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- "Nomen ei est Livia."
51 Comments
914
"Numele ei este Livia", I keep getting surprized by how much Romanian has inherited from Latin, both phonologically and semantically! :)
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Romanian is one of the Romance languages, that is, those that are direct descendants of Latin! :) I use the acronym SPIRF to remember the Romance languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, and French.
Does anybody else hear the speaker saying "Julia" instead of "Livia"
In latin, it does not really matter which way you order the words since it is their declension that shows their use in a sentence. You could say Livia nomen ei est or Nomen Livia est ei, the meaning is the same. It is not like most modern european languages. For them, it is the position of the word in the sentence, and more specifically around the verb, that tells you what is the use of the word, if it is subject or attribute. However, there exist some practical uses in latin that you will encounter many times, such as this order.
The word order is varied, but it's usually SOV, it usually changes based on what you want to emphasize at the end of the sentence.
Indeed it is. The technical name for languages that rely on conjugation of verbs and declension of nouns (as it is called in Latin) is "Analytic." English, which relies heavily on word order, is "Synthetic." But L-J 19 over-states by quite a bit when he says it doesn't matter.
- 463
It's just the other way around. Languages that rely on conjugation of verbs and declension of nouns are called synthetic languages (Latin, Finnish, Czech,...). Languages that rely on word order and function words (prepositions, determiners, auxiliary verbs,...) are called analytic languages (Chinese, English,...).
It's true, but we cannot say that the order doesn't matter in Latin .
Nomen Livis est ei = would emphasize strongly on "her".
Possessive adjectives, such as meus "my", suus "his/their", are fairly evenly distributed (68% preceding in Caesar, 56% in a sample of Cicero speeches).When a possessive follows the noun it is unemphatic:
So: The normal place for a possessive is to follow the noun.
When it is more emphatic, or in contrastive focus, it precedes. (...) However, the possessive adjective preceding the noun is not always emphatic: when it is tucked away between two more emphatic words it is usually unemphatic:
domum meī frātris incenderat.
"He had set fire to my brother's house."
It is also usual for the possessive to precede the noun when vocative: (...) Mī pater,' inquit,'Persa periit'.
My father,' she said, 'Persa has died'."eius and eōrum
The 3rd person genitive pronouns, eius "his" and eōrum "their", tend to precede their noun in Caesar (in 73% of instances) Unlike the possessive adjectives, however, there is often no particular emphasis when they are used before a noun. (...) With certain nouns, such as frāter eius "his brother" or familiāris eius "his friend", however, the position after the noun is slightly more usual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_word_order#Personal_possessives
As I understand "nomen" is nominative, the subject in this case, so the order goes from what is more relevant. Literally it would be translated as "the name of her is Livia". Sorry if I don't explain myself well :/
It's not the name of her, as it would be a genitive. It's the name to her.
I don't understand what you mean by the order which is the most relevant, could you explain, please?
Is the genitive case fom of Is / Ea the same or there's more to this sentence?
the genitive case (singular) of both is and ea is "eius" (the neuter "id" has the same genitive as well)
here I think they used the dative ei (is, ea and id all have the same dative as well), which I think they meant to use as a dative of possession: "the name is for/to her" (nomen ei est) instead of "the name is hers" (nomen eius est)
I hope this makes sense! :)
I agree with you. What I would like to know is the context in which the dative construction is preferred to the genitive; is it more colloquial, or perhaps later Latin, or what? Perhaps a Latinist could enlighten us. Fiat lux!
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I am not a Latinist, but I had 7 years of Latin at school some decades ago and I still have the old grammar book. Here is the explanation (translated from German):
Dativus possessoris and genitivus possessivus
The dative with esse (to have, to own) emphasizes possession. The genitive with esse (belong to) emphasizes the owner.
Domus est patri. = The father has/owns a house.
Domus est patris. = The house belongs to the father.
If someone could answer this question... I've went to several forums, and nobody could answer.
Well, this particular pronoun has thirty forms.
Ei is the dative form and means to him, to her, or to it. Ea is she. Here is the whole chart, which can be a bit overwhelming. Do not try to memorize all thirty forms until you know the function of all five cases (and the forms of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd declension nouns.
Yes. You can move the verb in Latin. Usually, the verb is more natural and common at the end of the sentence, but the other ways are not bad, or wrong. They put another emphasis.
With the "est", it's an exception, this verb is more often found in the middle of the sentence (or at the beginning of the sentence).
So your version is less usual, but still perfectly valid!
Actually eius is the genitive for all three genders. I assume this is the Dative (ei for all genders) used to indicate possession: The name to/for her is Livia.
Name her is livia. From a complete beginner ... I don't understand the formation of these sentences. You would think some kind of beginner lesson would explain this to people like me.
Yes, but does "Name her is Livia" sound right? It's a bit like anagrams, you have to rearrange the words so that the sentence makes sense.
I typed her but my phone autocorrected to he and it gave me a wrong answer, so mad
It marked my word order wrong when I have used the same word order before and it was marked correct.humf.
But we learnt in Latin that the verb is always at the back of the sentence?
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The first one means 'you are', the second one 'he/she/it is'.
infinitive: to be - esse
Present tense:
1. singular: I am - sum
2. singular: you are - es
3. singular: he/she/it is - is/ea/id est
1. plural: we are - sumus
2. plural: you are - estis
3. plural: they are - sunt
- 1292
"ei" was "his" (last exercise), now it is "her." With everything else so gendered, is third person sing. the one pronoun the Romans overlooked?
I don't understand why here is used the dative "ei" and not the genitive "eius". "Nomen eius est Livia"
- 463
In Latin, both the genitive and the dative can be used to indicate ownership. There is no exact equivalent of this use of the dative in English, but the Latin construction might become clearer if you add an implicit "belongs to" to the literal translation into English:
The name (that belongs) to her is Livia.
