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- "How is Marcus?"
"How is Marcus?"
Translation:Quid agit Marcus?
37 Comments
Quomodo se habet Marcus.
No. Marcus is the nominative, the subject of the sentence.
Marcus dormit.
Marce is the vocative. You use it when you're directly addressing him.
Salve, Marce!
It is not idiomatic in Latin to say "How are you?" Instead, they say "How do you keep yourself?" (Quomodo te habes?) or "What are you doing?" (Quid agis?)
"Agit" is the 3rd person singular of "agere", which is "to do".
"Est" is the 3rd person singular of "esse", which is "to be".
"Habet" is the 3rd person singular of "habere", which is "to hold".
Because that was never idiomatic in Latin. They never said that. "Quomodo" is a rather literal "how" -- "in what manner" -- and that can't be applied to verbs of state, only to verbs of action. Also, when it's a question the verb gets moved up.
Instead, in Latin they said "Quomodo se habet Marcus?" ("How does Marcus hold himself?") or "Quid agit Marcus?" ("What is Marcus doing?")
In Latin, all nouns are declined according to their function in the sentence. Names are nouns, so names decline.
This name is 2nd declension masculine. "Marcus" is the nominative case, "Marce" is the vocative case, "Marcum" is the accusative, "Marco" is the dative and ablative.
Here is a plain-English overview of what the cases are and how they work:
Latin cases, in English
Here are the noun and adjective declension charts:
declensions 1-3
declensions 4&5
Adjectives must agree in gender, number, and case with the nouns they modify, but they have their own declensions. Sometimes you get lucky and the adjective just happens to follow the same declension as the noun, but that is not a guarantee.
For good measure, here are the verb conjugation charts:
1st Conjugation
2nd Conjugation
3rd Conjugation
3rd i-stem Conjugation
4th Conjugation
No. "Quid" is "what". "Quid agit Marcus?" is literally "What is Marcus doing?" but idiomatically is used the way we use "How is Marcus?" And no, "Quomodo est Marcus?" would not work either. That would be "Quomodo se habet Marcus?", literally "How does Marcus hold himself?"
Marce is the vocative. You only use it when you are addressing him directly.
There is an explanation elsewhere on this page.
Nominative (the subject of the sentence) vs vocative (directly addressing him). Please see my comment above for more details.
'Quidmodo Marcus se habet' is not correct?
I thought quidmodo = how, and quid = what
I understand why the given answer is correct, but I don't understand why my answer is not.
So if i was telling it in 2nd S it will be "Quid agis?" but how can i say it in 2nd person P? Can it be "Quid agitis vos?"
To me, "How are you?" is different than "What are you doing?" The question is "How is Marcus?" not "What is Marcus doing?" So, I am confused where agit comes from when the lesson teaches that as meaning doing. I would of thought Quomodo est Marcus? would be correct.... clearly not.
You're trying to apply modern English to Latin. It doesn't work that way. Latin is a different language with different grammar, different ways of saying things, different idioms, etc.
Quomodo is literally "quo+modo", "what mode" or "what manner". It does not line up one-to-one with the English "how". Things rarely do. And honestly, the more I think about it, the English idiom "How are you?" makes less and less sense when taken literally. But that's how idioms work. They're not literal.
As I said before, Latin has different idioms than English does. Where we say "How are you?" and "I'm fine", in Latin they say "Quid agis?" or "Quomodo te habes?" and "Bene me habeo". Yes, literally "What are you doing?", "How do you hold yourself?", and "I hold myself well". But Latin is not English.
That really is the #1 thing to remember about different languages: They are not just English with different words. And that's just something we need to accept.
I get what you are saying and it certainly makes sense in that all languages don't translate always directly to another. As a new student, its difficult when you don't have the framework you have. I have a tendency to try and remember things by relating them to what I know already. So, then you are saying Quid Agis can mean What are you doing? and also How are you? Quomodo te habes is how to you hold yourself, but it always means that yes? Bene me habeo always means I hold myself well yes? In the tips section of this module it displays Quid Agis as what are you doing, or at least thats what I thought I remembered. I will go back and check that. thanks for the help.
Yes, "quid agis" does literally mean "what are you doing". Yes, "bene me habeo" does literally mean "I hold myself well".
But in English, we can say "What's up?" and we understand that we're not looking for "at a highter altitude". We can say "How's it hangin'?" and we understand that we're not looking for "it is suspended by rope".
