Five Go Adventuring Again

[Moonraker]

I'll let Cathy be the judge of that!

[Carlotta King]

Hehe it's already dyed!

[Liam]

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/mor ... deum&la=la" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

From this site I got these meanings:

Solum -- their wheaten* board
Lapideus -- of stone, consisting of stones, stone-
Paries -- a wall (of a building)
Ligneous -- of wood, wooden
Cellula -- a small store-room
* The color of wheat

The words are given to us in this order:
Solum lapideum -- paries ligneous – cellula
I don’t know Latin grammar, so I can’t vouch for the word order, but that’s the only thing that might be off – the word order – though I suppose Mr. Roland might not have read it out in grammatical order.

But just from the transliteration, I would put the words in this order:
cellula – lapideum – paries – ligneous – solum
[In] a room – of stone – a wall – of wood – the color of wheat

That's probably a very English word order. A more "Latin" word order, like in Spanish, might be the reverse:

panels the color of wheat - made of wood - on a wall - of stone - in a room

Which is the order Mr. Roland read it out.

The lady knew what she was talking about.

[Maggie Knows]

The lady knew what she was talking about.

Hear, hear: I never doubted it, honest

[Liam]

I'm glad you brought it up, Maggie Knows, so we could all take a closer look at it.

[yarvelling]

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/mor ... deum&la=la

From this site I got these meanings:

Solum -- their wheaten* board
Lapideus -- of stone, consisting of stones, stone-
Paries -- a wall (of a building)
Ligneous -- of wood, wooden
Cellula -- a small store-room
* The color of wheat

The words are given to us in this order:
Solum lapideum -- paries ligneous – cellula
I don’t know Latin grammar, so I can’t vouch for the word order, but that’s the only thing that might be off – the word order – though I suppose Mr. Roland might not have read it out in grammatical order.

But just from the transliteration, I would put the words in this order:
cellula – lapideum – paries – ligneous – solum
[In] a room – of stone – a wall – of wood – the color of wheat

That's probably a very English word order. A more "Latin" word order, like in Spanish, might be the reverse:

panels the color of wheat - made of wood - on a wall - of stone - in a room

Which is the order Mr. Roland read it out.

The lady knew what she was talking about.

That's some great research there! And as you mention, there is the problem of word order; many European languages rearrange the words to what is common in English, dependant on how the sentence structure runs; confuses the hell out of me!! I remember it mostly from many years ago learning German at school...... simple examples that I remember would be like :
asking a question: "Are we going shopping?". In German - "Gehen wir einkaufen?". 'Gehen being the verb 'going', 'wir' meaning 'us' or 'we', and 'einkaufen' meaning 'shopping'.
So I would imagine that Latin also rearranges verbs, nouns, and adjectives - or uses them in a different order to how we do in English peaking countries...
I imagine that Enid probably learned at least some Latin when she was at school, and knew that at the time of writing the books, many of her readers would also be learning it..... it's only really since the 60's that Latin has died out in schools - we never learned whilst I was there from mid 60's to late 70's...... so her Latin quotations are normally a little confusing to me! Even worse when i'm reading an old Billy Bunter book, as the author Frank Richards loved to liberally drop Latin phrases in wherever possible as it seemed to be a very important subject taught at the school of which he wrote: Greyfriars.!

[Liam]

many European languages rearrange the words to what is common in English, dependant on how the sentence structure runs; confuses the hell out of me!! I remember it mostly from many years ago learning German at school......

I can relate. My foreign language courses in school were always Spanish. In Spanish the adjective comes after the noun - a "red pen" in Spanish is a "pen red" - very hard to get used to. I had thought though that English structure was closer to German. It seems it's just as different as Spanish! I guess English didn't just get half its vocabulary from Latin, but some of its grammar too. I've read that the "no split infinitive rule" is actually a Latin rule that is "forced" on to English.

[Courtenay]

I guess English didn't just get half its vocabulary from Latin, but some of its grammar too. I've read that the "no split infinitive rule" is actually a Latin rule that is "forced" on to English.

That's true, Liam, if no-one minds going further off topic for a moment. In English, the infinitive form of a verb is made up of two words: to be; to go; to see; to do; and so on. In Latin (and probably in most other languages), a verb in the infinitive form is just one word. Which makes it impossible to "split" an infinitive in Latin - and because of that, some grammar pedant centuries ago decided that therefore infinitives in English must be kept strictly unsplittable as well!! Complete madness.

[Liam]

Courtenay, our masters' speech is always the best, whether French rulers in England or British rulers in America. We can't help but go gaga for it. That "grammar pedant" was probably just trying to make a peasant language a bit more highfalutin.

[yarvelling]

I guess English didn't just get half its vocabulary from Latin, but some of its grammar too. I've read that the "no split infinitive rule" is actually a Latin rule that is "forced" on to English.

That's true, Liam, if no-one minds going further off topic for a moment. In English, the infinitive form of a verb is made up of two words: to be; to go; to see; to do; and so on. In Latin (and probably in most other languages), a verb in the infinitive form is just one word. Which makes it impossible to "split" an infinitive in Latin - and because of that, some grammar pedant centuries ago decided that therefore infinitives in English must be kept strictly unsplittable as well!! Complete madness.

Well Courtney, never having studied Latin, and only having the basics taught back in the late 60's of English, I'm not too clear, to be honest, what an 'infinitive' is!! We're all familiar I presume with one of the most famous of all split-infinitives? "To boldly Go...." from Star trek? Well, if the infinitive is "To Go" and it's split by sticking 'boldly' in the middle, then more power to the split infinitive!! The phrase has more depth of meaning, and power of intent by being split...... to say "To go boldly..." just sounds weak, and pretty feeble in comparison!!

many European languages rearrange the words to what is common in English, dependant on how the sentence structure runs; confuses the hell out of me!! I remember it mostly from many years ago learning German at school......

I can relate. My foreign language courses in school were always Spanish. In Spanish the adjective comes after the noun - a "red pen" in Spanish is a "pen red" - very hard to get used to. I had thought though that English structure was closer to German. It seems it's just as different as Spanish! I guess English didn't just get half its vocabulary from Latin, but some of its grammar too. I've read that the "no split infinitive rule" is actually a Latin rule that is "forced" on to English.

Liam...That seems to be a fairly common 'rule' across Europe; French, German, Spanish, and probably Italy use that form too.... The Swiss and Austrians will use whichever form of French or German they speak natively. It almost seems strange to me, as a native English speaker, that our language has reversed the noun/adjective format, seeing as it is an amalgamation of many European languages, and Latin too..... Must make it very difficult to try and learn it

[Courtenay]

Well, German puts the adjective before the noun, like we do (I think so do Dutch and the Scandinavian languages), and English is more closely related to German at its roots than to French, Spanish or Italian.

How did we get onto this topic from the original theme of the thread, by the way??

[Anita Bensoussane]

The "via occulta" led us to this topic!

English is more closely related to German at its roots than to French, Spanish or Italian.

Yes - languages like English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic are "Germanic" languages and are believed to have descended from a common language referred to as Common Germanic or Proto-Germanic.

Languages like French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese are "Romance" languages and have their roots in Vulgar Latin.

[yarvelling]

Yes Anita, maybe it's the convergence with the Latin languages that caused some of the problems.... However our use of verbs and nouns etc is still 'backward' to how other European countries structure their sentences.....
The example I was using back in my earlier post about comparing the phrase to go shopping... I explained the German structure as I remember and understand it - PLEASE anyone correct me if I got it wrong!!
What I was saying was that in English we might a question "Are we going shopping?", but once the translation into German is done, it comes out more like "Going we shopping?" - which obviously doesn't work in as far as the English language is concerned...... so quite how we in the UK derived our form of language from other parts of Europe and turned it make what we use today, I do not know!! Perhaps it was something so simple among scholars of day just thinking "Going we shopping?" sounds 'bad'... let's add another word or two, and reverse the order a bit, and then give it some stupid technical past injunctive ablative terminology.... Lol!!
I don't 'get' it.... have no idea of the technical terms, but I know what seems to just *flow* correctly for me, but for any poor foreigner trying to learn the language, it must be a nightmare.... the way you think is turned around!!

[Nick]

It is that time of year again when FGAA is dusted off for a pre-Christmas read and the more I read this book the more I seem to enjoy it. The reason for my ever increasing enjoyment is Mr Roland. Has Enid ever created a more skin creepy villain? His grooming of the children, (especially Anne - my skin crawls whenever he holds her hand) and manipulation of Uncle Quentine is skin crawling.

[Julie2owlsdene]

Yes, Mr Rowland is certainly a creepy sort of character, and only George and Timmy could see that!! It's a great Chrsitmas read, but when I read it, I find myself getting annoyed that they can't see through Mr Roland, especially Uncle Quentin who is suppose to be an intelligent man!!!