I am deeply distressed to learn that Pliny, or Caius Plinius Secundus, author of Naturalis Historia, is guilty of faulty Latin. I shall write to his friend Catullus and mentor Seneca directly, though the post will be slow due to the enormous traffic through Verona and parts of the Appian Way.
I blame my own teachers as well, had we studied Didymus instead of Catullus I might have spotted it. Sic crustulum fortunae disintegrat. Here is the text of my letter to Seneca. An nescis quantilla sapientia mundus regatur. dt "Mathias Rösel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Sorry, this has become so off-topic, yet I cannot resist. >> For me, nullum (in this case nulla) has more the sense of nothing or >> none, Nothing in Latin is NIHIL. Nullus (-a, -um) is an adjective, compound of ne + ullus and usually followed by a related noun, which means: not one, noone. That is why... >> nullum quod tetigit non ornavit. .is rather faulty Latin. "Nullum" should be followed by a noun. Suggestion: Nihil, quod movit, non ornavit (better avoid discussions about sense here). > OK, I'm no Latin scholar but isn't nulla in some senses used for no, as in > nullatenus, in no wise? Yes. nulla- in nullatenus is ablative case (pronounce nullâtenus), you have to complement "parte" >> "no" in this sense seems more like sine than nullum. No. "Sine" means "without". >> As in Sine sole sileo Which translates as Without Sun I Am Silent, no? >> But how about sine qua non, without which, nothing? Yes, how about that? Res sine qua non datur, a thing without which another thing isn't given (the necessary minimum)--that should make it clear. So much about that. > It seems to me that, vis a vis Latin, the translation is often going to be > approximate rather than literal. That applies to any translation *sighs*. Italian has it, that traduttore e traditore, translators are traitors. >> But perhaps the sense of the thread is >> Nullum est iam dictum quod non dictum sit prius >> - Nothing is said that hasn't been said before. You might want to look up "nullus", once again. Suggestion: Nihil dicitur, quod non dictum est prius. (I don't agree to that opinion, though, but that's yet another topic). -- Mathias To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --
