Disputatio:Consociatio Humanistica Germaniae

De Latinitate

I think the only thing that would be fiendishly difficult for a Latin reader to understand is the apposition "societas membrum". Society (feminine nominative) limb (neuter nominative or accusative)? There's just no clue as to how the two words belong in the same sentence. It's true that "membrum", as a metaphor, can mean "member of a society" but it's not the obvious sense of the word (see membrum). Useful non-metaphorical terms might be "socius, sodalis, particeps". Either "societas particeps" or a relative clause might work.

There are a couple of strange uses of the dative (communi, libertati). I don't really understand those phrases. It's a similar issue really: datives and ablatives carry several possible senses, and so, in rereading, you need to think whether the reader will consider first the sense that you thought of. If not, you are maybe writing too obscurely for encyclopedic prose, and you could give more help, with a preposition for example, or with an added word, like "titulo"/"statu" + genitive with the title/status of ...

One other phrase is obscure to me: "caerimonias habet": in what sense does it have ceremonies: it celebrates? it hosts ceremonies? it prescribes ceremonies for others to use?

Unlike other verbs, "est" rarely ends a sentence, so to have the first five sentences ending in "est" or "sunt" is really odd.

Hope that helps ... Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 22:59, 17 Martii 2019 (UTC)

I was going to emphasize the comment about using membrum to mean 'member (of a society)', but now we see that Neander has taken care of that! IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:28, 18 Martii 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for all your help. On caerimonias habere, well, I simply looked up the German word for to conduct (a ceremony) here (it's the second meaning), and it seemed to correspond to "habeo". But if anyone finds a better verb, I'll be eternally grateful... Sigur (disputatio) 19:40, 18 Martii 2019 (UTC)

Information given at L&S implies that you might want the plural because the singular has a different meaning, so maybe the idiom caerimonias facere would work. Also caerimonias conficere. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 19:55, 18 Martii 2019 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. Between the two texts, the second sounds to me more like it, but I will defer to the judgment of more learned Vicipaedians. Sigur (disputatio) 20:10, 18 Martii 2019 (UTC)

... anyway, if sources say your usage of "caerimonias habere" is good, then probably it is. Quite happy to withdraw that point! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 20:15, 18 Martii 2019 (UTC)

On the other hand, this is where my son's primary school teacher would say: If you have the choice between a very general verb and a more specific one, use the more specific one... Sigur (disputatio) 20:28, 18 Martii 2019 (UTC)

Latin definitely agrees with your son's primary school teacher. Or, to write less inclusively, I agree with him. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 20:33, 18 Martii 2019 (UTC)

With her, actually. So, I'll take that up. And about those datives, I wasn't sure about them at all. So, if you found them strange, then the most probable explanation is that they were. Sigur (disputatio) 20:39, 18 Martii 2019 (UTC)

Unio libertati animi fovendae

I'm a bit lost about this: I know why I put the dative and I was most probably wrong, but in this construction I don't see it at all: Shouldn't libertas be in the genitive here and in any case agree with fovendae ? Sigur (disputatio) 08:09, 21 Martii 2019 (UTC)

Unio libertatis animi fovendae : The onion of warming freedom of the soul. Unio libertatis animi fovendi : The onion of freedom of warming the soul. But what are you trying to say? IacobusAmor (disputatio) 10:50, 21 Martii 2019 (UTC)

To be fair, "unio" is very common in later Latin in the sense of "Unity, Union" (as seen in many of our pagenames) and very rare in the sense of "variety of onion". The latter probably arose as a metaphor from the usual meaning in classical authors, "pearl". I suspect Iacobus must have a special liking for onions :) Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 11:15, 21 Martii 2019 (UTC)

And garlic, Horace notwithstanding! (Actually, he's being distracted at an international convention of psychotherapists, which happens to be taking place up the street.) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 11:28, 21 Martii 2019 (UTC)

Go easy on the garlic if about to attend a long session. But it does help with the blood pressure. I hope European leaders indulged freely in garlic before their meeting this afternoon. Theresa May surely hates it, and that may be a part of the problem. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:39, 21 Martii 2019 (UTC)

I'm awfully sorry not to be able to contribute anything to your fascinating discussion of onions and garlic. But to come back to my initial inquiry: The thing to translate was "Bund für Geistesfreiheit". If I may give it a try in English, that would be "League for Freedom of the Mind" ("Geist" may be a lot of things from mind to ghost to spirit to reason, you name it... but that's presumably not the issue here). Neander corrected my botched dative, but now I don't understand his. Okay, I see now that "libertati" and "fovendae" could actually agree. Is that a "good" dative then? Of the understandable kind? Sigur (disputatio) 21:07, 21 Martii 2019 (UTC)

Just in case the gist of the matter got overshadowed by all the onioned food for thought, let me say that "unio libertati animi fovendae" is a final dative construction of the same time-honoured type as, say, quindecimviri sacris faciundis. Neander (disputatio) 22:12, 21 Martii 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. At the time when I raised the issue (a long, long time ago) the word "fovendae" had not yet been added to the phrase. With that one word added, it is perfectly clear. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:24, 24 Martii 2019 (UTC)