Re: [tied] Latin

On Sat, 15 Mar 2003 22:19:49 -0800, Michael J Smith
<lookwhoscross-eyednow@...> wrote:

>In one of the sentences I'm supposed to translate, I came across the word
>"de" without the macron over the e. Now I know that "de" with the macron
>over the e means "down from, from , about, etc," and it's always had the
>macron over the e in sentences so far. I can't understand why there's no
>macron.

If the rest of the text has length markings, it's probably just an
omission. Anyway, Latin was never actually written with macrons over
the vowels.

>The other thing is that the vocabulary in the book gives the word
>littera, -ae, f., " a letter of the alphabet"; litterae, -arum, pl.,"a
>letter (epistle), literature." Is the latter definition always
>written in the plural form, the former always in the singular form? If
>not, how do I distinguish between "letters of the alphabet" and "a letter
>(in the mail)" if they're both in say, the nominative case? Or what would
>be the difference in "a letter (in the mail)" and "letters (mail)" if
>they're both written in the same case? In other words, if "litterae (a
>letter in the mail" is always written in plural form, than it would be
>indistinguishable from "letters (in the mail) " ?

More or less the same way one distinguishes between "scissors (one
pair)" and "scissors (several pairs)" in English.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...