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- "Mos Novi Eboraci est suavite…
"Mos Novi Eboraci est suaviter cantare."
Translation:It is the custom in New York to sing sweetly.
89 Comments
Just report them with "my solution should be accepted".
There are so many possible word orders that it is impossible to think of all of them. That's where we as the learners can help. :-)
Edit: This is how to deal with problems in the course: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/33853120
BTW, in the meantime, I have had this "word order issue" myself with this very same sentence. You are not alone. ;-)
Well New York's former mayor has made a veiled threat that he would sing like a canary if someone threw him under the bus, and I've always thought canary songs sweet. So, there's that.
(Yes, I will get ±38 downvotes and maybe even be barred from commenting for this, but for some reason I just can't help myself.)
10
No - because Novi Eboraci is in the locative, so should be translated as in New York. "The custom in NY is to sing sweetly" should be an option, though (it may be accepted already, I didn't try it yet!)
I added the implicit word "city" (It is the custom in New York City to sing sweetly), and it was marked wrong. However, one way to distinguish NY the city and NY the state is precisely by using the locative (for the city only, by definition).
EDIT: I'm not the one who originated the urbs vs. civitas distinction--elsewhere in these Duolingo exercises, they seem to use civitas to mean a state (like California) but urbs to mean a city (like Bostonia, Philadelphia, Novum Eboracum). I was trying to think of a way, using the Duo framework, to distinguish between the state of NY and the city of the same name; nothing to do with 'real' Latin usages, obviously!!
I believe it says SIGILLUM CIVITATIS NOVI EBORACI, or "seal of the city of New York".
In other words, the word civitas (appearing in the genitive case, civitatis, in the seal) is in apposition to the name Novum Eboracum (which also appears in the genitive case, Novi Eboraci, in the seal).
So, for these purposes, civitas = city.
(Caesar uses civitas in the De Bello Gallico to refer to each Gallic tribe, which was organized with elected leaders and so forth. It's not nonsense, therefore, for Duolingo to use civitas to mean "American state" rather than city.)
(Mos Novi Eboraci est vehementer loqui.) . The deponent verb "to speak" has passive-looking forms, so, in fact, its infinitive ("to speak") doesn't end in -re like cantare, videre, dicere, dormire (which are all active-voice infinitives); rather, its infinitive is loqui. (Other deponent infinitives, by conjugation, are: morari, to stay; vereri, to fear; loqui, to speak and sequi, to follow; experiri, to try out, examine.)
In fact, loquere is the singular imperative form: "Speak!" (said to one person)
But I do take your point about the vigorous speaking style in NYC...
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I am actually learning from spanish and this phrase is a hell to me, what does this even mean!!
The basic structure is, "Mos est ... cantare," "It's the custom to sing."
Any infinitive, like cantare, can be equated with the noun mos (custom, tradition, practice).
This infinitive has the adverb suaviter, "sweetly": to sing sweetly (which I guess means, to sing well!).
The 2-word phrase Novi Eboraci means "IN / AT Novum Eboracum," which is the Latin name for New York. (Names of cities have a special form, called the locative, to replace the prepositional phrase "in (named city).")
Does that help?
I think because the word is "customary", with an "a". https://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/customary
I spent two weeks in SF last summer, and had no problems. However, there really are a disturbing number of homeless people downtown. SF (and indeed all of the USA) should think of a way to give these people basic housing and the opportunity to work in exchange for room and board. We cannot consider ourselves a very civilized society when there are so many homeless.
Yes, you're right, they are the same and were written the same way by the Romans (with the character V ).
Notice that, in suāviter , the first one ("u") is combined with the initial "s" to make the sound "sw" (as in "sweet"), and the second one ("v") precedes the vowel "i", so that it, too, is consonantal.
In a word like meus or tuus , we can see the same letter used as a vowel.
It's not (yet!) the fashion everywhere to write suāuiter , but there are some books that do it. (It used to be the fashion to write "j" for the consonantal "i", but most modern books write them all as "i": iam , iacere , Iuppiter , etc.)
Names are nouns, and so they decline like any other nouns. There was a town in Britannia called Eborācum, York, in Roman times; hence New York, for Latin purposes (such as, for the city's seal, and for Columbia University and so forth), is called Novum Eborācum.
Place-names (for CITIES) don't use prepositions for IN and TO and FROM. Instead, for the IN function, they use a form called the locative, which for a noun of the type that Eborācum belongs to, is Eborācī (it happens to be identical to the genitive).
Novī Eborācī means "in New York," but if you want to say, "I love New York," you'll say Novum Eborācum amō (where the city is the direct object).
The name of Neptunus changes too, right? "the power OF Neptunus" = Neptūnī , "I offer this TO Neptunus" = Neptūnō , and so forth. "O Neptune!" = Neptūne .