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- "I am a woman."
"I am a woman."
Translation:Ego sum femina.
36 Comments
Femina and mulier both mean woman, but mulier is generally used by classical authors. For the checking of words, please consult Lewis and Short (free online). As to the ego, you could have a sentence with the word ‘ego ‘ if another sentence was following: ‘ego mulier sum, tu vir es.’ Latin usually does not use a pronoun. The word order: please learn the students to put the verb at the end of a sentence. That is the normal order in classical Latin.
"femina" and "mulier" are both accepted, as are all acceptable word orders (SOV is most common, but others are correct as well), both with and without "ego" (its use would depend on context we don't have, so we allow for it). Unfortunately it takes a while for the changes we make to take effect on the user-side, sometimes two weeks or more.
I understand the reasoning. However: even when you accept all the variations as answers, why don’t you use the preferred order in the examples you make? The same goes for the pronouns: Latin does use them only in certain cases, especially ‘is, ea, id’ ( often substituted by other pronouns). I really admire you and the others efforts. I just would love to see the examples as correct as they can be, esp. since you are in beta. ( note: I am not trying to be the smartass, I am a linguist, specialized in Latin and Greek.)
Frankly, I can't explain the reasoning behind it. I'm not one of the regular contributors who designed the course, just temporary help with the initial flood of reports. I am a regular contributor for other courses with flexible word order though, so I know how tricky it is to teach with the Duo format. If I had to guess, I would guess that they're using different orders and sentences both with and without pronouns to show that it's possible, because that's really hard to show any other way on Duo.
Thank you, I understand that. At the same time it makes my teacher’s heart age and worries me about other languages I might learn:-(
If you always check the forum, there are nothing to worry about, as people complain very hard when a sentence is not natural in a language. Duolingo is unusable without its forum.
For this matter, we can understand the order is flexible in a few exercices, and the correction should be always given with the most common order, I agree, that's logical, and normal & safe teaching ways.
Regarding word order, although SOV (Subject Object Verb) is the "standard" word order in Classical Latin, the given sentence has no object. The verb has a nominative complement.
In "ego sum femina", "sum" is functioning as a copula. In such a case, arguably the normal word order is SVC ( Subject Verb Complement), which is the order found in "Ego sum femina".
With regards to fēmina vs mulier: That is not entirely correct. The word mulier was reserved for women of lower rank or to describe lowly women's tasks. (Krogsæter 2015: 69, quoting Walters in Hallett & Skinner 1997: 34).
Sometime we give students words they will recognize first, like femina, even if it's not the more common.
Personally, I don't think it's a good thing. It makes it easier to learn, but teach falsely, as we tend to memorize the exercises.
If they apply this logics, in the Spanish/Latin course, the sentence will be "Sum mulier" (mulier/mujer), and the coherence will be zero between the 2 courses. So, it's not really logical.
That is a reason I understand, esp. when focusing on English speakers.
you really wouldn't use ego in this context. It would probably be "puella sum"
That would depend on the context. The pronoun can be used for emphasis.
"sum femina/femina sum" are also accepted, or should be, but unfortunately it takes some time for the changes we make in the Incubator to be active for users (sometimes as long as two weeks).
Still, please report (with the button in the lesson, not in the discussion) if it's not accepted, it's still possible something got missed!
Oftentimes we are denied reporting. With this specific phrase, the only thing I could report (which I didn't), was that the English sentence was wrong (which it wasn't).
You can't report that your answer should be accepted if it was graded as correct (logically enough). What were you trying to report?
I don't think I've ever seen a situation before where you couldn't report audio except on Android (when you have the freewrite reports available). What platform and app version/browser version?
"Ego femina sum" would be a more "standard" word order, "ego sum femina" changes the emphasis.
https://www.duolingo.com/skill/la/Introduction/tips-and-notes
I am = ego sum
you are = tu es
he/she is = is/ea est
Yes, and if that is marked wrong, please flag it and report "My answer should be accepted."
"Woman" can be translated as "femina" or "mulier".
"Virgo" is where the word "virgin" comes from, but at the time it did not mean "one who has never had sex". It meant "young woman" or "maiden".
Mulier was specific: Walters in Hallett and Skinner (1997: 34) told that “Ordet mulier var dessuten reservert for kvinner av lav status, eller for å beskrive nedverdigende handlinger som bare kvinner måtte gjøre.”—“The word mulier was furthermore reserved for women of low status, or to describe demeaning tasks which were done solely by women.” (Krogsæter 2015: 69. Yes, Iʼm tooting my own horn.)
No. The meaning is fairly different. Femina means woman directly while virgo tends to translate to virgin.
The subject pronoun is always optional and seldom actually used, but as learners it's useful to know what they are so that we know which verb is appropriate to use.
