Grammatica Capitulum XVIII · Litterae Latīnae

The chapter of writing. It teaches what one writes on, with what, out of what — and above all two ways of counting: the letter that is missing and the letter that is one too many, and then the number of times.

1. What is missing, what is left over

Two compounds of esse, built like adesse and abesse from capitulum IV:

The construction is the trap. What is missing is the verb's subject, never its object:

Littera dēest. — a letter is missing (literally: a letter is absent). Duae litterae supersunt. — there are two letters too many.

Note the spelling: two e's follow each other in the singular, dēest, dēestis, dēesse — and never in the plural, dēsunt.

2. The adjective with a single shape

brevis, breve (cap. XII) had two. frequēns has one, the same for all three genders.

frequēns vir, frequēns apis, frequēns vocābulum

And its stem is not read off the nominative: it is read off the genitive, exactly as for a third-declension noun.

frequēns, frequentis → stem frequent- → frequentem, frequentī, frequentēs, frequentia, frequentium

The nominative's long ē returns nowhere else.

3. What kind? Such. — and the rest of the family

Three pairs look alike and do not ask the same thing:

quālis and tālis are adjectives: they agree with the noun whose quality they state — Quālis est cēra? Tālis est quālis tua.

They have neither comparative nor superlative: one does not compare “such”.

4. How many times?

The frequency pair: quotiēs? … totiēs. It counts the times, where quandō (cap. XIII) places the moment.

The first four numeral adverbs are words apart, not to be guessed from the numeral:

semel (1), bis (2), ter (3), quater (4)

Only the last still lets quattuor be heard. From five on, the series turns regular: the numeral takes -iēs.

quīnqu*iēs, sexiēs, septiēs, deciēs*

The -m of decem drops before the suffix: deciēs, not *decemiēs.

5. The compound shifts its vowel

premere becomes imprimere: the stem's -e- turns into -i-.

• premis → imprimis
• capere → accipere (cap. VIII)
• facere → efficere (this chapter)

A stem's short vowel weakens as soon as a prefix pushes it away from the word's opening.

6. The vowel and the consonant

vōcālis “has voice” and is pronounced alone; cōnsonāns “sounds with” and cannot be said without a neighbour. Both words are feminine in Ørberg, because littera is understood, and both make their genitive plural in -ium: vōcālium, cōnsonantium.

Mind cōnsonāns: the long ā is in the nominative singular only. Everywhere else the stem is cōnsonant-, short.

7. The superlative, continued

Nothing new since capitulum XIII, but nine more adjectives take it:

• ordinary: dūr*issimus, rārissimus, mollissimus, turpissimus, frequentissimus*
• in -er: impigerrimus (like pulcherrimus)
• in -lis: fac*illimus, difficillimus* (cap. XVII)

One exception worth keeping: varius does not compare. Its stem already ends in an -i-, and Latin says magis varius, maximē varius.

8. The same: īdem, eadem, idem

It is the pronoun is, ea, id (capitulum VI) with the small syllable -dem glued on the end. Everything you know of is therefore serves here — bar one weld.

Two things, and no more:

• the -m becomes -n before the d: eum + dem → eundem, eam + dem → eandem, eōrum + dem → eōrundem. An m is awkward just before a d.
• a quantity tells two forms apart: īdem in the masculine, with a long ī (is + dem lengthens the vowel), against idem in the neuter, with a short i (id + dem, where the d drops and lengthens nothing).

9. The degrees of the adverb

An adverb compares like an adjective, and more simply: it changes neither gender, nor number, nor case. Three forms, and that is all.

• the comparative is the adjective's neuter, in -ius: rārior, rārius — the second form is the one taken;
• the superlative takes -issimē, with a long final ē: rārissimus → rārissimē.

Two adverbs change word as they change degree. No rule produces them; they must be known, like “well, better, best”:

Latin does the same for multum, whose comparative is plūs (capitulum XIX), and for magnopere, which gives magis and maximē — the two words by which adjectives in -ius compare (§ 7).

10. suum cuique

quisque, “each”, belongs to capitulum XVII. This chapter adds its most famous phrase:

Suum cuique. — to each his own.

cuique says to whom, and it is the same form in all three genders. The formula does not say that the same thing goes to everyone: it says that each is given what is his.

11. Two vocabulary traps

• mercēs, mercēdis is the wages, what the one who has toiled receives. merx, mercis (cap. XVI) is the merchandise. Same family, two things.
• papȳrus has a long y; zephyrus has a short one. Both words are Greek and are not treated alike.

12. Recalled, not taught

• fierī serves as the passive of facere: Latin does not say *fācitur. The course has only the three forms of capitulum XVI — fit, fīunt, fierī.
• cum “when” (cap. X) is a different word from cum “with” (cap. V), and it is built here with the indicative. The cum of the subjunctive must wait for capitulum XXIX.

The chapter's lectūra

Apis in cērā — a wax tablet left open, a bee coming in on the west wind, and two children reading in the tracks of its feet a word nobody wrote. None of that is in the book: with us, nobody writes.