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- "Me bene habeo."
49 Comments
Is h in habeo silent or not? Anybody knows? The lady doesn't pronounce it, but the man does. I am confused
Its not silent. I think they have really bad pronouncers half the time i cant understand what the people are saying or their saying it wrong. I have taken Latin 1 and am now taking Latin 2 and we dont pronounce some of the words the same.
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Thanks for this link on Latin consonant pronunciations, Rae!
Also by the same guy on vowels:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwtgvwJljto
And his yt.com channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrMiGmO4X9WeWq1fMm_7avg
- 1204
from what little I do know the h is not silent but it soft, like a pronounced exhale of sorts.
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There are many latin pronunciations used today, with the most popular being Ecclesiastical (the pronunciation used in the catholic church, which is based on modern Italian phonology) and Classical (the reconstructed pronunciation of Latin from around the birth of Christ). Both are valid, but they have some differences; one of which being that the H is pronounced in Classical Latin, but not in Ecclesiastical Latin.
Yeah im a little confused by this actually habeo doesnt really fit there
Yes, Rae. But it's a Duolingo source. Could someone paste other sources for this expression, just to check.
Tacitus, Annals 14.51 has Burrus say "Ego me bene habeo".
Cicero in letter 2.8 to Atticus says "bene habemus nos", which can be translated as "We are in a good way".
There may be other classical sources, but I only found these two via a Google search.
Why is it "Me" and not "Ego sum"? and why is "habeo" needed? Can't I just say "Ego sum bene"? Doesn't "bene" itself mean "well"?
"Habere" is literally "to have/to hold". Therefore the reflexive pronoun is required for it to say "I hold myself well".
We use "well" in English as a health-related adjective (I am well), but outside of that context it is an adverb. "Bene" is typically an adverb and we cannot assume that Latin uses adverbs in the complement to describe the subject (?Ego sum bene).
So is it correct to inject the adverb in the middle between the reflexive pronoun and the verb?
From http://rharriso.sites.truman.edu/latin-language/latin-word-order/,
Adverbs do not have endings to indicate agreement, so they are “velcroed” to the word they modify, usually coming directly before.
From that, I would think that it is correct to inject the adverb between the reflexive pronoun and the verb.
Is this talking about health or mood? Good and well are different in this context. Can bene be used for both?
As a Romanian speaker, translating this literally would refer to your health.
You can't.
Habeo is not "I feel", it's "I have/hold".
Habeo=I have/hold
Me habeo=I have/hold myself
In addition, the non-copulative verb usually should be at the end of the sentence.
No. "Habere" means "to hold". It needs to be reflexive: "I have myself well." It's not "I hold well."
The "me" is accusative: literally, "I have/hold myself well". Bene is an adverb.
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"Me bene habeo" = I am well. OK. But when I translate "male me habeo" as "I am bad", the answer is wrong and it is "I feel poorly". Could someone explain to me ? Thank you.
I am well = my health is good.
I am good = I am a good person.
I am bad = I am a bad person.
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'Me bene habeo' literally means 'I hold myself well', which we translate as "I feel good'. You can almost think of this as the answer to the question "how are you holding up?". "Me male have", "I hold myself badly", just means the opposite of "me bene habeo", and we have to translate it to something with an opposite meaning. "I feel poorly'" is just one possiby translation.
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But, Michle, you can say "I feel bad" when you don't feel well physically or emotionally.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/do-you-feel-bad-or-feel-badly
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Thank you for your reply. It's not very easy to learn Latin through English, I'm French.
I wrote "I feel great" but got Marc-ed wrong (by the way, stop using Marcus). Can someone explain why?? Thank you.
"Great" is too strong to be an accurate translation. "I feel good" or "I feel fine" would be more appropriate.
Why is it sometimes thw who before the feeling bu other times its "feeling, who, form of habet"
- "I am" is "sum", not "sums".
- You cannot have more than one conjugated verb in the same phrase. You would not say "He is has".
- Latin does not say "I am have" or use "esse" to help conjugate verbs.
- "Se habere" literally means "to have oneself".
(ego) me bene habeo
Here are the verb conjugation charts:
1st Conjugation
2nd Conjugation
3rd Conjugation
3rd i-stem Conjugation
4th Conjugation
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.
As explained on this page before, it's literally "I hold myself well".
If they translated "habeo" to "i have" does it make sense that this can be literally translated to "i have a feeling of wellness" ?
The voice says "mei" , not "me". That's not right, is it? Sounds like English pronunciation slipping in.
