Cornu in French means “horned,” obviously from Latin. But since the joke involves French horns…
Not from your modern point of view, from your Anglophone point of view. Basque or Irish are perfectly modern languages, maitea… (that’s “sweetheart (voc)”).
About noun declensions in Latin, does anyone know whence the conventional ordering? Because another way to look at it is that the first declension consists of the a stems, second of the o-stems, third of consonant and i-stems, fourth of u-stems, and fifth of e-stems.
“O” is a vocative particle in English , and although it’s most commonly seen in prayers and poetry, I’m pretty sure “Oh” serves the same function in certain circumstances. For example, if I’m speaking to my husband and my daughter walks in , I may say “Oh, Daughter, a package came for you today”
To me, “Oh, daughter, a package came for you today” and “O Daughter, a package came for you today” carry slightly different meanings. In the first, I interpret the “oh” as meaning something like “that reminded me” or “by the way,” whereas the “O” in “O Daughter” is simply a direct address to the daughter, and not indicating that interjectory sense of the word “oh.”
I suppose the spelling might make a difference, although there isn’t any difference when spoken. (that comma ended up there unintentionally) I specified that she walked in while I was talking to my husband to try to make it clear that it was a direct address rather than a BTW.
In that case, you are using a vocative “O” and not an interjectory “oh.” I mean, they’re homonyms, so they sound the same.(Though it is possible that by now, the vocative sense of “O” has become archaic and just folded into the word “oh” as an additional meaning. I don’t think there are a lot of people who are aware of the distinction.)
Actually, this Mental Floss article, while explaining the distinction, does say that it hasn’t always been historically separated like that, and that the spellings and meaning have sometimes overlapped.
English has basically lost its case inflections except for a small number of vanishing situations. But that means that English has much less flexibility in word order.
Imagine this sentence.
George the man gave the dog the bone.
We know because of word order that the nouns in this sentence play these roles:
George [subject] the man [appositive/subject] gave the dog [indirect object] the bone [direct object]
Well, almost, because it could also be this –
George [addressee], the man [subject] gave the dog [indirect object] the bone [direct object]
The difference between these two sentences must further be restrict by use of a pause or other vocal signal to set “George” apart, or, in writing, with a comma.
But imagine a language that has inflections for the vocative (addressee), nominative (subject), dative (indirect object), and accusative (direct object). Then you would be free to reorder the words in any way without changing the meaning –
(In these, take “George” as the addressee/vocative)
George the man gave the bone the dog
George the man the bone gave the dog
George the man the bone the dog gave
George the man the dog gave the bone
George the man the dog the bone gave
George gave the man the bone the dog
George gave the man the dog the bone
George gave the bone the man the dog
George gave the bone the dog the man
George gave the dog the bone the man
George gave the dog the man the bone … etc.
You have 120 of ways of ordering the words in the sentence without changing the meaning.
So what, you ask? Well, if you’re free to change the order, then you have different ways of emphasizing different parts of the sentence, you have more flexibility in writing poetry or song lyrics. Those could be great.
You could also leave out words in the sentence (such as when answering questions) and the case inflection would still make the meaning of the answer unambiguous.
You now have the difficulty of learning at least five inflections for each noun, which makes it harder perhaps for a non-native to learn as an adult, but every language has its own difficulties.
And, of course, I left out the genitive case, another common case (indicating possession).
So, how many ways might you be able to say this sentence with six cases?
George the man gave the dog of John the bone
(of course it’s slightly different with the genitive, because it usually does have to be in proximity to the correct noun, but there is still some flexibiilty)
Adjectives and adverbs also need to be proximate to the words they’re modifying. I don’t remember the correct Latin phrasing, but one of the prophecies of the Oracle, in response to a prince asking what will happen if he goes to war, could be parsed either as “You will go, you will return, you will never die”, or as “you will go, you will never return, you will die”.
Depends; Latin Prose Composition states that “a word that generally stands close by another receives emphasis by separation from it”, and “the more unusual a position is for any word, the more emphatic it is for that word.”
Examples given:
arbores seret diligens agricola, quarum adspiciet bacam ipse numquam.
voluptatem percepi maximam.
aliud iter habent nullum.
equites ad Caesarem omnes revertuntur.
That just sounds like straight-up ambiguous phrasing. Is this the same oracle who told that “If King Croesus crosses the river, a great empire will be destroyed”? 