Disputatio:Gryllidae

Corrections

Well I said "insectae" not "insecti" (which you say means pursued) so while in correct doesn't have the accidental meaning you were refering to. Anyways by subplani I mean "some what flat". I found a similar example in Lv 13:19 with "subrufa" and according to Whitaker's words sub+adjective means "somewhat -, -ish; rather -; under, from under/below; lesser/assistant;"

Yeah, Insectati sunt would indeed have meant "they have pursued," but you said insectae sunt, which is just the wrong gender: it's insectum, -i (literally meaning "notched" because of their segmented bodies).

Subplanum is OK in my book, but there might be a better way to say it.

Viscera means "internal organs; guts." I don't think you can use it to describe an ovipositor. It's really an organum.

I put corpus and organum in the singular because normally in Latin, a body part stays in the singular even when we are talking about a group of people (or crickets), just so long as each of them posesses exactly one: corde nostro is more common than cordibus nostris. This construction is actually very common in the Vulgate bible (which I know is one of your stylistic models), for examples, see Genesis 18:5, Exodus 14:17, 31:6 and so on.

Quia means "because", so it cannot be followed by a noun clause. I.e. to use quia you would have to say something like "They can chirp because the backs of their wings are rough." To say "They can chirp because of the backs of their wings," you might use causa with a genitive. But I thought it would be stylistically better to use an ablative construction, either an ablative absolute (like I did use) or, say, some participle or another meaning "using, relying on."

Also, of course, female crickets do not have an organ for depositing sheep ;)

--Iustinus 18:31, 9 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

Biological Authority

When I transfer taxoboxes, I usually try to look up the Latin name of the "authority." Since a huge number of the biologists who first defined taxa wrote in Latin, that is normally easy to do. However, in the case of Ignacio Bolívar, I am a little stuck: the only source I have for his Latin name is the publishing information of his 1878 Catalogus orthopterorum Europae et confinium (which is presumably the very source in which he first defined Gryllidae), where the responsibility is given as "auctore Ign. Bolivar."

Well Ign. presumably stands for "Ignatius." "Bolivar." is a bit enigmatic, though, for two reasons. One, I wouldn't stake my life on whether or not the Latin imprint included the accent; two, the period at the end may or may not indicate an abbreviation (responsibilities very very often end in a period whether or not the author's name has been abbreviated). I decided to go with our usual strategy of keeping the author's surname unchanged, and linked to Ignatius Bolívar. Since Bolívar wrote in the late 19th century, this is most likely what he did himself anyway, but should contrary evidence arrise, we may have to change this. --Iustinus 19:17, 9 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

FYI: This addition apparently wiped out the comments that I spent 20 minutes adding, and I don't have time now to readd them. IacobusAmor 19:30, 9 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

ARGH! Oh no! That shouldn't have happened. Did you get an edit conflict, then click "save" without noticing? Well, sorry that happened to you. --Iustinus 19:54, 9 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

I clicked Servare hanc rem and bombed out of it; then when I looked, my addition wasn't there, but yours was. In any event, you weren't talking to me above. Of points that I recall—Good catch on ova, not oves. In the sidebar, why Taxinomia instead of Taxonomia? Why Families instead of Familia? (I don't see how to change these.) You rightly saw the problem with quia; if I'd had room, I'd have asked "Where's the verb?" Shouldn't the first word of the article be Gryllus, not Grylli? (That is, shouldn't we define the singular instead of the plural?) And general question: why do people keep using the pattern A B est instead of A est B? Does some textbook or school of learning require all verbs to come at the end? Is it a Germanism? IacobusAmor 21:49, 9 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Iacobus...lamentably, the phrase "in latin the verbs come at the end of the sentence" is one that is hammered into the minds of many students of latin, without the addendum on the use of linking verbs.--Ioshus Rocchio 00:44, 10 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

That's amazing. The very, very, very first Latin sentence in the textbook we used in high school, decades ago, was America est patria nostra. Non-Americans may substitute their country of choice. :) IacobusAmor 01:08, 10 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

I'm with you, the first one I read was "In pictura est puella, nomine Cornelia. Cornelia est puella Romana."--Ioshus Rocchio 01:11, 10 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

Again, sorry, I have no idea why it would do that (unless my above theory be correct). As for taxinomia, that is indeed odd, but apparently correct: see the note at taxonomia. I fixed Subfamiliae though (good catch). Were I the author I would indeed start with gryllus, but I don't know how strong the wikipolicy is there. As for A B est, you are right that it is not necessary to apply the verb-genrally-comes-last rule to est, but neither is it necessarily wrong to do so. But for the benefit of anyone who's reading this: est/sunt usually goes in the middle (as in English) when it means "is/are", but at the end or the beginning when it means "there is/are." Cf. Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres --Iustinus 22:19, 9 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

The upshot of the taxinomia bit appears to be that taxon is a neologism, the ancient form of which would be taxis... this should form the compound taxînomia rather than taxonomia. --Iustinus 22:23, 9 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

But isn't Greek onoma the source, leaving the English combining-form onomy, which should imply a Neolatin taxi-onomia, which elision would turn into taxonomia? Compare English taxidermy, which isn't taxodermy because there's no o in the Greek root derm-, but there is an o in the Greek root onom-. IacobusAmor 00:28, 10 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

No, actually the -nomy in "astronomy" and the like comes from nomos meaning "law, custom." And of course if you look in the Greek dictionary you'll see that the usual word for skin is derma -tos not dermos -û (though that does exist). Just some more random factoids, tyvm. --Iustinus 03:25, 10 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

By golly, that's right! Even more interesting is that the French & English forms of the word apparently didn't exist until the 19th century. Does the Latin form postdate 1800 too? IacobusAmor 03:43, 10 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

Iustinus, do you happen to have a copy of Catalogus orthopterorum Europae et confinium lying around your house? If not how do you find these things so quickly? Alexanderr 19:32, 9 Augusti 2006 (UTC)

I don't, no. If I did, I would know for sure if it had that accent! I find these things via WorldCat, by pluging in my key words, and limiting the results to works written in Latin. If you want to look for Neo-Latin texts that you can actually read online, there is a huge catalog of them here. Unfortunately, it seems to be down at the minute (and I doubt they have Bolívar's Catalogus anyway. --Iustinus 19:54, 9 Augusti 2006 (UTC)