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

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Ray Brown <ray.brown@F...> wrote:

> 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.

Cool.  German does that too, with the mixed Konjunktiv.



> My preference is: "Me accusativum praefixo indicaturum"
With my scant 2 years of Latin in school, I could not have
decoded this correctly.  I probably would have attributed
the indicaturum to accusativum, and mistaken the praefixo
as a 1s verb form.  Me, then, would have had to be a weird
dative form, maybe of a conlang word: "I prefix an
accusative, yet to be demonstrated, to the word 'me'."  =P

I had no trouble understanding the wrong sentence, though,
nor the correct one in direct speech.



-- Christian Thalmann