Latin Question

[Jean in Newcastle]

Ds14 was supposed to translate:

 

virtutem iuvenum laudamus. into English.

 

He translated it as "We praise young men with courage."

 

The books says that it should be "We praise the courage of young men."

Virtutem and iuvenum both look like they are accusative. So is his translation acceptable?

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

My Latin is extremely rusted.

 

I don't think 'virtutem' can be translated as 'with courage'.. That would not be the accusative.

 

And iuvenum cannot be accusative. My Wheelock lists it as genitive plural only, and cannot be interpreted any other way.

 

So yeah, his translation is wrong.

Edited November 14, 2011 by CleoQc

[Ester Maria]

Ds14 was supposed to translate:

 

virtutem iuvenum laudamus. into English.

 

He translated it as "We praise young men with courage."

 

The books says that it should be "We praise the courage of young men."

Virtutem and iuvenum both look like they are accusative. So is his translation acceptable?

No, not acceptable.

 

Virtutuem is accusative of the noun meaning "courage" (virtus).

Iuvenum is GENITIVE PLURAL of the noun meaning "youth" (iuvenis), i.e. it means "of young men".

 

So, it is "We praise the courage (acc.sg.) of young men (gen.pl.).", NOT "We praise young men (acc.pl.) with courage (abl.sg.).", therefore, your son's translation is not acceptable.

Edited November 14, 2011 by Ester Maria
typo

[Jean in Newcastle]

Thank you. Sigh. Up until now, my Greek knowledge was enough to help me to translate the Latin. I either need to brush up on my Greek or my Latin or both.

[TranquilMind]

Ds14 was supposed to translate:

 

virtutem iuvenum laudamus. into English.

 

He translated it as "We praise young men with courage."

 

The books says that it should be "We praise the courage of young men."

Virtutem and iuvenum both look like they are accusative. So is his translation acceptable?

No, it is not, since virtutem is accusative singular, 3rd declension, but iuvenum is genitive plural, also 3rd declension. There are multiple translations for all of the words, but if this is what the book wants, this is why.

 

This is from my "Latin Master" daughter (got a certificate and everything!) who is in AP Latin. ;)

[Elizabeth in WA]

Thank you. Sigh. Up until now, my Greek knowledge was enough to help me to translate the Latin. I either need to brush up on my Greek or my Latin or both.

 

iuvenis, -is is third declension, something he needed to either know (required vocab) or look-up to correctly translate the sentence. One that was known, he should have recognized -um as the genitive plural ending. My guess is that he assumed it was a second declension noun without looking.

 

I don't think brushing up on Greek would help, it's more about knowing old the declension tables and then knowing that you have to look up the declension of unknown nouns for many ending.

 

For this, I engage in the tedious writing out of tables along with my children, something we do more intensely in the summer since it can take a long time, but it does lead to mastery of the forms. And we do some during the school year, hopefully enough to master new forms and solidify the last learned old ones. Fortunately, the new forms introduction slows down in the second half of Wheelock's! (Passives, for example are easy one you get the pattern since you already have the forms for sum down) Then I just look-up the declension of unknown nouns.

[Jean in Newcastle]

You're right. I just assigned him the tedious task of rewriting out some selected tables. He's doing it with a good attitude.:001_smile: