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- Topic: Latin >
- "Discipuli in ludo scribunt."
20 Comments
Shouldn't "The students write at school" also be allowed? After all "at school" in English is not literally next to the school, but more like "inside the school building or institution".
75
Agreed. The at in this case signifies whilst attending. I think that US English tends to use in where the UK uses at:
UK: I learnt that at school
US: I learnt that in school
Since this is an intenational platform, both should be accepted.
As of February 3rd, it is not. I was penalized for answering "at school."
It would help if you copied and pasted your exact answer so we could help you see if there was some other error or typo that tripped the correction algorithm. Just because it provides "...in school" for the corrected answer does not necessarily mean the problem with with "at" vs "in".
I didn't understand one thing. Why the "in" in "in ludo". Shouldn't "ludo", with this ending, already give the idea of being in a place. For example, the locative case in Russian. Isn't there a locative in Latin? Or just like "domi", which means at home in Latin!
The locative is used for cities, small islands, and a few special words like domus, not all places
It depends what kind of schools!
There are differences between schola and ludus
Lūdus litterārius
= Roman primary school.
Schola grammaticī
= Roman middle school, from age 12.
Study: Latin, Greek, Literature, and grammar of course.
schola Platōnica (for instance with Platon)
= Followers of a philosophe.
Now I understand why "ludus" also mean "game" etymologically, because it's like a kindergarten (even if they are older, it's the idea behind).
Ludus is for small children, and schola for adults and teenagers.
I wrote in Latin, but a pop up kept telling me I was writing in English. In the end I submitted an intentional error in Latin, just to get onto the next question
The next time that happens, take a screen shot and file a bug report.
https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/204728264-How-do-I-report-a-bug-
For the record: "in" is always followed by the ablative? I think I read somewhere it were followed by accusative.
It depends. If I'm recalling correctly:
- For simple locations (X is in Y), it's in + ablative.
- For a sense of movement (X goes into Y), it's in + accusative.
Yeah, that makes sense, I think the accusative also answers "whereto" in Latin.
- 680
Wouldn't "at" school be better? Although "in" may not be totally unacceptable, if "at" is better, one should not prefer "in" because in Latin is also "in". That would be a false friend, o a partially false...sometime English "in" is the best translation for Latin "in", but other times, like in this case, in seems to be a deformation because the words are similar or the same, but not suitable.
A translation should not be literal, word by word, nor keepinh a word if it is same. A good translation translate the meaning to proper English, and not to a stranger standard that's accidentally similar to Latin. It should not sound or look similar, but mean the same.
- 680
I mean, "at" should not only be accepted, but also preferred and taught. Then, if "in" is also accepted it is OK for me, but IMO it cannot be the first option in English for this sentence. .
