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- "Salve, quis es tu?"
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Salve = singular greeting. Salvete = plural greeting.
"Hi to you alone" = Salve. (French: salut à toi, salut à vous)
"Hi to you all" = Salvete. (French: salut à vous tous)
French really has a "you all"? I thought that was just an English thing!
Yes, "vous tous". Because there's also an ambiguity in French, between the "vous" singular (formal) and the "vous" plural, (formal or informal).
The English "you" is originally the exact equivalent of the French "vous". It explains the ambiguity between singular/plural.
But "Vous tous" (vous toutes) is usually used as an emphatic expression. An antonym of vous seul/vous seuls/vous seule/vous seules.
I'm aware of how English lost "thou" and of the influence French had on English after the Norman Invasion. I just hadn't really given much thought to the French side of things beyond what I learned in school learning French as a foreign language. But now that you point it out, it makes sense that "vous" would have the same ambiguity that modern "you" has.
gjeremy
In French, "tu" is the singular familiar and "vous" covers both singular polite and plural regardless of familiarity. As PERCE_NEIGE said, "vous tous" forces the plural "vous".
15
So French has a "you all" form. Does French also have a "thou all" form (Familiar 2nd person plural?)
- 1309
In BR English we don't use "you all" , We do not have a formal or an informal you. When we translate from another language we are taught that "vous" is often the "second person plural."
The letter "V" was pronounced like a /w/ by the Romans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin#Phonology
There seems to be an audio glitch at the beginning of the audio clip. I think that's what they were referring to.
No, it's entirely unrelated. "Wiki" is a Hawai'ian word that means "quick".
That's an urban legend, a backronym.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wiki#English
https://www.etymonline.com/word/wiki
Thanks for explaining that. I was so confused about that, it reminded me of gaelic where no word sounds as it's spelled.
The reason for that is because the Latin alphabet doesn't encompass a lot of the sounds made in Gaelic, since it was so linguistically isolated during its creation.
Irish spelling is very regular and rule-driven. It's just that the rules are very different than what they are in English. Different languages that use the Roman alphabet often use the letters to represent different sounds.
Letters in different languages don't sound the same. A Spanish "ll" is not an English "ll".
It's like when people says that French is impossible to read, because they apply the English rules of "letters-sounding" when they read French. French is very regular in the pronunciation, surprisingly regular, not as regular than Spanish though, that is the champion in regularity.
If you learn all the sounds made by a letter in the language, or a group of letters, you can decide if the sounds are different from the spelling.
Writing systems can be phonetic or not. This concept does not apply to languages themselves.
Esperanto and Lojban might have had philosophies behind their development, but natural languages evolve naturally. They are not developed. They do not have philosophies.
not as regular than Spanish though, that is the champion in regularity.
as regular as Spanish.
And Italian spelling is also quite regular.
Thank you for the correction.
Less than Spanish. Spanish has probably the most regular spelling (among Romance language), it's a language specially made to be phonetical. Spanish and French had completely opposed philosophy in their development. Spanish wanted to be a phonetical language, when French re-latinized and re-greekified many words to sound like an intellectual language, or a language with a great history. (but it also kept naturally the spelling often without a need for re-latinization, to be honest)
And Welsh "ll" is totally different again, which confused me when I started to learn Spanish. "Ll", in both Spanish and Welsh is a different letter to "L" though, which is probably why there is a difference between the two letter sounds.
The glyphs have no inherent value. Each language that uses the same alphabet assigns letters and letter combinations to sounds differently.
The Roman alphabet was never meant to be used with the Celtic/Gaelic languages. Heck, its ancestor the Phoenician alphabet wasn't meant to be used with Greek or Latin. So when a language adopts an alphabet that doesn't have characters assigned to sounds they have, they have to get creative.
Salve is for greeting one person. It's the second person singular imperative verb "be well".
Salvete is for greeting more than one person. It's the second person plural imperative verb "be well".
In French "Porte-toi bien" as a greeting (it's very rare), in English: "Take care".
I'm still having issues with the audio in Latin. It worked at first but now it doesn't. Is anyone else having this issue?
Please, fill a bug report, and tell them what is your OS, your browser, how it happens, etc...
It's the imperative "Be well." So you use "salve" when addressing one person (2nd person singular) and "salvete" when addressing more than one person (2nd person plural).
I don't understand the difference between Salve and Salvete. What's the difference and how do you use each? :)
It literally translates as the imperative "be well". So it's the 2nd person singular "salve" when you're addressing only one person and it's the 2nd person plural "salvete" when you're addressing more than one person.
Here are the verb conjugation charts:
1st Conjugation
2nd Conjugation
3rd Conjugation
3rd i-stem Conjugation
4th Conjugation
Here is a plain-English overview of what the cases are and how they work:
Latin cases, in English
Here are the noun and adjective declension charts:
declensions 1-3
declensions 4&5
Adjectives must agree in gender, number, and case with the nouns they modify, but they have their own declensions. Sometimes you get lucky and the adjective just happens to follow the same declension as the noun, but that is not a guarantee.
Why is the subject "tu" being said here? That is not normal/neutral. Also, why has the word order been consistently an English word order and not a Latin one? Once, when I used a neutral Latin word order, my answer was marked wrong. The order insisted upon was an English neutral word order, not a Latin neutral word order.
The course contributors put the sentences together, and the Duolingo engine breaks them apart and presents them in different forms. If you're asked to provide the correct verb conjugation for "Salve, quis ___ tu?" then the "tu" is an essential clue. But if you're given "Hello, who are you?" then you ought to be able to translate it as "Salve, quis es?"
From now on, whenever you're not sure why something was marked wrong, please either copy&paste or screenshot your full answer so we can help you see the real reason it marked you wrong. If a correctly written valid translation is marked wrong, you can always flag it before moving on to the next prompt and report "My anwer should be accepted." If enough people make that same report, the course contributors will evaluate it.
The verb is "salvere", to be well, and this is the imperative form. Therefore it needs to be conjugated to 2nd person singular or 2nd person plural.
Salve, Marce!
Salvete, Marce et Stephane!
