mistake 
Signatured!!