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- Topic: Latin >
- "Stephanus est vir."
37 Comments
Duo rejected "Steven is a man." I hope the team will be adding some additional acceptable translations. Wish I could help. EDIT: We mustn't anglicize names because later we will learn how declensions work on Latin names.
Don't translate the name. Stephanus, not Steven. :)
Volgav vitsenanieff nivya kevach varatsach.
Yes, after having done a few lessons I understand why: it's important for Latin declensions. And I just want to thank those of you who aren't downvoting my comment, it provides learning for anyone who made or is tempted to make the same mistake. The downvotes are discouraging.
It's the reason why I think they should let us translate the name. If I speak Latin with someone, my name will be translated, to add the proper declension.
I'm happy my school made me take 2+ years of Latin because otherwise I wouldn't understand anything having to do with declensions and conjugations otherwise. I find it interesting that Latin is an option on Duolingo because the whole program is pretty much immersive vs. memorizing all the endings - it seems kind of counter-intuitive. But I guess I'll see later on!
By the way, thank you Arcana for all the help you are giving in the forums. Your expertise is appreciated!
Besides learning declensions, imagine what would happen to the accepted translation list if we tried to accept anglicisations... Stefan/Steven/Stephen/Stephan/etc. would quickly multiply the number of translations by a huge amount and be hard to keep consistent, and there would always be people wanting this other version that was left out.
Salut, Trofaste, ça fait longtemps! Just wondering, isn't there a global acceptance policy of a word that has a one-letter typo? I think I have even sometimes reversed two letters and my response was still accepted (in the German ie vs. ei spellings).
I think that gets nullified if your typo happens to be a real word. So, for instance, if the answer requires the word "go" but you typed "got," the system would reject it because "got" is a real word and not the correct one for the translation.
Exactly right. And sometimes it does strange things too, it's done by algorithm, not by us.
Can't accept every variants of a name. Yes, that's true, you're right. But there's certainly a semi-official translation for a name, as it's used in Latin textbooks. Of course it's impossible to add all the variants of a name.
For Stephanus, English dictionary translate it this way: https://glosbe.com/la/en/Stephanus
Stephen
Also, the audio sounds like the "ph" is an "f" sound, but it should sound like the ph in "uphill."
Please report audio issues with the button in the lesson, not in the sentence discussion.
There's a guide on how to be most helpful with your reporting here. :)
Ph is might have been pronounced like in uphill, but also has the "f" sound, like in philosophy, phenix, photo. Although ph is Greek in origin and was pronounced like aspirated p+h, it has changed to f sound in both Latin and Greek soon after and in around second century continued to later pass it to other languages, ie French and Spanish, etc. The idea of pronouncing ph as f spread to other languages, for example Hebrew, where the letter פ can be p or f depending on context. Languages tend to change and normally go to the easiest way regarding pronunciation. Aspirated p-h naturally changed to f sound. U might have been pronounced line English w, but the v sound is naturally occurring in all the languages so why there's none in Latin, since some words would sound more naturally with v not u /w/? Distinction is visible on Pompeian graffiti where in one word letter u and letter v can clearly be distinguished. And since nobody exactly knows how Latin was pronounced, let's skip "aspirations" (;)) and go on with learning.
Before, staphanus est puer wasn't accepted. Duo said it was supposed to be stephanus puer est. But now I see stephanus est vir is correct. Does the placement of the verb matter?
The end of the sentence is the most common verb placement. The others are also correct though, and have been added, but unfortunately it takes some time for the changes we make in the Incubator to be active for users (sometimes as long as two weeks).
Still, please report (with the button in the lesson, not in the discussion) if it's not accepted, it's still possible something got missed!
I wrote "Stephanus is the man" and it got marked incorrect, but I've used different articles ("a" and "the") interchangeably on other questions without issue
It's been added, but unfortunately it takes some time for the changes we make in the Incubator to be active for users (sometimes as long as two weeks).
Still, please report (with the button in the lesson, not in the discussion) if it's not accepted, it's still possible something got missed!
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Because the order of words in Latin seems very flexible, I tried to translate this as 'The man is Stephanus' but it got marked wrong. Thus I am guessing that 'The man is Stephanus' would have to be 'Vir est Stephanus' or maybe even 'Vir Stephanus est'. I'm just beginning, so maybe sentence order gets explained more later...
How do we know this? What sources can you quote in support of this? Thanks
The v sound was one of the easiest parts to reconstruct.
You can check literally any Latin textbook for more information.
This has been accepted for over 60 years.
Why wouldn't it accept Stefanus instead of Stephanus (technically Ecclestical spelling not Roman/Greek)
Of course Stephanus is a Classical Latin word. You can tell it's of Greek origin because of the ph.
EDIT Adding variations of names would add hours of hours of work. We will be accepting Stephanus, not Steven, Stephen, Stefon, Steve, Stepanie, etc. :)
