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- Topic: Latin >
- "She is a girl."
"She is a girl."
Translation:Ea est puella.
28 Comments
17
Though it could be mistaken for "It is this girl", since ea puella can also mean "this girl"...
- 668
"Puella ea est." sould also work. "Puella" is written in uppercase "ea" lowercase letters, so I thought I have to use "Puella" at be beginning of the sentence.
A tip: ignore the uppercases/lowercases in the word bank: they are confusing and should be removed to allow us to be creative with the sentences.
Ah, I wasn't given a word bank but had to type it in. I put, "Ea puella est" but it was marked wrong. Is it acceptable?
Latin is extremely flexible when it comes to word order, but there are (many) situations where one order stresses on one particular meaning or another. In general, the first word in a structure takes precedence.
It is flexible because the endings/noun inflections/verb conjugations convey the meaning. Still Wheelock's Latin textbook emphasizes that Romans often used a Subject-object/adverb/etc.-verb order. The verb often came last as sort of a dramatic unveiling at the end because one doesn't know what the message is often until the verb is mentioned.
If that is true, then they will be adding some acceptable translations soon. For now, I know that (for this exercise) you have to get the verb in the middle. I.e. Ea est puella or Puella est ea. Lol, when I came around to it the second time, all I could remember was that I had gotten it wrong the first time. ;) Now I remember - verb in the middle. Easy.
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This seems to be the case with the verb -to be- but it looks to me as if, ordinarily, the verb (other verbs) typically appears at the end of the sentence. Am I incorrect?
Came here to say this after a few exercises marked wrong for word order. So long as the verb conjugation and noun declension are correct, word order is irrelevant.
- 317
i'm a bit confused what the difference between "est" and "es" is. I think they both mean "is". If they both mean "is" what situations do i use them in? thanks for your help
I put "puella et est" and it was marked correct, but with a typo. Is Duo assuming that I meant "ea" instead of "et"?
Word order doesn't matter in Latin and if it was to the verb should be at the end to make it neater .
To suggest word order doesn't matter is incorrect. It can and does change shades of meaning, specifically emphasis.
There is a standard word order (SOV--or, often, OV with the subject implied in the verb) that should be the basis of unemphatic sentences here.
That's not to say the others should be marked wrong, but there should be a suggestion for a better answer.
I learned classical latin during my scolarity. We would generally place the verb at the end of sentence, or, at the end of a significant segment of the sentence. Not always the last word but it's the general way. As tzznandrew wrote it, there is a standard word order and subverting it is indeed meaningful, so you definitely can't say word order doesn't matter. Sure, you can learn it without knowing the grammatical structure, but it's clearly not the best way, always better to grasp the logic of the language.
