r/latin

¡Hola! soy una estudiante de latín y estoy en mi segundo año aprendiendo latín en la universidad de MSU. El año pasado, asistí a los clases de LTN 101-102 y este año tomo las clases de Livy y Virgil. Es muy difícil. quiero aprender mis declinaciones pero ahora yo necesito tomar buenas notas en mis clase, y en resultó hago solo que yo necesito para pasar la clase. También quiero aprender conjugaciones de verbos, pero eso es un problema diferente. ¿Qué crees es el consejo más importante para mí?

Salve!
I am composing a passage for part of a project I am doing that will ultimately be gifts for two of my professors. I would appreciate some feedback and advice before I send it to another professor so he can look it over.

I am aiming to have the emphasis to be on the teacher, the teacher and everything referring to the teacher to me in the masculine, the student and the verbs and such relating to the student(s) to be in the feminine, and I would appreciate advice on a double frequentative to insert somewhere. One of the professors let it drop after I had put this together that he loves double frequentatives.

The Latin I have is:
"Bonus magister discipulas suos non solum rem docet, sed etiam cupititas et ardarem discipularum fovet. Is benignus est, sed non nimis benignus. Is utilis est, sed disciplulas sias in se ipsos stare facit. Is libertatem promovet, sed discipulae suas securitatem dat. Illus quam plur magnus magister est, est matronum et dux."

The English translation is supposed to be:
"A good teacher not only teaches his students the subject, but also fosters the desire and passion of his students. He is kind, but not too kind. He is helpful, but makes his students stand on their own. He promotes freedom, but gives his students security. He is more than a great teacher, he is a mentor and leader."

Firstly, thank you again to everyone who helped me with my mental block.

LLPSI and read vol.1-3 of Cambridge Latin Course, which was very chill and gave me a real boost in confidence. Consequently, I have been picking up my Moreland and Fleischer again.

If you are willing to advise here is my next issue: I have picked up LLPSI again and re-read from chapter 20 to 26. (which is where I stopped) I have had no issues up to that point. However, as soon as I get back to chapter 26 or 27 the difficulty resumes and I know that I am not understanding every sentence.

I use Legentibus, so the chapters are paired with Fabulae Latinae and Stories in Easy Latin. Chapter 25 was paired with Ius More Lapideo (no trouble understanding), and Chapter 26 and 27 are paired with De Ira Lupina, and Numquam Posthac (both of which are challenging me).

If I used a dictionary and translated the chapters, I think I would get it. Should I? Or is it more important to just keep listening and reading over and over until I understand? Do I go back further? At least with a written translation, I could possibly identify what constructions or vocab I am struggling with and study them.

What do you think?

1. Ask and answer questions about mottos, tattoos, names, book titles, lines for your poem, slogans for your bowling club’s t-shirt, etc. in the comments of this thread. Separate posts for these types of requests will be removed.
2. Here are some examples of what types of requests this thread is for: Example #1, Example #2, Example #3, Example #4, Example #5.
3. This thread is not for correcting longer translations and student assignments. If you have some facility with the Latin language and have made an honest attempt to translate that is NOT from Google Translate, Yandex, or any other machine translator, create a separate thread requesting to check and correct your translation: Separate thread example. Make sure to take a look at Rule 4.
4. Previous iterations of this thread.
5. This is not a professional translation service. The answers you get might be incorrect.

Has anyone here recently participated in one of these conventicula? Anything you can share about how it is run and how helpful it was?

https://www.conventiculum.com/2026-english

To everyone on here (please don't recommend actual books, or real courses I have to pay for, I don't have the circumstances for either to actually be a considerable option), I want some suggestions on the best free website I can use to learn Latin. One that actually explains the grammar (like the nouns, verbs, tenses, pretenses), how to word sentences, etc. unlike Duolingo which kinda just gives you a bunch of words and has you learn the grammar along the lines. I want a free website/app that gives proper, full-depth lessons. Particularly those that focus on exampled, really simple and repetitive lessons, like putting two and two together over and over until a kid gets the concept.

>Memorare, O piissima Virgo Maria, non esse auditum a saeculo, quemquam ad tua currentem praesidia, tua implorantem auxilia, tua petentem suffragia, esse derelictum. Ego tali animatus confidentia, ad te, Virgo Virginum, Mater, curro, ad te venio, coram te gemens peccator assisto. Noli, Mater Verbi, verba mea despicere; sed audi propitia et exaudi. Amen.

A couple days ago, I was playing around with the Latin of St. Bernard's prayer to Mary—as someone on another sub was worried about some of the language used. I knew that the end of the prayer actually has a pun in the Latin which is not reflected in most English translations (Do not, O Mother of the Word, despise/neglect my words). So, I figured that there were more things hidden in the original prayer. And when I started, a question came up.

>Remember, O merciful Virgin Mary, that it has not been heard in this age, that anyone running to your protection, begged for your help, and asked for your prayers, was left abandoned.

The question is this: when the prayer says tua praesidia and tua auxilia¹, I know the general reading (the protection you are providing, the help you are providing)—but could "your protection" and "your help" be understood to mean "the one who protected you" or "the one who helped you"? Like, it is definitely "your help" and "your protection"—but what the connotation of the phrase is. Is it Mary directly helping and protecting? Or, could the text be understood to mean, Mary sending us to her protector/her helper?

Just an out of the box/speculative understanding of the text. Any potential merit there?

¹I would assume you couldn't do that alternate understanding with tua suffragia. I mean, *maybe* the Holy Spirit interceding for her, but that is even more of a stretch.

Edit: maybe if it was your helper it would need to be tuo auxiliuo—now I don't know what to think. Latinists, what say you?

Hannibal is giving a motivational speech in A.U.C. XXI about how the Alps are actually not that bad:

> Alpes quidem habitari, coli, gignere atque alere animantes; pervias paucis esse, esse et exercitibus. Eos ipsos quos cernant legatos non pinnis sublime elatos Alpes transgressos. Ne maiores quidem eorum indigenas sed advenas Italiae cultores has ipsas Alpes ingentibus saepe agminibus cum liberis ac coniugibus migrantium modo tuto transmisisse. Militi quidem armato nihil secum praeter instrumenta belli portanti quid invium aut inexsuperabile esse?

Eorum here seems to me to refer to the legatos which I guess sort of makes sense, but then he's saying that the Romans (the ancestors of these particular Roman delegates) aren't indigenous to Italy—or maybe to the Alpine region?—and in fact migrated there themselves a long time ago.

The translation I've been looking at online agrees with this, but my Bristol Classics edition has a footnote for "ne maiores quidem" that refers to something in Book V called the Gallic migration where it seems like he is writing of Gaulish tribes migrating into Italy that displaced Etruscans et al.

This is news to me (didn't the Latins or Italic tribes displace those other peoples?) but is the idea that Gauls are the ancestors of Italians? If Livy means the Romans here, what's going on with this footnote?

I know most courses start late May/early June but I'm talking summer term 1 courses at uni already, but for term 2 I'd like to travel somewhere and dedicate every waking hour I have to learning latin & greek. Does anyone know of programs like this that begin in July? Canada, US or Europe.

Would I be fine if I were able to translate all the Latin that I am required to know on the AP Exam? Is there anything more worthwhile I should be reviewing right now (other than being able to translate all Latin)?

Here's a few lines from Sarbiewski's Odes. It's one of those cases where I think I can read it but I can't make any sense it. He's talking about the constellation Aries being in charge of the zodiac.

Demitque, et dominis cornibus annuit
Torvis jura leonibus

https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Lyricorum_libri_quattuor/I

-que links to the previous sentence. It seems to translate as "And Aries withdraws privileges from savage lions and nods assent with his lordly horns." But the nodding assent is a non sequitur because the context is that Aries is the leader.

Edit: I have put on my textual critic hat, and I think annuit may in error for abnuit.

I'm not sure why I'm getting stuck on this, but I'm writing something for my students, and I'm second guessing my phrasing. They have had a lot of exposure to the phrase "placet mihi" to mean "I like" (literally "it pleases me...). I know that you can use the infinitive with placere to express an action that pleases you (placet mihi cibum edere.) I also know that you can use a nominative to say a specific thing pleases me (cibus mihi placet).

Where I'm getting stuck, however, is with the verb "esse." I want to say "it pleases me to be useful." Would that be:

Placet mihi utili esse (utili being dative to go with mihi) (see 455.2.a)

Placet mihi utilem esse (utilem being accusative as part of an ACI as the subject) (see 455.2)

I'm thinking it should be dative since it would agree with the thing it's describing (mihi). Is that correct? This would mean it's the same as a previous question I asked. I'm guessing the accusative option would be "some other implied person being useful is pleasing to me."

I'm mostly looking for confirmation that I've finally internalized how this verb works.

Hello everyone, I’m currently on my umpteenth rewatch of Mary Beard’s Meet the Romans and she’s translating a ring which equates to “I love you not enough”, from the Latin “Te Amo Parum”.

I’m thinking of proposing to my girlfriend later on in the year and she knows how much of a Roman nerd I am, but I’m wondering, the subtitles show it as “Te Amo Parem”, rather than “Te Amo Parum” - which google shows.

Which one is correct, and do the beginning of the words need to be capitalised? This phrase will go on a ring, just in case anyone wanted to know!

Thank you so much for your help, Vale!

Edited: Latin grammar

I'm writing a journal in Latin to practice my knowledge and I came to a thought which I'm unsure of how to render. I wanted to write: "I don't remember if I told you why I did that". My rendering would be:

"Non memini num tibi dicerim cur id fecissem".

I'm following here Gildersleeve's grammar (511, note 2) that states that the primary senquence shifts to secondary sequence when double dependency is involved. I'm I following the rule correctly? Thanks for your help.

I'm currently working thru a few introductory textbooks on my own: Lingua Latina, Ecce Romani 1&2, and Latin via Ovid. I'm using those 3 books along with "Essential Latin Vocabulary" by Mark Williams to build a solid flash card set (1500 cards made and counting!). It's all going pretty well. I'm finding doing all 3 textbooks at the same time especially helpful. The overlap and redundancy makes things sink in much better for me.

I should be done this stage in the next month or two. My question is where do I go next? I want to get as much intermediate reading under my belt as possible before I try tackling the Virgils and Ovids. I'll do Lingua Latina 2 ("Roma Aeternam"), of course, but what are some other 'training wheels' readings that aren't too daunting to build confidence? Would reading the Vulgate be a good intermediate text, for instance, considering I know the stories already and Biblical syntax tends to be more straightforward?

Any reading recs, as well as any other tips, on how you make the leap from introductory textbooks to reading the Greats, would be much appreciated. Thanks!

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I was thinking about how we have words like ambidextrous for people who can use both hands equally well.

That got me wondering: is there a similar term for preferences—more specifically for someone who doesn’t really have a preference between boobs or butts, but appreciates both equally?

I came up (somewhat jokingly) with terms like “ambicurvus” or “ambicurvae”, based on “ambi-” (both) and “curves.”

- Does something like that make any linguistic sense?

- Is there an actual term that already exists?

- Or is this just something you’d normally describe instead of naming?

Curious if anyone has a better word for it?