1.5 Latin Still Written in English — Epoché
What you will be able to do Give the full Latin behind e.g., i.e., etc., cf., viz., ibid., et al., N.B., q.v. Use e.g. and i.e. correctly, and say what each actually means. Use per se, de facto, ad hoc, pro rata, status quo, vice versa, sic in an English sentence without hedging. Read a biological binomial and say what its two words are doing grammatically. Read sentences like Canis tuus mihi placet. [37] — I like your dog. — without looking anything up. Prerequisites : 1.4 — the ten prefixes. The last three lessons found Latin inside English words. This one finds Latin standing about in English sentences, unassimilated, still wearing its own clothes. You have been writing it for years. Very few people know what most of it says, and the two commonest items are mixed up by good writers every day. What you already know Sixteen tags. The second column is the Latin they abbreviate or are; the third is what they actually mean. Tag Full Latin What it means e.g. exemplī grātiā for the sake of an example — so: some of the things I mean i.e. id est that is — so: another way of saying the same thing etc. et cētera and the rest cf. confer compare — an imperative, "compare it!" viz. vidēlicet namely — from vidēre licet , "one may see" sic sīc thus — "that is really what the source says" ibid. ibīdem in the same place — the source just cited et al. et aliī / et aliae and others — of people, not of things N.B. notā bene note it well — again an imperative q.v. quod vidē which see — go and look at it per se per sē through itself — in itself, as such de facto dē factō from the deed — in fact, whatever the rule says ad hoc ad hoc for this — made for this one occasion pro rata prō ratā parte for the reckoned share — in proportion status quo status quō the state in which — how things stand vice versa vice versā with the position turned — the other way round Two of those have grammar worth noticing now, because you will meet the form in the Syntax volume. cf. and N.B. are imperatives : confer is "compare!" and notā is "note!". They are instructions to the reader, which is why they sound abrupt when you translate them. And vice versa is an ablative absolute , one of the most Latin of all constructions: two words in the ablative, meaning "the position having been turned". You will build them yourself in the third phase. The rule The distinction that matters most is e.g. against i.e. , because using the wrong one changes what your sentence claims. Sentence What it claims Bring a warm coat, e.g. a parka. a parka is one example; a duffel would do Bring a warm coat, i.e. a parka. by "warm coat" I mean a parka, and nothing else The Romance languages, e.g. Spanish, lost the neuter. Spanish is one of them The Romance languages, i.e. the daughters of Latin, lost the neuter. that phrase is a restatement of "the Romance languages" The English mnemonic is " e.g. = example given, i.e. = in essence", which works but teaches nothing. The Latin teaches something: exemplī grātiā is a genitive plus an ablative meaning "for the sake of an example", and id est is simply "it is" — a pronoun and the verb you met in lesson 0.1. Knowing the Latin makes the difference impossible to forget, which is the small everyday payoff of this whole volume. Three more rules about using these things, since they exist in the wild and you will be marked on them. et al. is people. aliī is the masculine plural of alius "other", so it means "and other people". For other things you want etc. Writing "apples, pears et al." is a small solecism. etc. never follows e.g. e.g. already says "some of them", so adding "and the rest" is saying it twice. sic is not sarcasm. It means the quotation really does read that way — that the mistake is the source's, not yours. It has drifted in casual use into a way of sneering, which is worth resisting, because in scholarly writing the neutral sense is the one readers assume. And one observation about the form of the abbreviations. vidēlicet is abbreviated viz. with a z that has nothing to do with the word: the mark is a medieval scribal symbol for a final -et , which later printers mistook for a z . The abbreviation is a fossil of a scribe's shorthand, five centuries old, still in use. The biggest body of living Latin All of the above is ornamental. There is one place where Latin is not ornamental at all, where hundreds of thousands of new Latin phrases have been coined since 1753 and the endings still have to agree: the naming of living things. Every species has a two-word Latin name — a binomial , the system Carl Linnaeus fixed in Species Plantārum . The first word is the genus and is capitalised; the second is the specific epithet and is not. Both are Latin, and the grammar is real. Name What it says The grammar Homō sapiēns the wise human noun plus a participle agreeing with it Canis lupus the dog that is a wolf two nouns, both nominative Quercus alba the white oak quercus is feminine, so the adjective is alba Acer rubrum the red maple acer is neuter, so the adjective is rubrum Tyrannosaurus rēx the tyrant-lizard king Greek genus, Latin noun in apposition Bellis perennis the daisy that lasts through the year per + annus , the prefix of lesson 1.4 Look at the third and fourth rows together. Quercus alba and Acer rubrum are both "colour + tree", and the adjective ends differently because the two nouns have different genders. A botanist writing a new name has to get that agreement right, and journals reject names that do not. This is the clearest possible demonstration of why the Forms volume exists: the endings are not decoration even today, and a person who knows Latin vocabulary but not Latin endings cannot name a beetle. It is also a good place to notice that the gender of a Latin noun is not guessable from its ending. Quercus ends in -us , which usually marks a masculine noun, and it is feminine — like manus from lesson 0.1. Trees are feminine in Latin for reasons that go back further than Latin. Lesson 2.9 is whe