"New York is an American city."
Translation:Novum Eboracum est urbs Americana.
29 Comments
Why not 'Novum Eboracum urbs Americana est" I'm quickly getting very confused about when not to out the verb at the end.
Generally, Latin word order is extremely flexible. Seeing as this course is in its beta stage, please report the issue when it arises. I have noticed that this course either follows the sentence constructions, "[Subject] [object] [verb]," or the more English friendly, "[Subject] [verb] [object]." Truthfully, both answers are equally valid, but currently, some wrong answers are byproducts of the system. Also, kudos to you for learning Latin!
There is no set order in Latin, though most formal writers used SOV. Just report that it should be accepted and move on
195
Word order is important in Latin as provider of emphasis.... in fact, classical Latin would be SOV. the inversion would put stress in the part which is "out of place"... so the proposed word order "Novum Eboracum est urbs Americana" would translate with emphasis something like "It is an AMERICAN CITY what New York is", to emphasize the displaced part of the phrase.
Based on my limited knowledge of Latin I believe word order is relatively loose in that you are not required to usually place a part of speech in a specific spot. Rather, the placement of certain words (ex: a verb at the beginning of a sentence) can imply a certain quality of a sentence. This is why Latin is a popular medium by which poetry is written, as sentences which in theory say the exact same thing have a different emphasis from each other depending on which order their words take.
It would be fun if instead of using american cities and states names, (that didn't exist when Latin was spoken), they use roman empire cities names like Lutetia (Paris) or Londinium (London), in the exercises.
True, although York was actually founded by the Romans as as "Eboracum", so I guess it's just a clever joke. I'm not a fan of the other American stuff in this course either.
- 92
Agree, and why not Italian cities like Pompei etc. Both options are surely more relevant to the course.
- 195
I really liked Novum Eboracum, I will never ever see New York in print without remembering it.... and it is possible because York was an city in Roman times with the name Eboracum
I quite enjoyed learning that ''New York'' is ''Novum Eboracum''! But I get your point. MAYBE they could do a bit of both: put some old and some new ones. ''NY'' was cool to study, but ''Boston''... Not so much.
- 491
Such as: Alexandria, Athens, Atlanta, Augusta, Cambridge, Carolina, Cincinnati, Colombia, Corinth, Corpus Christi, Damascus, Hannover, Helena, Ithica, Jericho, London, Medina, Memphis, Messina, Minneapolis, Naples, Nova Scotia, Paris, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, Santa Cruz, Syracuse, Toledo, Troy, Venice, Vienna
EU, IR, SCA Latin Place names
Neo-Latin place names
- 134
A small suggestion: demonyms and geographical adjectives can be written in lower case.
- 1890
So, is "Novum Eboracum" just as valid as "Eboracum Novum?"
In other words, is the order of a multiple-word proper name rigid or flexible?
The order of adjectives in relation to nouns is flexible to a degree; so, yes, "Eboracum Novum" should be a completely valid translation. Since both words have been put the in the accusative case, the linguistic use of a noun as an object or indicating motion towards (at least for Latin), swapping the position of the adjective to be after the noun is more than acceptable. I am not sure if the course will currently or eventually accept "Eboracum Novum" as a correct answer, but I hope it does eventually.
- 1890
Thank you. I'll have to try reporting it once or twice to see if they'll eventually accept it.
Except if it's the name of a city! (or the name of something used by everybody)
I guess that if the name of the city is "Novum Eboracum", it becomes an expression, and you can't change the name.
- 92
It is most annoying that the verb at the end is not consistently accepted by the software. It is just guesswork which order is going to be accepted
Urbs is the nominative so it's used for the subject or with the second clause when the verb is simply 'est'. Urbe is the ablative, meaning 'by, with or from the city.
- 1529
It's REALLY early to be getting into the ablative, which is why they probably didn't get into that. It's sort of a catch-all for whatever isn't caught in the other cases such as the accusative, or dative. (with regard to objects)... Latin can seem quite intimidating looking at all the declensions and verb conjugations etc., but once you get rolling in it... it'll come a bit easier.
In reality, Urbe doesn't change in Urbs, but the "normal" word is Urbs.
Ubs = nominative = meaning it's the "normal" case. Like when something is subject. The cities are beautiful = nominative.
Accusative is when the word is grammatically a complement to the verb. I make a cake. "a cake" would be grammatically accusative, as it's the result of the action verb, or the "thing" that receives, benefit or suffer from the result of the action.
To make it very simple, the ablative case can be used when you have a preposition like "by" + the word.
For instance:
"Occidit hostem gladio"
Occidit means to "He kills". "Hostem" means the ennemy, and "gladio" means by or with the glave.
If you had the "normal" word, it's not glavio, it's gladius.
I would use the nominative "gladius", if I wanted to say "The glave is very sharp" for instance.
Another instance of Est not being allowed to terminate the sentence; this is incorrect. Latin is EXTREMELY flexible, the endings determine the word meaning, rarely does the word order.
