“The die is cast” is “Iacta alea est” but how would one say “Let the die be cast”? Thanks.
Alea iaciatur.
Word order doesn’t really matter. Iaciatur could be spelled jaciatur if you prefer.
Thanks bibliophage. Could I trouble you for a phonetic on that second word?
A small note here: Erasmus argued that Caesar’s famous quote was really “Alea iacta esto”, a rare (to say the least) perfect imperative. This would be another way to say “Let the die be cast,” to compliment Bibliophage’s translation.
The main arguments in favor of this is that there was a similar Greek proverb which used the perfect imperative: “anerrhíphthw kubos” (w = omega) which according to Plutarch are the words Caesar uttered. The rarity of esto makes it likely it was shortened to the common est in copying.
yak ee AH tur
Why ‘yak ee’ instead of ‘yah kee’, or is the difference meaningless? My Latin minor is years in the past and fading daily, sadly.
Bibliophage mentioned that the word order doesn’t matter. Why is that? Is this true of the way it was actually spoken in ancient Rome or a function of an anglocized translation?
It doesn’t matter because in Latin, each word is modified according to its role in the sentence. There is no way to transform “The farmer looks at the wolf” to “The wolf looks at the farmer” without altering the exact words used.
Many languages have declension systems much more complex than the one in English.
To provide an example to Derleth’s comment, compare these two sentences.
“The girl loves the poet”
puella amat poetam
“The poet loves the girl”
poeta amat puellam
If you rearrange the first sentence to poetam amat puella, it still means that the girl loves the poet.
Gotcha. But didn’t a convention inevitably form in daily usage? I can’t imagine that some people would put the direct object first and others the subject first, even if their spelling made it clear who was who.
In general, Latin follows the subject-object-verb pattern. But you might say that this is more like guidelines than actual rules.
As has been pointed out, Modern English uses word order to establish the syntactic roles of words within a sentence. When the order changes, so does the meaning.
Consider the following sentence: Mark killed the king. There is no question as to who is doing the killing and who is dying. But if we change the order of the nouns, we get The king killed Mark. The roles are now reversed. What was the subject of the sentence has become the object, and vice-versa.
Try the same sentence in Latin: Marcus regem occidit. No matter what the order of the words may be, the sentence will always fundamentally mean the same thing. The roles of the two nouns are determined by their inflected endings, and not by the order in which they appear. To reverse the roles, you would have to change the sentence to Rex Marcum occidit.
Word order does have a role in Latin, but it is more subtle. It is used to lend emphasis to specific words.
So Marcus regem occidit could translate to “Mark killed the king,” as opposed to John or Ralph doing the deed. Regem Marcus occidit would mean “Mark killed the king”, not the duke, earl or prince. And Occidit Marcus regem would mean “Mark killed the king”, as opposed to inflicting a flesh wound.
Og, I hope I got all this right. Wouldn’t want to screw up a Latin lesson with Polycarp and bibliophage around.
Subject-Object-Verb is the general convention in Latin, most often seen in simple sentences. The inflected endings do allow for orderings that would seem bizzare or impossible in English, and are often used in literature to (1) emphasize a particular word (by putting it at the head of a sentence), (2) produce figures of rhetoric like oxymoron, chiasmus, transferred epithets, etc., (3) allow in poetry for rhythmic effects within the strict quantitative metrical rules.
Other examples of Latin word-order conventions: Adjectives tend to remain adjacent to the nouns they modify except in poetry; quantitative adjectives (e.g. magnus, largus, solus) precede, qualitative follow. Prepositions almost always head their object (tenus is the exception, and this is often an adverb).
In early Latin instruction, the student is frequently reminded that “word order is unimportant”; this is done to get the student to focus on the endings rather than translate word-by-word. It is probably better to say word-order is less important in Latin than in English (where it is critical to meaning); a native Latin speaker would likely understand simple sentences that didn’t follow the expected order, but would certainly note that they were unusual and draw the conclusion that the choice was made for deliberate emphasis.
IMHO, Horace’s Carmina are the supreme example of how far a poet can stretch Latin word order to craft beautiful verse; I believe the somewhat chilly reception they received among the general public in Augustus’ Rome was due in large part to the sometimes convoluted word order.
If the word order isn’t necessary to the meaning of a sentence, wouldn’t that make end-rhyming in Latin much easier than it is in English?
It certainly does, not to mention the repetition of endings, features utilized ad nauseam by medieval Latin hymn composers. Surprisingly, however, the classical writers rarely did it in verse; the one exception I’m aware of is the occasional rhyme between the caesura and end of an elegaic couplet (both in the same line). Ennius may be an exception, but he’s always an exception:-)
Latin poetry rarely employed the use of rhyme. In fact, IIRC, when Cicero tried his hand at poetry he was ridiculed for a single occurrence of it.
Pardon me, I meant to say Roman poetry. Medieval Latin poetry and hymns were quite different.
It’s both easier and harder, in some ways. In English, one has the flexibility of substituting a completely different word, which will have a completely different ending. If “breeze” doesn’t rhyme in your poem, you could try “zephyr”, or “wind”, or the like. But in Latin, any word you substitute is going to have to be in the same form, and is thus likely to have the same ending. So depending on what exactly it is you’re trying to rhyme, the rhyme could be inevitable no matter what word you choose, or it could be impossible.