The following is another example of what makes this list so delightful, even when the snow is blowing!
Jim Shields At 11:17 AM 1/11/2011 -0700, Allan Taylor wrote: > Not all nouns that end in -us are masculine in Latin. There is also > a feminine inflection which ends in -us, and many of the nouns that > belong in that inflection happen to be plants and trees, e.g. cornus, > crataegus. The "two ending" adjectives (-ensis, -ense) merge masculine > and feminine, so if you have a noun of ambiguous gender, and an adjective > which suffers from the same indisposition, you had better reach for your > Latin grammar book quick! > And Bob, you can't say (in correct Latin), carpe plantem. -em is the > correct accusative ending for third declension feminine nouns, but planta > is a second declension noun, so it has to be carpe plantam. > I usually hate pedantries such as this posting, but you post when > something is in your area of expertise, and that's why I'm sounding > off. No offense intended; but really, if you want to be able to handle > Latin binommials, you have to have a passing acqauaintance with Latin > noun and adjective morphology. I once read an article on African > violets, and how to divide them when they get all bunched up. The author > concluded: "e unum pluribus!" thinking that all you had to do to reverse > the meaning was to reverse the word order. But word order in Latin is > fairly free, possible because the real work of the grammar is in the > morphology of the words, not their order. Correct way to say what she > was trying to say is e uno pluri. > Then after you have the grammar solved, you have to confront how to > pronounce them...oi veh!. Allan Taylor >_______________________________________________ ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 _______________________________________________ Alpine-l mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/alpine-l
