Wednesday, March 28, 2007

just "bumping" this to the top, as they say...

I'm just bringing this back to the top 'cause I don't want to forget about it as it gets further away from the first page of the blog...


I'm just curious about this... If I wanted to write "thank you for your help" in Latin, would it be something like "ago gratia tibi tuum auxilium," with "tuum auxilium" being in the accusative case? Or am I totally wrong?~Rachael
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I would use a construction that we have not learned yet, the genitive of cause 'auxilii tui.' But you certainly give me pause; let me investigate further.
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Okay. I was just wondering because while studying last night I came across the grammar for chapter 17 (I think it was...) where it talks about the use of the accusative in expressing duration of time - something like "tres horas" translating as "for three hours." So I wondered if the accusative could imply "for" something in other contexts as well, such as "to thank someone for something." Please do let me know what you find out because I'm really quite curious.And thanks for the info about the genitive case. I don't think I would have guessed that in a million years, but it makes sense that it could be used. ~Rachael
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I thought about this again, and another option is to go with propter+ acc. That is Gratias ago tibi, propter auxilium tuum (because of)....but I would avoid the dative like the plague in this case, simply because the english 'for' has so many functions that are not all covered by the Latin dative. I will keep thinking about this.
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Hmmm... That's very interesting. So could the genitive of cause still be used or would propter + acc. be better (or more correct)? ~Rachael

2 comments:

E Pluribus Unum said...

I would go with the genitive of cause for style...it is my experience that, unless they are talking about location, they didn't feel the prepositions much, unlike English.

RaeS said...

Cool! Thank you very much! ;D