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- "Venitis ab urbe?"
37 Comments
I'm not sure that makes sense. Most Latin inscriptions and manuscripts don't feature punctuation in the sense we use it today. Modern punctuation conventions are only a few hundred years old.
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There should be a "-ne" suffix added to "venitis", in order to express the question here.
The punctuation makes it a question (in ancient Rome, the inflection and/or context could also indicate a question if -ne was omitted).
Intonation&Context in English can do this also. Note:
Language came long before punctuation.
My terms are not linguistically correct (maybe theres a better word than raisingtone (or ^) to use here in reference to ENG speech, i don't know)
What is a question but a statement with a request attached. a request for more details, for acknowledgement, for agreement, for validation, for the other persons thoughts, etc....
- You work at the bank (neutral tone - statement)
- You work at the ^bank^ (tones rises at the end - question)
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You work at the (pause) bank (pause shows disbelief, or lack of understanding, while the statement on a whole shows full comprehension, thus a rhetoric question if you also lowered the tone of Bank it would imply that the location is the part being questioned where as if you raised or lowered tone on You or Work it would indicate more nuisance to the question)
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John's here (statement)
- John's ^here^ (question made from whole statement via raising the tone on here)
- ^John's^ here (questioning specifically that John is the one who is here (as though john was not expected or undesired a contrast) by raising the tone on john
a lot of ways to make questions out of statements just by changing the tone in ENG and in Korean as well, which I noticed you are also studying, can have the statement be a full question on it's own context dependent.
It is not uncommon across many languages particularly colloquially for questions to be formed as is (the statement can be unchanged becoming a question) with some aspect of querying attached ... whether thats a yes/no marker like latin -ne or hindi kya or the amazing variance of korean endings that can alter the verb to mean number of type of questions (separate from the question word itself) .... it is FAR more common with yes/no questions though and obviously theres way more ways to ask a question in each language that has this feature.
I would have expected ‘Dum venītis ab urbe?’ or ‘Venītisne ab urbe?’ Though it might be correct, it would be better to teach the standard ways of asking questions, to avoid confusion.
In the books of Patrick O'Brian, with the adventures of Jack "Lucky" Aubrey, an officer of the British Royal Navy, there are lot of questions made by just assigning a question mark to affirmative sentences. And I found that in others writers.
I wrote ‘are you coming’ and it got marked wrong. Does Latin have a progressive aspect that I didn’t know about?
It better be like the most authentic latin accent ever because it is difficult to understand.
I find it difficult too. The consonant s slides on to the vowel a - so that for me the sentence became Veniti saburbe. Greater familiarity with Latin should overcome that difficulty.
So the verb, starting at the beginning of the sentence, makes it a question? Does this normally happen as a rule?
No, I don't think so. The way a Y/N question is indicated in Latin grammar is the suffix -ne. Word order, including placement of the verb, doesn't matter in making something a question.
I did not understand the pronunciation of this phrase AT ALL!! They really need to add an option to slow down the audio like other courses have (and yes, I have submitted this feedback on this).
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Yeah, I would really like that too. It's been addressed before. It's not going to happen. Some technical thingy, what'a-ma-call-it, do-hickey, I don't know, but it's not going to happen.
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Elsewhere, yes-no questions without the -ne suffix were marked wrong. I thought the suffix was optional if the sentence was pronounced in the rising intonation indicating it was a yes-no question. Then, someone commented and told me that it was not optional. Now, this sentence from Duo comes without -ne. I'm at a loss.
I put, "Ab urbem venitis?" and it was accepted. Now I am wondering why? Shouldn't it be "Venitisne ab urbe?" Well, I see others have addressed the fact that the "ne" is optional, but getting the case wrong usually causes DL to count the sentence as wrong.
Too often it marks my answers as correct with s typo. It's no typo when I've tacked on the wrong ending! I report, but doubt it'll be fixed.
I would think so. Did you write "from" or "form," as above? DL usually accepts a one-letter typo, but mixing up two letters often will cause the sentence to be counted as incorrect.
