43 Comments
101
Note: This is a deponent verb, which is a verb that appears passive even when it's in active tense. The phrase "nata est" is actually past tense of the verb nasci, meaning "was born." So it translates to: "A girl was born in Germany" or "The girl was born in Germany."
Volgav vitsenanieff nivya kevach varatsach.
Sorry, but what does "Volgav vitsenanieff nivya kevach varatsach." mean and what language is it? It sounds pretty cool.
I asked him yesterday, he said: "It's a sentence in a conlang I made, meaning "Two rivers do not flow the same direction." I use it to mark my comments so that I can find them again. Basically my list of Followed posts is very long, so if I don't want to keep one around, I'll remove it. But if I want to find a given comment again, and the post isn't in my followed list, I can't find it very readily - Duolingo doesn't have an option to search by username - so I add in a sentence that it can search for. Conlangs lend themselves beautifully to this purpose. Thanks for asking! :) Volgav vitsenanieff nivya kevach varatsach"
- 101
I actually take this as a compliment, because this conlang was intended to sound Slavic - it even makes use of some Russian names to aid in this (one of them being a word present in this very sentence, "volga" ;). So this comment made me really happy. :D
Volgav vitsenanieff nivya kevach varatsach.
- 101
Exactly so. :) And thanks @DarkLordBaudish for asking!
Volgav vitsenanieff nivya kevach varatsach.
Without further context, "The girl was born in Germany" would be a more natural English translation than "A girl was born in Germany."
- 274
Exactly what I think of, every time I see this example. Valar Dohaeris!
- 493
A girl was born •
The girl was born •
Both are equally valid without further context.
Once upon a time, there was a girl born ... now the girl born ... lives happily ever after. [ having a defining introduction ] The end.
A girl was born. X happens to this girl. Now the girl who was born has definition.
Prior to having any defining introduction, the Indefinite Article serves. Endowed with a defining introduction, the Definite Article serves.
Further context sufficient to transition from Indefinite Article to Definite Article after one introductory sentence:
News story: A tsunami alert has been issued. The alert targets the following areas:
I'm not really sure why "A girl is born in Germany" wouldn't be correct. It's the perfect tense, which could be translated to a present perfect tense in English. At least, such is the case in Dutch, maybe this is more a question of me not understanding the English tense?
- 24
I think sigaloenta was questioning the choice of indefinite article (a) over the definite article (the) rather than the verb. Whilst grammatically correct, the use of 'a' makes the sentence feel a bit pointless.
Personally, I'm not bothered - either is a correct translation and I'm not expecting great philosophical insights at this stage of the course - maybe later when we can read Tacitus in the original... ;o)
- 781
The article is not important. In English we usually use the past perfect when referring to somebody's birth. I know it's nonsensical, but English has its quirks.
Well I'd imagine so, yes.
In fact I'd dare to say that multiple girls have been born in Germany. :D
- 155
I know we also have New York and Philadelphia, but in the context of speaking Latin, my first association is more along the lines of "Germanien" than "Deutschland". Is there an English word at all that I could make that distinction with?
An English word making the distinction between old Germany and modern Germany? It's the same problem with Italy. Italy doesn't mean a state called Italy in the Roman times. Same thing with Gallia meaning France, and that was bigger than modern France...
- 155
I know we can use Gaul instead of France to refer to the area in Roman times, but I wouldn't know an unambiguous alternative for Italy either. I suppose Germania and Italia simply don't have equivalents in modern English?
- 1530
Are they already throwing the past tense verbs in? Okay that was rhetorical. It just seems we might have had something said in the lesson's intro.
- 198
Probably "The girl is born in Germany" should be perfectly correct, since it also conveys a "past" meaning in English in the same was as this Latin sentence... She is not being born now, even in English it means that she was born some indefinite time ago, also indicating an action happened in the past. You could easily point to a 20 year girl to someone and say "That girl is born in Germany¨, even that it has happened 20 years ago.
Agree, but I was under the impression "is born" is incorrect English. At least that's what I learned in school; a lot of Swedes say "is born" because that's how we do it in Swedish, but we always got marked wrong for it. Might be a good idea to accept it anyway since many learners here aren't English native speakers.
- 124
"Is born" is correct in Eglish, but it corresponds to Latin nascitur, not est natus.
- 155
Thanks for explaining. I find translating tenses is one of the most taxing things, because the pragmatics differ so wildly from one language to the next. :)
- 781
Literal translations are one thing, expressing yourself as a native English speaker is another. We'd say, "The girl was born in Germany."
- 428
"The girl is born in Germany" is also correct English; it just depends on the context. "Every three seconds, a girl is born in Germany."
I don't think nascitur is the same, it's more like he's being born at this moment, whereas historical present exists in English where you can express past events with present tense.
