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- "Corinna litteris Latinis stu…
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1016
Litteris latinis in not accusative but an indirect case (dative or ablative). The verb studeo (studere in the infinitive mode) shouldn't be followed by accusative? Anyway, great jobbso far, regardless some flaws also in pronunciation
- 921
Litteris Latinis is in the dative as studere often takes the dative instead of the accusative for its 'direct object'.
- 921
It would make more sense as to why the dative is used if the course taught a different translation of studere = 'to strive for', 'to direct one's efforts to'. The 'for' and the 'to' at the end of each match with how a dative form is often translated. There are a few verbs that take the dative instead of the accusative but many of the books for learning Latin I have used often provide a translation that ends with a 'to' or 'for' to emphasis that it takes the dative.
But, as with most languages, there are going to be weird exceptions and such that may not seem logical but likely felt very natural to a native speaker.
Thanks for your clear and detailed explanation. Yes, if the more exact definition of studere is "to direct one's effort to" or "to devote oneself to", the usage of being dative is perfectly reasonable.
Also, no natural language is that logical, except it is an artificial language such as one created for computer science. But perhaps it is this very un-logicalness that counts as one of the reasons why natural languages are so beautiful.
Have we been introduced to the dative case yet? This has been confusing me all day, why sometimes I'm seeing Litteris Latinis as the object in the sentence, and other times Litteras Latinas. I like the explanation of how studere takes the dative case, but hello have we been told that anywhere in the learning materials? Loving this course so far!
Agreed. I'm just guessing which one to use and can't seem to detect any rhyme or reason to it. Would be helpful to have some explanation for it.
Since we aren't introduced to the dative, should we just accept the "weird" endings of objects when studere/studeo is the verb and carry on until we actually learn the dative?
I was confused about why it was dative and not accusative also, but then I thought about the word study. Why is corinna studying and not just learning? You study in prepartion for something. You can learn just to gain knowledge.
The fact they chose study should tell us shes doing it for a reason. Making it dative.
Even tho it would be nice if they told us, u dont really need to know the true latin definition of a word to find out its case. You just gotta think of its English uses and meaning.
What intrigues me here is the use of the plural form (litteris Latinis - dative). Couldn't it be "litterae Latinae" (singular dative form)?
- 921
From my understanding, it is more common to use the plural to mean 'literature' since the singular can mean simply 'letter'.
Tks Moopish! I realized it is like in french ("lettre" for a letter of the alphabet or mail, and "Belles Lettres" for the study of a language), or even portuguese (letra X Letras - for when you study languages at the university).
When does one capitalize “Latinis”? It proffers “latinis” as an alternative.
