- Forum >
- Topic: Latin >
- "Est paterfamilias."
34 Comments
Paterfamilias was the oldest living male in the household and he held power over the rest of the family. Every important decision was made by the paterfamilias.
Power of life and death, on his family and on his slaves, until the new religion came.
The given translation "There is a head of the house", is possible, as "est" at the beginning of the sentence could be "there is", but I'm not really convinced that the more natural way to understand it wouldn't be "He is a/the paterfamilias/head of the house".
What are your opinions please?
2232
"He is head of the house" was accepted. Like you, I thought an implied "He" rather more likely than "There is" - but DL is fine with either.
I said 'He is head of the house.' It was marked wrong. But is it really wrong?
- 380
No, then the oldest son took his place, if not availsble the oldest brother of the late paterfamiliss.
- 217
There are female household heads in other cultures. I was trying to figure out whether the Mods will be including this concept in this course, or whether they will be sticking to only having a paterfamilias, as there was in Ancient Rome.
How does the declenation work? Does "I save the paterfamilias" become "patremfamilas servo"?
- 380
Head of the house, i. e. The people living there, is too restricted. A child living elsewhere is still part of the core family and still is under the authority of the paterfamilias.
Previous exercises kept "paterfamilias" untranslated, treating it as its own English word. I thought it weird, but I went along.
Previous exercises also allowed "He is..." for "est" statements if this kind. Which is cool, since "There is" / "There are" is lame English.
But "He is paterfamilias" was just rejected.
"He is head of the house" is a valid translation of "Est paterfamilias", yet it was rejected and marked wrong. Moderators, please fix this!
Est should be restricted to He/She/It - So He (or It) is a head of the house, or It is the head of a/the house, should be more correct?
- 588
In my native language the translation fits perfectly like in other latin languages: "Es el padre de familia", "È il padre della famiglia", "Es la cabeza de la familia", È il capo della famiglia". The head of the house" seems a little more confusing, (Pater = Padre = Father).
This audio needs to be clipped- can hear about 8 seconds of background/typing noise after it! x
- 452
His is the father of the family ( is this english?) Your translation doesn't make sense.
