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- "Hoc vinum viginti nummis con…
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How come nummus isn't in the accusative case? Shouldn't it be 'nummos' or something?
Indeed that would seem more natural. Of course, this course seems set partway between Ancient Rome and the modern age, and jumps quite a bit across the two millennia. So perhaps they thought it better to only learn the word nummus.
But the internet is vast and plentiful, and even with this, it provides.
239
"This wine is twenty coins", would that be correct English? (It's considered the as wrong here).
There is nothing wrong with "This wine is twenty coins", but a better translation would be "This wine costs twenty coins".
- 921
It should not have been viginta, maybe you are thinking of triginta?
Both are indeclinable so 20 will always be viginti and 30 will always be triginta.
If "nummis" is in the ablative, then what is the literal translation? I don't understand.
It's the ablative of price, although a little digging makes me wonder why this isn't the genitive of value.
https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/1897/genitive-vs-ablative-of-price
I had wondered if it would be Genitive on the logic that it's the possession of how much of something or 20 of coins.
As far as I know the ablative means "by/with/from/in/at/on, so I don't understand the context.
Yeah sorry, thanks for that. I had made my comment before I clicked on the links.
- 752
It depends whether or not the wine is being bought 'right now' or the person is telling a friend what the wine 'cost me'.
It's too early in the tree to have anything other than present tense.
This sentence is a report on the price of wine.
This isn't a class on Roman numerals, and that defeats the purpose of learning how to actually say the numbers.
- 239
Viginti was written with letters in the question. The English translation is then expected to be written with letters as well. PaulKing282586 has a similar question above.
PaulKing was asking about Roman numerals. That's a different issue.
In all of the lessons I've done, numbers are accepted in place of words as long as you're typing in English. It's only when you're typing in Latin/Spanish/German/etc. where you need to type the words, otherwise it defeats the purpose of the lesson.
- 239
Then I understand. I don't see the need for allowing numerals at all, but if that's the way it works in all other courses I can see your frustration.
Perhaps they want to keep Latin in this way... to keep a path open for handling Roman numerals (XX), and that they alone should be translated into our numerals (20). More likely: no one constructing the Latin courses ever thought about it or knew that you could use numerals.
