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- "Philadelphia is my city."
"Philadelphia is my city."
Translation:Philadelphia est urbs mea.
41 Comments
I barely know any latin so far but all i needed was that 1st sentence. Why curse us with that song?
Why is "Philadelphia mea urbs est" wrong? Surely the word order doesn't change the meaning?
There are limits to how you can change the word order. Your sentence means "My Philadelphia is city," which is grammatically different than "Philadelphia is my city." "Mea" should come after "urbs", and vice versa for other contexts. Hope this helps!
“Urbs” is the nominative form and is used to declare a subject. “Urbe” is in the ablative. The ablative case is usually translated with a ‘by/ with’ so in this case “urbe” on its own could potentially mean “by/with the city”.
What is the difference between mihi and mea. They both mean "my", no?
Mihi nomen urbs mea
Something to do with the order possibly?!
The word “mihi” belongs to the 1st person singular pronouns “ego, mei, mihi, me, me” and is dative so would be roughly translated as “to me”. Mea on the other hand, is a possessive 1st person singular adjective, which means “my”. I hope that helped.
Okay, I don't really have a grid for the "to me" part of "mihi", because the only phase I know with "mihi" in it is "mihi nomen" which, as I've heard, is kinda an exception.
Agreed. That confuses me about possession. So in general genitive is used for possession/belonging?
Yes, the genitive is generally used to denote possession (such as in “the king’s throne). The genitive can also have other uses depending on context (which as far as Duolingo goes I risk giving obsolete information here, but they should be learned if you want to get a better understanding of the grammar): 1. Possessive genitive 2. Partitive genitive (part of a whole, as in “pars hominum” = “a part of the men”) 3. Objective genitive (as an object of the action, as in “Metus hostium” = “a fear of the enemy”... There are many more uses than that, but these are the ones I run into most frequently when translating the more ubiquitous writings.
Possibly beyond the scope of duolingo, but I know you would say: Mihi nomen est (blank) for "my name is (blank)". Would it also be appropriate to say "Mihi urbs est Philadelphia" to say "My city is Philadelphia" (or Philadelphia is my city, as in the prompt). I know that the dative of possession isn't often taught at the beginning of learning Latin, and this sentence seems to come up early in duolingo, but I used this construction in the placement quiz and it wasn't accepted. Thoughts on whether it would be an appropriate translation or not? Something I have yet to learn while teaching myself Latin is when the dative of possession is/is not appropriate, so I'm interested to know if there is a particular reason why it wouldn't be appropriate here.
I just realized that there is a discussion board & I'm gonna leave my first comment here. Madison est urbs mea!
What's with the words order? Isn't it supposed to be 'Philadelphia urbs mea est'?
Mediolanum est urbs mea, why do so many people put a state in this thread lol urbs, not civitates!
It seems wrong that urbs would take the nominative... am I wrong or should it be in the accusative case?
Why is "Philadelphia est oppidum meum" false? I mean, oppidum is another word for city, which granted is rarely used for larger cities, but it is possible and has indeed be used in that context.
There must be too many Goths in Madison for Duolingo to acknowledge the existence of flyover territories...
Hi ignacio, these sentence discussions are here to ask or answer questions about the sentences. Audio issues should be reported with the Report Button, not here.
