did he do something dumb and get put in jail

did he just fall off

was he born again

did bad boy find out he was gay

8/18/2009 11:29:46 AM

WHOA

8/18/2009 11:35:20 AM

arog why you got 2001 twice anyway

lookin' like the dudes in my spam folder

8/18/2009 11:36:39 AM

just fell off like woah

so in hs everyone took their foreign language junior and senior year...i was like fuck that so i took latin freshman/sophmore year. anyways, we were going over the afterlife in latin and i said "river-of-woe"...made the rest of class filled with seniors/juniors laugh. one of my favorite hs memories

8/18/2009 11:36:50 AM

hercle dnl

nescivi te dicere latine

approbo

8/18/2009 11:40:18 AM

I, too, took Latin in HS

too bad all everyone did was cheat and no one from that class remembers shit....ask anyone.

8/18/2009 11:42:21 AM

apparently i remember shit

for instance

i also remember asking you a question

[Edited on August 18, 2009 at 11:45 AM. Reason : amo amas amat amamus amatis amant]

8/18/2009 11:45:12 AM

i probably had the worst latin teacher ever =/

this is what a website told me "hercle dnl to be ignorant you dicere latine to approve"

[Edited on August 18, 2009 at 11:46 AM. Reason : ^yeah i remember a little of the amo amas amat etc thing]

8/18/2009 11:45:52 AM

it's because I AM A SPAMMER.

all the SPAM you have ever received, you can attribute to me.

you're welcome.

8/18/2009 11:46:17 AM

damn, dnl

i didn't know you spoke latin

i approve

8/18/2009 11:46:23 AM

my whole point was that nobody from MY class remembers that shit....because the teacher couldn't teach and everyone cheated their way through while she turned a blind eye.

8/18/2009 11:47:33 AM

so do you guys want to join my wolf web latin class

it meets in this thread

right now

8/18/2009 11:48:15 AM

favorite word in latin that looks like an english word now is laude

[Edited on August 18, 2009 at 11:49 AM. Reason : http://www.thefreedictionary.com/laudations]

8/18/2009 11:48:19 AM

this thread officially sucks Apollo's nards

8/18/2009 11:50:46 AM

Quote :

"did bad boy find out he was gay"

Rob-"bad boooooi haaaaaaaaaaaaay"

Diddy-"...."

Rob-"lets remix love game by lady gaga!"

Diddy-"For the love of all thats good and biggie get the fuck out"

8/18/2009 11:50:53 AM

black rob fell off way before lady gaga...like woah was from like 99

[Edited on August 18, 2009 at 11:52 AM. Reason : when he was still puff daddy]

8/18/2009 11:52:32 AM

i was just thinking of the gayest song a guy could sing... and anything that says saying that they want to ride a disco stick (or something like that) takes the cake.

8/18/2009 11:55:04 AM

he had a mixtape out like a year or two ago

it sucked like WHOA

8/18/2009 11:55:46 AM

oh i didnt put 2 and 2 together...my b

[Edited on August 18, 2009 at 12:00 PM. Reason : i always thought it was "like woah" not "woah" ...aint that something...]

8/18/2009 11:55:56 AM

Here are the top three things you need to know about Latin.

First, most words have different forms based on how they're used. You're probably familiar with verb conjugation in English. "I ride" in the present tense, "I rode" in the past. Latin has that, but it also changes up the forms of other kinds of words. Nouns change form based on whether they're the subject or object of the sentence, for example, in a process called declension.

Second, word order isn't that big a deal. Because each word in a sentence encodes information about how it's being used, the language isn't so dependent on word order to encode meaning. "Dog bites man" and "man bites dog" mean very different things in English, but in Latin, it's not that big a deal to say "canis mordet hominem," "canis hominem mordet," "mordet hominem canis," or any other permutation.

Third, you probably won't ever really use Latin as you've learned it. Latin has taken many forms over the centuries, and not just in terms of the size of its vocabulary and the number of its speakers. The language is older than several forms of script used to record it! The academic, "classical" Latin you learn in school doesn't really reflect the majority of the corpus of the Latin language. There aren't very many primary texts outside of Pliny's letters that you'll be able to read easily, and even then, you'll need some significant literary & historical context for most of it.

That said, let's move on to your first lesson.

[Edited on May 21, 2018 at 10:28 AM. Reason : ///]

5/21/2018 10:27:55 AM

whoa!

5/21/2018 10:33:38 AM

Let's take a look at a very basic Latin sentence: Porto aquam, "I carry water."

You probably recognize these words from English, where they are common root words. English is full of Latinate words and rules! The root -port- comes directly from our verb here, portare, which means "to carry." You should also be familiar with the root -aqua- from aqua, which of course means "water."

But where is the "I"? Personal pronouns are rare in Latin. They exist, but they're most often used only when absolutely necessary or for emphasis. The subject "I" here is clearly communicated through the conjugation of the verb. In English, we say "I carry, you carry, he carries, we carry, y'all carry, they carry." It's a bit confusing. Why are all of them "carry" except the third-person singular form?

Latin is much clearer: porto, portas, portat, portamus, portatis, portant. The word's inflections are distinct and convey the meaning immediately.

By process of elimination, you can tell aquam is the object of the sentence. But it's actually obvious by the form. The suffix -am tells us that a noun of the first declension is singular and in the accusative case, which is roughly the same as what we'd call the direct object of the sentence in English.

"The water is cold, I carry the water, I bathe in the water, I mix tea with water." These sentences all render the noun the same. But in Latin, each of these uses of the noun constitutes a case, which is something like a method of using the noun. And these cases require the word to have a particular inflection: aqua, aquam, aquae, aqua.

Most verbs and nouns in Latin belong to a category that tells you the rules for inflection. We refer to verbs as being verbs of the first, second, third, or fourth conjugation. We refer to nouns broadly as nouns of the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth declension. Our sample sentence features a verb of the first conjugation and a noun of the first declension.

We'll get into what those mean and how they're used in the next lesson.

[Edited on May 21, 2018 at 10:47 AM. Reason : NB CrazyCode ate the macrons that tell you the lengths of the vowels.]

[Edited on May 21, 2018 at 10:47 AM. Reason : Post #50,888.]

5/21/2018 10:46:31 AM

Venni Vetti Vecci

5/21/2018 11:01:22 AM

He joined the mob, right?

5/21/2018 12:02:49 PM

Let's talk a little bit about declension first.

Few words in English get declined, but there are some you use every day: third-person personal pronouns! Think about these words: she, her, hers. We call these forms the subjective, objective, and possessive cases. She is the subject when the case is subjective, the sentence is about her when it's objective, and it's her sentence when it's possessive.

Similarly, Latin nouns change their endings based on how the word is being used in the sentence. I won't go into all the cases now, but if you want to research on your own, the major cases are called the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative.

Let's look at a sample of how you might see a Latin word listed in a Latin dictionary. Take aqua from earlier:

aqua, aquae, f. 1st declension: water.

agricola, agricolae, m. 1st declension: farmer.
brassica, brassicae, f. 1st declension: cabbage.
merda, merdae, f. 1st declension: shit.
rana, ranae, f. 1st declension: frog.

5/21/2018 2:05:50 PM

A quick aside for technical notes.

You may be wondering how to pronounce Latin words. There isn't an easy consensus on this. Everyone has their own ideas based on what kind of Latin they learned and their teachers' biases.

I can tell you how I do it. All Cs and Ks are hard. All Vs are pronounced as Ws. Seezer didn't say vinny vidi veechee. Kaiser said wayni, weedy, weekee.

For the vowels, A is ah, E is ey (like a long A in English), I is like an English long E (eee), O is oh, and U is ooh.

Vowel length is really just how long you hold the vowel the way I was taught. It's really useful in print to indicate vowel length since it's a key way to differentiate some words, especially something like aqua whose nominative singular & ablative singular forms are identical except for the final vowel's length.

I wish I could type the macrons for you (long marks over the vowels), but I don't have a premium account, so I can't post the HTML character references, and the Wolf Web stupidly strips the Unicode characters and replaces them with their naked equivalents in the ASCII range. Sorry about that. When it matters, I will note a long vowel with an asterisk. So aqua is nominative, and aqua* is ablative.

[Edited on May 21, 2018 at 2:24 PM. Reason : ///]

5/21/2018 2:24:02 PM

the most interesting things I learned in Latin that people who aren't familiar might remember:

audio = I hear

video = I see

also I thought -orum was cool

that one professor at State sucked tho LOL

5/21/2018 3:44:33 PM

Let's take a look now at the different cases of the first declension, starting with the singular forms.

Most textbooks would draw a table for you. I'm not gonna do that. I'm just gonna list 'em using our sample word agricola.

You already have the nominative form there. For the first declension, you generally drop the final -a then add a different ending. So:

Nominative: agricola
Genitive: agricolae -a => +ae
Dative: agricolae -a => +ae
Accusative: agricolam -a => +am
Ablative: agricola* -a => +a*

Note that the genitive & accusative forms are identical. Seems like it could be confusing, but context makes it clear in practice. Trust me.

Okay, so let's look at how these cases are actually used. I'll give you a sample sentence for each in English. Remember that agricola means "farmer."

Nominative: The farmer walks through the field.
Genitive: The life of the farmer is hard.
Dative: The bank loans money to the farmer. Alternatively: The bank loans the farmer money.
Accusative: People love the farmer.
Ablative: The market works with the farmer.

See the correspondences here? Latin nominative to English subjective; genitive to possessive; dative to what we call the indirect object; accusative to the direct object.

So what about the ablative? There isn't a distinct correlation with English there. What you most commonly learn in first-year Latin is a use of the ablative case called the ablative of accompaniment, e.g. "with the farmer" here. There are similar special uses for the other cases, like the accusative of time (multo*s anno*s, "for many years).

Don't sweat the ablative too much for now. I'll walk you through the most common uses.

Pretty painless, right? Now, let's do the plural forms:

Nominative: agricolae -a => +ae
Genitive:agricola*rum -a => +a*rum
Dative: agricoli*s -a => +i*s
Accusative: agricola*s -a => a*s
Ablative: agricoli*s -a => i*s

Not too bad! The farmers walk through the field, the lives of the farmers are hard, the bank loans money to the farmers, etc.

Note that the plural nominative is identical to the singular genitive & dative forms, and the plural dative is the same as the plural ablative. It's honestly not that bad.

Let's do a verb or two next and start putting together some sentences!

5/22/2018 8:09:38 AM

Let's jump back to our sample verb from earlier, porta*re ("to carry").

It's a first-conjugation verb. Similar to nouns of the first declension, you drop part of the infinitive form there--specifically the -a*re bit--and add other endings to the root.

These endings tell you the number involved (singular or plural) just like nouns, but they also encode other information about the verb: what tense it's in, what voice it's in, and what mood it's in.

Don't worry about the voice and mood too much. We're only talking about the active voice and the indicative mood, which should be familiar to you. You should know active vs. passive voice already ("I carried" vs. "I was carried"), and indicative just means it's definitely happening ("they carry" vs. "they might be carrying").

Let's form the present tense of porta*re real quick, at least in the singular:

1st person: porto* -a*re => +o* ("I carry")
2nd person: porta*s -a*re => +a*s ("you carry")
3rd person: portat -a*re => +at ("he/she/it carries")

And now in the plural:

1st person: porta*mus -a*re => +a*mus ("we carry")
2nd person: porta*tis -a*re => +a*tis ("you [pl.] carry")
3rd person: portant -a*re => +tant ("they carry")

Now, this guy is a transitive verb, which means it acts on an object. Let's put together a sentence using our vocabulary words: "The farmer carries the cabbages."

"The farmer" is the subject, and it's singular. "The cabbages" is the direct object, and it's plural.

You should end up with this: Agricola brassica*s portat. But it could also be portat agricola brassica*s or even brassica*s portat agricola, depending on the effect you're going for. See how the meaning is clear regardless of the word order? Pretty cool. But traditionally, a simple sentence like this follows the order of subject, object, verb.

Notice what's missing? Articles! Not a lot of "the" and "a" and whatnot in Latin. Few pronouns, too. The language doesn't really need all that. Equivalent terms do exist, but you'll find that they're largely omitted.

Here's another great verb for you: da*re, which means "to give." This is a transitive verb as well, but it can also take an indirect object. Think about how you might give something to someone. It's a great opportunity to use the dative case!

Now, da*re is a first-conjugation verb regularly formed just like porta*re. So how would you translate this sentence? "The farmers give cabbages to the frogs." Hint: "the frogs" is the indirect object!

Did you guess agricolae brassica*s rani*s dant? Great job!

This Latin stuff's not so hard, is it? We'll touch on some adjectives and adverbs next!

5/22/2018 9:48:46 AM

whoa

5/22/2018 9:49:57 AM

The declension of an adjective kinda depends on the gender of the noun it's modifying. For simplicity's sake, let's only modify feminine nouns to start.

Our sample here is going to be nova, which pretty much means "new." An adjective must agree in gender and number with the noun it's modifying, so let's translate a phrase like "the new frog" into the various cases:

Nominative: rana nova
Genitive: ranae novae
Dative: ranae novae
Accusative: ranam novam
Ablative: rana* nova*

Straightforward, right?

Another common adjective is magna, which means "big" or "great." There is a word order convention to be aware of here. Adjectives describing size or quantity generally come before the noun. So "the new frog" is rana nova, but "the big frog" is more often magna rana.

(You might be wondering about the word for "frog" being feminine and how that intersects with frogs that are, y'know, males. Save that for after the fifth declension.)

Adverbs formed from adjectives, like "quickly" from "quick," modify verbs rather than nouns, and so there aren't really any gender issues. To form a regular adverb from an adjective of the first or second declension, you drop the ending (usually -a or -us or -um) and replace it with -e*. So to say "newly," it's nove*.

I'll drop a few more examples of adjectives and adverbs on you, but first, we should probably talk about the second declension.

[Edited on May 22, 2018 at 4:24 PM. Reason : ///]

5/22/2018 4:20:15 PM

Nouns of the second declension are mostly masculine or neuter. Let's look at the masculine endings first, starting with the singular forms of the word hortus (garden, like a home garden for decoration):

Nominative: hortus
Genitive: horti* -us => +i*
Dative: horto* -us => +o*
Accusative: hortum -us => +um
Ablative: horto* -us => +o

Adjectives of the second declension follow the same rules, so to say "the big garden" in the accusative case, it's magnum hortum.

Here are the plural forms:

Nominative: horti* -us => +i*
Genitive: horto*rum -us => +o*rum
Dative: horti*s -us => +i*s
Accusative: horto*s -us => +o*s
Ablative: horti*s -us => +i*s

Neuter nouns & adjectives are very similar with a couple of exceptions. Let's look at caelum, which means "heaven" or "sky." First singular:

Nominative: caelum
Genitive: caeli*
Dative: caelo*
Accusative: caelum
Ablative: caelo*

Now plural:

Nominative: caeli*
Genitive: caelo*rum
Dative: caeli*s
Accusative: caelo*s
Ablative: caeli*s

Neuter adjectives of the second declension unsurprisingly follow the same form.

Time for some fresh vocabulary words! New nouns:

discipulus, discipuli*, m. 2nd declension: student.
farnus, farni*, f. 2nd declension: oak tree.
populus, populi*, m. 2nd declension: people/nation/community.

bonus, bona, bonum: good.
laetus, laeta, laetum: happy.
malus, mala, malum: bad.
parvus, -a, -um: small.

5/22/2018 4:48:56 PM

My entire hs Latin class cheated as well. I made a 30 on the final exam and my teacher gave me a 50 point curve so I wouldn’t fail

5/22/2018 9:18:56 PM