Re: CHAT The motto: (was: Conlang Coat of Arms)

I've been offline awhile and haven't caught up yet. Responding to this
first (below)

I

On Sat, 4 Sep 2004 13:45:14 +0100, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
>On Saturday, September 4, 2004, at 05:53 , Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating
>Dragon) wrote:
>
>> Peter Bleackley wrote:
>>
>>> Argent. In chief, a quill gules. In base, an anvil sable. The motto,
>>> "accusativum per prefice indicabo".
>>
>> Could you please tell me what the translation of the quote would be if
>> you added the "I think" bit at the start? To my mind, that's an
>> intregal part of the quote. I assume it's not quite as simple as,
>> "cogito accusativum per prefice indicabo".
>
>You assume correctly - we need the accusative & infinitive construction.
>
>But - HELP!!!! - the 'Latin' is getting more terrible as we go on.
>
>I said in an earlier mail that *"per prefice" was bad Latin because "per"
>governs the accusative case. That's true, but - blushes deeply - I am
>utterly & thoroughly ashamed of myself for not spotting that 'prefix' is
>ENGLISH, not Latin!
>
>mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
>
>I should've noticed that at once. For a start, the Latin form of the
>prefix is PRAE- (not pre-). I fact, the actual Latin word for 'prefix' is
>"praefixum" (2nd declension neuter).
I didn't notice it either, despite knowing the etymology of "prefix".

>So, sorry Peter, far from *"accusativum per prefice indicabo" being
>perfect, as one or two others said, it is awful. It contains both a
>lexical and a syntactic error - not a good advertisement for Conlang.
On the contrary. Clearly, it's not Latin, but a conlang that's cleverly
designed to looks like Latin!

>Can I make it absolutely clear that I am not intending to criticize Peter
>or anyone else? Peter's idea was excellent. But I'm supposed to be the
>latinist around here and singularly failed to correct it properly; the
>only person I'm criticizing is myself. The rest of the email is meant to
>be positive & helpful.
>
>So, before moving onto Adrian's point, let us get the original correct.
>
>OK - if we want to retain the preposition "per" (by means of) then we
>should have:
>"accusativum per praefixum indicabo"
>
>If we are happy with just the plain ablative being used instrumentally (i.
>e. 'with a prefix'), then we should have:
>"accusativum praefixo indicabo"
This is my preference. It's short.

>Right - now if we want to make the clause depend on "cogito", then:
>
>If we want the version with "per" it would be:
>"cogito me accusativum per praefixum indicaturum"
>
>If we used the plain ablative rather than per+accusative, it would be:
>"cogito me accusativum praefixo indicaturum"
>
>{sigh}
>Before some pedant points out that "indicaturum" is the future participle
>and that the future infinitive 'should' be "indicaturum esse", I had
>better say "Yes, I do know that (and have known it for some 50 years)!" I
>also know that in practice the "esse" (to be) part was very often omitted
>and IMNSHO is certainly better omitted here.
>{/sigh}
It's never been clear to me when the "esse" can be omitted and when it
can't.

>But the 'cogito' versions are maybe longer than we'd want for a motto
>below a shield. In Latin the constructions used for reported
>speech/thought ("oratio obliqua" is what the traditional grammar books
>call these forms) are so distinctive that it is not at all uncommon just
>to find whole sentences or, indeed, paragraphs written as 'oratio obliqua'
>  with no introductory verb of speaking/thinking if the context is clear.
>So we could just have:
>"me accusativum per praefixum indicaturum"/"me accusativum praefixo
>indicaturm"
>
>Well, I've now given you all six variants in correct Latin, so which shall
>we go for?
>
>My preference is: "Me accusativum praefixo indicaturum"
>
>Ray
>===============================================
>http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
>ray.brown@freeuk.com
>===============================================
>"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
>interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760