Disputatio:Finnegans Wake

De editione

I'll begin in English but will translate into Latin if preferred. The Latin is OK except that the word order is very English. Anyone can change that but perhaps the creator of the page would like to do it? I altered one reference because: a work of general relevance to the article is better placed in the bibliography; an introductory paragraph shouldn't be controversial and rarely needs to be footnoted (unless the article title itself needs justification, which is not the case here); but a detail that might be questioned should certainly be footnoted, e.g. the origin of "quark", so that was fine. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 08:43, 1 Augusti 2018 (UTC)

I'm new to Latin and I know that Roman authors would compose bizarre sentence structures, but I assumed that these mixed word orders were reserved for artistic works only, and that an encyclopaedia's prose should be straightforward. I can move the words around if you wish. What "orders" would you recommend for sentences? Should I add verbs to the end of sentences more often (not constantly otherwise it would be noticeable)? M890709 (disputatio) 09:03, 1 Augusti 2018 (UTC)

"Straightforward" in Latin, an SOV language, usually means Subject + Object + Verb, except for forms of esse, which in independent clauses usually goes in the middle. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 11:37, 1 Augusti 2018 (UTC)

[Edit conflict: I am partially repeating what Iacobus has just said:] Thanks for replying, and thanks for contributing to Vicipaedia.

It's true that styles differ in different genres, but it's also true that what seems strange in English writing might seem straightforward in Latin writing! You'd find the same with German (and other languages too): if you stick to English word order, you'll be difficult to understand.

A Latin sentence commonly begins with an emphasized word or phrase (which might often include the subject noun if there is one) and commonly ends with a main verb. Esse ("to be"), if it's the main verb, is an exception and rarely takes final place. If you read Caesar, you see more of a standard word order; if you read Cicero, you see more variation. Both writers were admired. Medieval and later Latin writers aim at a similar style, though they don't always hit it.

If you look at the first paragraph of Caesar's Gallic War (in Latin, I mean) you get a first sentence whose main verb is est ("is"), which naturally comes between the subject and predicate, and then five sentences whose main verbs come at the end. But there's also a lot of variation in that first paragraph, and the aim of it is not to be bizarre (if I may borrow your word) but to describe the subject [the geography of Gaul] as briefly and clearly as possible. This is just the sort of thing an encyclopedia article has to do. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:01, 1 Augusti 2018 (UTC)

Of course, I was aware that the order in English is different to how things are expressed in other languages, but this is also the first time I have studied another language. I am using the Vulgate, Ørberg's grammar books and a Latin-English interlinear of Cicero to learn. Thank you for this valuable information, which I will use, and I will take a closer look at Caesar. M890709 (disputatio) 00:07, 2 Augusti 2018 (UTC)