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- "Sine dubio nos valde esurimu…
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I'm just wondering about the word stress. In the recording, the speaker emphasizes the "i" in esurimus.. Idk why, but I was expecting to hear the "u" stressed, as in /e-SUR-i-mus/. What are the rules?
2116
The pronunciation is correct. Esurire is 4th conjugation, therefore the "i" is long in 2nd person singular, 1st person plural and 2nd person plural.
- ēsuriō
- ēsurīs
- ēsurit
- ēsurī́mus
- ēsurī́tis
- ēsuriunt
Thank you, I'm glad there is someone who knows pronunciation rules helping out. I think I know why I was expecting the second syllable to be stressed: in Bach's Magnificat, there is a movement called "Esurientes," and the "e" is stressed, so I thought the "i" should not be stressed.
But please, can you tell us, what is all this talk about "long vowels." I see in many texts they are indicated, as you have done above. Does word stress always fall on the long vowels? I doubt that, because I'm pretty sure the first person singular is /e-SUR-io/ and not /E-su-ri-0/. So I suppose that "long vowels" refers to a longer pronunciation of the vowel, which may or may not coincide with word stress.
- 2116
This is quite a complex subject. It's important if you want to pronounce Latin correctly, and particularly in poetry where the scansion is determined not by the stress, but by the lengths, or quantities, of the syllables.
The sign used above a vowel in many books and texts to indicate that is long (like this ō) is known as a macron. A syllable containing a long vowel or a diphthong is said to be long by nature. If a syllable has a vowel with two or more consonants between itself and the next vowel, even if the second consonant is the first consonant of the next word, it is said to be long by position. Letters "x" and "z" count as a double consonant for this purpose. Exceptions to this are "ch", "ph", "th", "qu", and sometimes "gu" and "su", which count as single consonants. Also a mute ("b","c","d","g","p","t") followed by a liquid ("l", "r") in the same word count as a single consonant although this rule can be overridden if the scansion requires it.
If a word ends in a vowel or an "m" and the next word begins with a vowel or an "h" the two syllables are pronounced as one. Usually it is the first syllable that is truncated, but when the second word is est, the "e" of est is dropped with "st" being tacked onto the previous syllable. Running the syllables together like this is known as elision. Occasionally the scansion requires that elision does not take place; when this happens it is known as hiatus. Elision probably happened in normal spoken Latin too although it is not apparent in the speech examples in this course. In poetry it does not occur between the end of one line and the beginning of the next.
In words of two syllables the stress is always on the first syllable regardless of quantities. If a word has more than two syllables and the penultimate syllable is long, the stress is on that penultimate syllable. If the penultimate is short the stress is on the antepenultimate. In your esurientes example the penultimate syllable "ent" has a short vowel followed by two consonants. It is therefore long by position and is stressed.
I started writing a reply to this too, but it beyond me really, accentuation comes into it too, this was as far as I got: Thank you for mentioning that Bach piece. Here is a link for it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQAWqqaUTHE Esuriéntes is at 21 minutes along. I am used to singing fairly ancient Latin, prose and poetry and thinking much more about accentuation than stress. That is what comes out in that Bach piece. Being a native English speaker I had to be taught that in Latin accentuated syllables are lifted not leant upon, hit or hammered, they give life to the words, and that final syllables are never accentuated (or stressed for that matter, although when learning conjugation and declension tables (how verbs and nouns/adjectives change) one tends to do this). I am sure someone else can explain this much better than I can, but it becomes second nature. Imagine how a native Spanish speaker might pronounce a word or sentence and you're probably not far off.
- 358
In short, if the penultimate syllable is long, it's stressed; otherwise, stress the antepenult.
Have just come across this excellent video precisely on Lain accentuation, well worth looking at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrS72G4nFGw
I've heard both ways spoken, and there's no good grammatical reason to prefer one over the other.
Well that's how it is now. I wonder how it was four days ago, when you posted the comment?
'Undoubtedly' should do for 'sine dubio'. If you haven't already, click on 'My answer should be accepted' next time you try it.
Apparently, "without (a) doubt" is the sole and single allowable way to translate sine dubio. "Undoubtedly" is apparently always completely wrong. I can't figure out WHY.
"No doubt we are very hungry" should be accepted. It's not word-for-word, but is fairly close, and is natural English.
She pronounced the [s] as ]t] in [sine]. They should have given us some information about pronunciation if there is pronunciation exercises involved. It is disappointing.
The underlined translation says "without doubt", but you are marked as incorrect if you dont put "without a doubt". Is that an error with the app or a matter of context?
- 2116
In my opinion both are equally acceptable. Either could be back-translated into Latin as sine dubio.
I cant believe it failed me for spelling 'very' as 'vary', its corrected far greater errors before as typos.
I cant believe it failed me for spelling 'very' as 'vary', its corrected far greater errors before as typos.
Generally, single-letter mistakes are "forgiven" if the result is not a real word.
So typing "very" as "vwry" (for example) would probably go through.
But "vary" is a real English word -- just not the correct one for this context. So I'm not surprised it gets marked wrong.
- 2116
The number of times I have been dinged for leaving the "y" off "they"! Must be hundreds.
This kind of resembles Spanish if you think about it.
No big wonder, since Spanish is a descendant of Latin :)
Because being hungry and starving are two completely different things. Hungry generally means it's time for lunch, dinner etc, but starving usually means like close to death.
