# huic ille feminae hos nummos omnis dare mauult



## Buonaparte

*huic ille feminae hos nummos omnis dare mauult*

Dear Forum,

Can the above sentence be legitimately translated in both the following ways:

1. He prefers to give all these coins to this woman
2. That man prefers to give all these coins to this woman

Both appear legitimate to me, but I may be missing some subtlety in terms of emphasis or something, or maybe I'm missing alot more! Hee hee. 

Buonaparte

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## Whodunit

Salve Buonaparte! 

I can see that you have understood the sentence, but the translations are not very accurate. Maybe it was a typo in the thread title, but you should know that _omnis_ is the genetive singular (for all genders) here, so it doesn't fit _nummos_, which is the accusative plural. However, your translation would be correct, if the word was _omn*e*s_.



Buonaparte said:


> Dear Forum,
> 
> Can the above sentence be legitimately translated in both the following ways:
> 
> 1. He prefers to give all these coins of everyone to this woman
> 2. That man prefers to give all these coins of everyone to this woman
> 
> Both appear legitimate to me, but I may be missing some subtlety in terms of emphasis or something, or maybe I'm missing alot more! Hee hee.
> 
> Buonaparte


 
As for the emphasis, the sentence would (literally translated) sound like this:

_To this woman, that man perfers to give these coins of everyone._

I'm not sure if theres's a better to phrase it in English.


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## Buonaparte

Whodunit,

Can't onmis be accusative plural, either mas or fem, in this context? 

Buonaparte


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## Whodunit

Buonaparte said:


> Whodunit,
> 
> Can't onmis be accusative plural, either mas or fem, in this context?
> 
> Buonaparte


 
I've checked it with my grammar book, if there are some alternatives, but _omnis_ can only be genitive singular (all genders) or nominative singular (masculine/feminine). The accusative plural would be either _omnes_ (masculine/feminine) or _omnia_ (neuter).


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## modus.irrealis

The -is ending is an alternate ending for the accusative plural with the 3rd declension adjectives. See http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0001&query=head=#63 for example.


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## Whodunit

modus.irrealis said:


> The -is ending is an alternate ending for the accusative plural with the 3rd declension adjectives. See http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0001&query=head=#63 for example.


 
Interesting ... I didn't know that, and my grammar book doesn't say anything about that either. So, sorry Buonaparte, your translation was correct.


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## Buonaparte

modus.irrealis/Whodunit,

Thanks gents. 

When you (modus.irrealis) say 'alternatve ending' does that mean that both 'is' or 'es' are correct and it makes no difference which one is used with 3rd declension nouns?

And one further question (sorry for all these questions all at once, but I've only just stumbled across this forum and it's a really useful resource for me as up till now I've been struggling alone with learning on my own - not easy!), and that is, my grammar book 'P. Jones and K. Sidwell', 'Reading Latin: Grammar, Vocabulary and Exercises' it lists declensions in the following way with some cases in parentheses, eg:

Nom: ego
Acc: me
Gen: mei
Dat: mihi (mi)
Abl: me

My question is: what do the parentheses mean? Book doesn't explain them. It may be more of the 'alternate' endings that modus.irrealis highlighted, but I don't know. Any ideas?

Buonaparte


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## modus.irrealis

Buonaparte said:


> When you (modus.irrealis) say 'alternatve ending' does that mean that both 'is' or 'es' are correct and it makes no difference which one is used with 3rd declension nouns?


My understanding is that in this case the -is ending is the older one and was replaced by the -es ending, but would still be available to later writers as a possibility. Also, it's only some 3rd declension nouns that can use the -is ending, basically those that form their genitive plural with -ium (e.g. only _duces_ is possible as acc. pl.).



> My question is: what do the parentheses mean? Book doesn't explain them. It may be more of the 'alternate' endings that modus.irrealis highlighted, but I don't know. Any ideas?


I think it just means that the dative can also be _mi_. This dictionary entry has:



> *ego*  (old and late, egō), _gen._ meī; _dat._ mihī, oftener mihi or mī; _acc._ and _abl._ mē;


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## Whodunit

modus.irrealis said:


> My understanding is that in this case the -is ending is the older one and was replaced by the -es ending


 
That could have been due to some misunderstandings. Consider this:

Romani naves omnis oppresserunt.
_The Romans attacked all the ships._
_The Romans attacked everyone's ships._



> I think it just means that the dative can also be _mi_. This dictionary entry has:


 
Interesting. My dictionary says that it was poetic to use _mî_:



> *egô, ego *(_gen. meî, dat. mihî & mihi (lit. also mî), acc. & abl. mê (OL mêd); cf. NHG "ich")_


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## modus.irrealis

Whodunit said:


> That could have been due to some misunderstandings.


 That sounds likely, and even if it led to the nominative and accusative plural being the same, the Romans didn't seem to have too many problems with that in general (3rd declension nouns like _dux_ and 4th and 5th declension -- and of course all neuters).



> Interesting. My dictionary says that it was poetic to use _mî_:


That makes more sense, because I don't think I've ever come across _mi_ in my reading (and it's a form not listed in the grammar I used to learn Latin), but the "oftener" in the link I gave confused me (in fact, I was going to write Buonaparte that the fact they put _mi_ in brackets probably meant it was the rarer form but I took that out after I read the dictionary entry). I guess the "oftener" refers just to the _mihi_ with short _i_ at the end and not also to the _mi_.


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## Whodunit

modus.irrealis said:


> That sounds likely, and even if it led to the nominative and accusative plural being the same, the Romans didn't seem to have too many problems with that in general (3rd declension nouns like _dux_ and 4th and 5th declension -- and of course all neuters).


 
Well, to be honest, it doesn't bother me to see the nominative looking like the accusative and vice versa, because that's true for many modern languages, too. In German, the nominative and accusative always look the same, except for masculine singular (nouns and adjectives). I remember cases in the Slavic languages (Czech, Russian e.g.) and in English, of course, in which the accusative looks like the nominative.

However, what causes me (dative? ) some problems is when the accusative or nominative have the same forms like the genitive. That rarely happens in German and English (_to_ before the dative and _'s_ for the Anglo-Saxon genetive, strictly speaking), and I don't like it in Latin either. 



> That makes more sense, because I don't think I've ever come across _mi_ in my reading (and it's a form not listed in the grammar I used to learn Latin), but the "oftener" in the link I gave confused me (in fact, I was going to write Buonaparte that the fact they put _mi_ in brackets probably meant it was the rarer form but I took that out after I read the dictionary entry). I guess the "oftener" refers just to the _mihi_ with short _i_ at the end and not also to the _mi_.


 
What I'd like to know would be - but maybe this deserves a new thread - how the _-hi_ came to be attached to the _mi-_? In Indo-European, as far as I remember (didn't check it), the root was supposed to be *_me-_. Is that some demonstrative pronoun?

I'm asking this because we have _mi*ch* _in German, and the _h_ is present in many earler (MHG, OHG) forms.


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