Wheelock's FAQ chapter 11

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Wheelock's FAQ chapter 11: Questions

Questions are listed at the top of the page and are divided into several categories. Click on the links at left and you will be taken to the question and corresponding answer below.
Category: Practice/Repetition sentences (PR's)
PR3
I'm puzzled by the "hoc." Isn't "hoc" nominative? The sentence seems to have two subjects.
PR7
Can "eO" be translated as "his"?
Category: Sententia Antiquae (SA's)
SA1
Why are "mE" and "amicum" accusative?
SA5
I don't understand what "bene" is doing in here.
Category: Translations (TR's)
TR9
How should I translate "agere"? None of the meanings seem to fit.
TR11
I don't understand why "ad mortem tE" is at the beginning of TR 11.
Category: Groton and May (GM's)
GM3
Would it be okay to translate "eum" as "it", since it refers to something inanimate?

Wheelock's FAQ chapter 11: Answers

Category: Practice/Repetition sentences (PR's)
PR3:
I'm puzzled by the "hoc." Isn't "hoc" nominative? The sentence seems to have two subjects.
A:

Some gender confusion. "Hoc" is neuter, and the form therefore serves both the nominative and accusative cases. Because it is neuter, "this thing" is accusative, and is the correct translation. "Hunc" would be "this man".

Liz's answer:

sorry, Joe, but when you said 'hunc' would be a man I laughed. What a hunc! Never made that connection before.

PR7:
Can "eO" be translated as "his"?
A:

Joe Ireland's answer:

No, it can't. "Is .. ea .. id" is normally an adjective meaning "this" or "that". Here it is masculine dative to agree with "libro", and either of those two translations would suit.

Category: Sententia Antiquae (SA's)
SA1:
Why are "mE" and "amicum" accusative?
A:

Gary Schultz' answer:

My Latin dictionary simply says that this verb takes a double accusative in this usage. Other languages (e.g., Greek) also have such double accusative verbs. The Latin verb doceo, which appears in Wheelock's Chapter 8, is another such verb (as it is in Greek) -- one can teach someone something, which results in two accusatives. For some reason, Wheelock skirts the issue directly, except to insert the usage into an exercise unannounced, just to confuse his students!

SA5:
I don't understand what "bene" is doing in here.
A:

Joe Ireland's answer:

It is really just a polite idiom. It could be considered redundant; though perhaps it might be more useful to consider it a "polite intensification". Same sort of thing as "Good luck to you" drawing the response "And the best of luck to you". If you wanted to be archaic, it might be "Fare thee well", replied to by "Fare thee very well." In modern parlance, it would just be "Goodbye", and "The same to you".

Joy's answer:

I translated bene as "quite" in order to give added emphasis to the sentence.

Category: Translations (TR's)
TR9:
How should I translate "agere"? None of the meanings seem to fit.
A:

As I've said before, don't worry about learning all the meanings of "ago". "Ago" is an all-purpose verb; it simply means "do the obvious thing to the direct object". We do the same sort of thing with nouns in English -- "So, I hung the whatzis on the whatchamacallit...."

TR11:
I don't understand why "ad mortem tE" is at the beginning of TR 11.
A:

That's for emphasis. Emphasized words and phrases always go at the beginning or end of a sentence. Remember that this was a speech, and his original hearers heard him one word at a time. Cicero has just said that Catiline has marked them for death, so now he begins, "For death *you*... At that point, before hearing the rest of the sentence, his hearers could fill in the blank, with an implied "should be marked".

Category: Groton and May (GM's)
GM3:
Would it be okay to translate "eum" as "it", since it refers to something inanimate?
A:

Yes.


Last updated Thu Nov 13 17:10:54 GMT 2003

FAQ ©2003 by its creator Gary Bisaga and Meredith Minter Dixon. Copyright to FAQ answers is retained by their authors.