Agreed, except that there’s no need for the future tense. The imperative mood is sufficient, so “insere”. “Insero” is “put into” or even “thrust,” so it’s perfect.
No, not always. In this case, because it’s neuter, you need the form “caput” for the accusative. And just for clarity, you don’t need “your” here, it’s implied by the fact that it’s a body part without prior referent. Caput is “head”, “a head” , “the head”, or “your head.” If you did want to specify, caput tuum.
No, these are just two different words for pig. Porcus is more specifically a domestic big. Sus is any pig, and aper is a wild pig (i.e. a boar). There are plenty of other pig words. “In suem” is “into a pig.”
This is something like “The head’s pig exists. You will thrust!”
I would say In suem caput insere! It might work better with a suffix. “Capitulum” and “capitellum” are “little head,” but the connotations seem to be largely positive. A pejorative suffix is “-aster”, so perhaps In suem capitastrum insere!
Just to address this, the verb requires an accusative, not a dative.
Thou shalt is a pretty good translation. If the speaker says ponito (future) instead of poni (present) it gives the command an archaic and formal tone. Lots of Roman laws, for example, have future imperatives. But generally they are quite rare. Our sentence sounds like colloquial abuse, so I’d go with the present imperative.
That would be correct if referring to something located in a pig. It is not correct in this case, which refers to something going into a pig. It calls for the accusative case. The Latin “in” can mean “located in,” taking the ablative, or “into,” taking the accusative.
One might be able to argue ‘heus’ is a shade different – just a general call to pay attention to what follows (Yo!), whereas ‘age’ calls you to action regarding what follows.
But in practice you see ‘heus’ with the imperative in cases where it is hard to see any distinction between it and ‘age’.
‘Heus’ and ‘age’ are often combined ‘Heus age, responde (minimum est quod scire laboro) de Iove quid sentis?’ (Persius II.17-18). I think this makes ‘heus’ a lot like ‘en’ – another interjection that also means at root ‘pay attention’, but gets combined a lot with ‘age’ + imperative, and then occurs by itself with imperatives in a way that is not really different from ‘age’. Heus + imperative, en+ imperative, age + imperative, and heus/en + imperative probably all blurred together given that there is a lot of overlap between ‘Listen up, do this!’ and 'Go do this!".
My best evidence for the above paragraph is that ‘age’, though technically a singular verb, can accompany plural imperatives – a Roman can say ‘Age respondite’ as much as ‘Age responde’. In those cases ‘age’ has lost the force of its inflection, thereby robbing it of any status as a verb, and so the word seems no more than just another interjection + imperative, just like the same usage of ‘en’ and ‘heus’.
So, sure, ‘Heus caput in porcum insere’ probably equates to ‘Age caput in porcum insere’.
One caveat, however: ‘Heus’ is less stylistically flexible than ‘age’ because it always comes first in the sentence (some exceptions in Roman comedy). So if you wanted to say ‘Go stick your head in a pig’ but wanted to emphasize the ‘stick’ part at the expense of the ‘go’ part, you’d say ‘Insere, age, caput in porcum.’ ‘Heus’ can’t be downplayed like that, so the best you’d be able to come up with is ‘Heus insere caput in porcum.’ But for this phrase I think the ‘Go’ deserves pride of place, so we don’t need to worry about that.
[snark-jack]
Today (and always, as well) it’s the lawyers (and judges) who do that. There’s way too much Latin in legalese (spoken and written) to be comprehensible to the lay person (doctors included, apparently). That’s a disgraceful situation to have ingrained into our legal system. Please to just say it in English!
[/snark-jack]
ETA: OTOH, it appears that QtM needs to say something that is really best NOT understood by his intended audience!
“in”, in both English and Latin, may mean “within” (location) or “into” (movement of entering). Locational Latin in tes the ablative, but ‘motional’ in, as in this case, takes the accusative.
Neuter accusative is not always the nominative. In many instances, e.g. second declension nouns in -um and plurals in -a and -ia, your ‘rule’ is true. But not always. Accusative of caput is capitem.
Cite? Allen and Greenough disagree, and the fairly common phrase per capita suggests that in the plural, at least, nom. and acc. are the same (e.g. not **per capitēs).
The use of Latin in medical and legal terminology is a good thing. Technical terminology in various fields is full of common words that mean something subtly (or not-so-subtly) different from their common meaning, and those differences can be the cause of much confusion. By using words for your jargon that don’t have common meanings, you avoid this problem.
I appreciate that those who are actually knowledgeable about Latin were so polite about explaining what was wrong with my translation, it’s the cool people like that that keep me coming back to this board. And I actually learned something!
de Iove quid sentis?’ (Persius II.17-18). I think this makes ‘heus’ a lot like ‘en’ – another interjection that also means at root ‘pay attention’, but gets combined a lot with ‘age’ + imperative, and then occurs by itself with imperatives in a way that is not really different from ‘age’. Heus + imperative, en+ imperative, age + imperative, and heus/en + imperative probably all blurred together given that there is a lot of overlap between ‘Listen up, do this!’ and 'Go do this!".
