a case for nouns /  by Anthony Gibbins

On this page and the last, the word pictor appears numerous times. Let’s take a look.

pictor est! coquus pictorem salutat. coquus est pictoris amicus. coquus cibum pictori dat.

You’ll notice that in each of these sentences, the word pictor appears with a modified ending. That is because each example appears in a particular Noun Case. Each Noun Case has a job to do.

pictor is in the Nominative Case. It is the Subject of the Verb. It is ‘doing the action of the Verb’. Here, the pictor ‘is’. In the final sentence, pictor multas gratias coquo agit, pictor is again in the Nominative Case and is the Subject of the verb agit. He is driving thanks to the cook.

pictorem is in the Accusative Case. It is the Object of the Verb. It is ‘receiving the action of the Verb’. Here, the pictorem receives the action of greeting. coquus is in the Nominative Case and is the Subject.

pictoris is in the Genitive Case. Here the Genitive Case is signaling Possession, not unlike an apostrophe s in English. ‘The cook is the artist’s friend.’

pictori is in the Dative Case. There are numerous ways to describe what the Dative Case does. One is to suggest that it is ‘Indirectly Affected by the action of the Verb’. The Subject is coquus, so the cook is giving. The Object is cibum, so he is giving food. pictori is dative, so the artist is Indirectly Affected. The cook is giving food to the artist. (Similarly, in the final sentence, coquo is in the Dative Case.)

The cook gives food to the artist. The cook knows the artist to owe much money, and not (nec) to have this money. The cook gives many thanks to the artist.

the thief, the cook, the cat and the painter /  by Anthony Gibbins

You may notice that in a world seen from a cat’s POV, human actors lose their names and are reduced to the things that they do.

We have seen that benignus is an adjective meaning kind. There are many adverbs that are formed from adjectives, and benigne is one of them. It means ‘in a kindly manner. Let’s look at some others;

laetus – happy laete – happily ; aequus – fair aeque – fairly ; amicus – friendly amice – in a friendly manner ; apertus – open aperte – without concealment ; promptus – ready at hand prompte – quickly ; dignus - worthy digne - deservedly ; luculentus - full of light luculente - splendidly

And the thief? Oh, don’t worry. The thief is coming.

Soon Pico hears someone knocking on the back door. It is the artist! The cook opens the door and greets the artist in a kindly manner. The cook is a friend of the artist.

Boring! Alice in Wonderland, Impersonal Verbs and Passive Infinitives /  by Anthony Gibbins

The opening sentence of Alicia in Terra Mirabili reads Aliciam iam incipiebat plurimum taedere iuxta sororem suam in ripa sedere nec quidquam habere quod faceret. This was Clive Harcourt Carruthers’ 1964 translation of ‘Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do.’ A more literal translation of Aliciam taedere incipiebat would read ‘it began to tire/bore Alice’. taedere is an Impersonal Verb.

We have seen the impersonal verb placet (it pleases) numerous times now. placet is often written with a Noun in the Dative Case and an Infinitive Verb. Marcello ambulare placet. ‘It pleases Marcellus to walk.’ or ‘Marcellus likes to walk.’ In today’s page placet is modified by two adverbs, maxime (very much) and minus (less). taedet is often written with a Noun in the Accusative Case and an Infinitive Verb. Marcellum ambulare taedet. ‘It tires/bores Marcellus to walk.’ or ‘Marcellus is bored of walking.’

Finally, this page includes both an active and a passive infinitive. vexare can be understood as ‘to annoy’, whereas vexari means ‘to be annoyed’. Hence Piconi placet murem vexare (It pleases Pico to annoy the mouse.) but muri minus placet vexari (It pleases the mouse less to be annoyed).

It pleases Pico very much to annoy this mouse in-this-fashion (sic). It pleases the mouse less, however, to be annoyed. Indeed (quidem) it very much tires him to be annoyed.

receptaculum purgamentorum /  by Anthony Gibbins

I first came upon this phrase in Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis. It was one of the ghosts, I think, dropping a receptaculum purgamentorum over the head of one of the students; a rubbish bin. A receptaculum is ‘a place where things are put or stored’. purgamenta is 'that which is cleaned away, rubbish, filth’. The Roman historian, Titus Livius, referred to the Cloaca Maxima, the massive drain that carried water and worse out of the Roman Forum into the Tiber, as the receptaculum omnium purgamentorum urbis, ‘the receptacle of all the filth of the city’.

The little grey mouse figure, by the way, came with a recent Lego model of a T-16 skyhopper, a nice allusion to Luke's aside to Wedge Antilles, 'I used to bull's-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home. They're not much bigger than two meter.'

This small mouse lives near the bin. Now Pico spends (degit) a few hours chasing the mouse.

holes in my pocket /  by Anthony Gibbins

where are your keys is a remarkable approach to language learning that shifts the responsibility for language acquisition from the teacher to the learner. That, of course, is a vast oversimplification, and I encourage you to check out whereareyourkeys.org to introduce yourselves to their methods. Just to give you a taste though, here is a question posed by their website; What if by changing how communities teach themselves, we could completely turn around the worldwide crisis that endangered languages face?

One of the concepts of WAYK that I find most useful is ‘holes in my pocket’. I understand a ‘hole in my pocket’ as anything that I want to express in Latin, that I am kept from expressing due to a lack of knowledge or understanding of the language. By identifying and keeping lists of such holes, I can set about to ‘hunt’ the correct words or expressions and, to complete the metaphor, mend the holes.  

A few months ago a colleague and I took a trip to the New South Wales art gallery to talk about the artworks in Latin (a great way to practise your language skills, mea sententia). One of us wanted to comment on a detail in ‘the back of’ the painting, and we soon realised that neither of us could do it with confidence. We were familiar with the word tergum (back), but were worried that this would sound more like the reverse side of the painting, than something in the background. So we went hunting!

I think we found what we were looking for in Livy, who uses aversa urbis to refer to the distant part of the city, that part far removed from the speaker. A successful hunt! After hunting a word, it is best to put it immediately into use. And that is why I have written in aversis aedificii on this page.

The food having been completely consumed, Pico exits from the restaurant through the posticum. A posticum, if you do not know, is a door situated at the back of a building.

Meanwhile, in an alternate (Cambridge Latin) universe… /  by Anthony Gibbins

coquus est in culina. coquus in culina dormit. Pico intrat. Pico circumspectat. cibus est in mensa. Pico salit. Pico in mensa stat. coquus sterit. Pico murmurat. coquus surgit. coquus est iratus. ‘pestis! furcifer!’ coquus clamat. Pico exit.

The cook is in the kitchen. The cook is sleeping in the kitchen. Pico enters. Pico looks around. The food is on the table. Pico jumps. Pico stands on the table. The cook snores. Pico purrs. The cook gets up. The cook is angry. ‘Pest! Scoundrel!’ the cook shouts. Pico exits.

This is the level of Latin in the first few Gilbo stories, also available on Legonium.com. If you haven’t already, check them out.

Then Pico enters the kitchen. The cook who is cooking in the kitchen is kind. Although (quamquam) busy, he always prepares something of food (aliquid cibi) for Pico.

Spaceship, Spaceship SPACESHIP!!! /  by Anthony Gibbins

Lego makes a long-sleeved minifigure t-shirt (tuniculam) adorned with a psychedelic Lego spaceman. That’s pretty awesome!

animadvertere became a favourite Latin word, as soon as I encountered it. The range of meanings offered by Cassell’s Latin Dictionary is ‘to take notice of’, ‘attend to’, ‘perceive’, ‘observe’. What appealed to me was the two halves of the word, and how they worked together. animus, Cassell’s says, defines ‘the spiritual or rational principle of life in humans (as opposed to corpus, the body)’ and ‘the seat of thought, intellect, mind’. vertere means ‘to turn’. Thus, to turn the animus towards something, is to notice it.

Pico hurries through the restaurant. No one (nemo) notices him except (nisi) this small boy wearing (gerens) an excellent t-shirt.

felix ianuaque /  by Anthony Gibbins

This is a true story, although I won't blame you if you don't believe it. I once lived with a cat called Geraldine (aka Gerry Howl). Geraldine got into the habit of scratching on my bedroom door every morning until I woke up to feed her. In the afternoon she would stretch out on my bed, the only place in this apartment that got any natural light. One afternoon, as I saw her sleeping lazily in the sun, I started scraping on the door with the tips of my fingers. I did it until she woke, and looked up at me with (what seemed) a vexed expression. I smiled back, but kept it up for another minute or so. And, I kid you not, she never scratched on the door thereafter.

It must be frustrating to be an animal living in a world of doors (or cans of food for that matter) that you can not open. Pico has to wait until (dum) someone (aliquis) entering (intrans - another participle!) opens the door. Then he secretly (clam) follows her.

Pico waits outside the restaurant until someone entering opens the door. At last (tandem) a certain woman enters. Pico secretly follows her.