"How many universities are in Rome?"
Translation:Quot universitates Romae sunt?
8 Comments
130
While I agree that the suggested word order is more natural, I believe Romae can also go at the end of the sentence. Classical Latin word order is quite flexible.
- 838
I know that "romae" means "in rome" but another sentence has "in america" and still "in rome" is not accepted here. It's not obvious to me why these two cases would be different. Is "romae" simply a special case, or what?
Short answer: yes, special case.
in Americā takes the Ablative.
Cities and other special words (rus, domus, humus, and a few others) kept the Locative case that disappeared for most other words.
Hence Romae (which will look exactly like the Genitive Case) is locative, but America, though the ending is the same (-a) won't do that because it is not a city, but a larger structure. Therefore, like most other things you will be in, it needs the prep "in" and the noun in the Ablative (here "in Americā")
Thank you for clearing this up - I was wondering why all the sentences used "in America" instead of "America+e" for Locative.
- 838
The mouseover suggestions give both "quot" and "quid" for "how" but still "quid universitates romae sunt" is not accepted. What is the difference?
"Quid" for "how" is not the most common way to use that. It generally means "what."
Further, "quot" means "how many?" This is why "quid" doesn't work here.
