Imagine if we had this much attention paid to other Classical languages.
How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?
271–280 of 328 posts
Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?
#272If we're just trying to translate the literal meaning of this sentence from English to Latin, these are good answers. But I suspect that if we went back to ancient Rome and found someone experiencing the meaning behind these words (a guy talking about a girl who has said goodbye too many time, and he doesn't believe that it's going to be final this time either), the actual phrase he says may be completely different.…
> the actual phrase he says may be completely different
That's also true in English, in my experience. I've never heard someone express this phrase (or a variation) in conversation, but the sentiment is common.
A typical phrasing in English would be more like "She always says she's done but she always comes back."
Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?
#273As a native english speaker, I feel like "She'd said goodbye too many times before" better conveys the meaning for me.
I always heard it as "She's said goodbye too many times before," but that was probably my mind filling in the gap. Also, I never heard the rest of the lyrics so I don't know if they're present or past tense.
Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?
#274I'm really sad at how much Latin I've managed to lose since my school days. It's really an incredible language and this stack exchange post shows some of that versatility. Because the words in Latin contain dense grammatical information in their spelling, you can be much more flexible with word order. This gives classical poets the ability to do crazy things with word ordering to create "word pictures" where the stru…
I'm curious about why you've added what I assume are stress marks in the Latin. I studied it (admittedly, a while back) all my way through school and have never once seen this used, including in this poem. In no way a criticism of me trying to make a thing about it - is it an American thing?
Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?
#275If we're just trying to translate the literal meaning of this sentence from English to Latin, these are good answers. But I suspect that if we went back to ancient Rome and found someone experiencing the meaning behind these words (a guy talking about a girl who has said goodbye too many time, and he doesn't believe that it's going to be final this time either), the actual phrase he says may be completely different.…
> the actual phrase he says may be completely different That's also true in English, in my experience. I've never heard someone express this phrase (or a variation) in conversation, but the sentiment is common. A typical phrasing in English would be more like "She always says she's done but she always comes back."
Ha, I've never really listened in to the rest of the words and kinda assumed the meaning was "she left many people" with "too many" indicating loneliness. TIL
Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?
#276Fun facts, Grammar schools in the UK were originally schools created mainly to teach Latin grammar and currently there are 163 Grammar schools operating in the UK as academic oriented (or orientated per UK English grammar), secondary schools [1],[2]. You know that the language is hard when you have multitude of schools dedicated to teach its grammar. Latin has a reputation of a complex language with complicated grammar, and the OP kind of demonstrating this perception.
Interestingly, based on School Standards and Framework Act 1998, no new maintained grammar schools can be opened [3].
[1] Grammar school:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_school
[2] List of grammar schools in England:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grammar_schools_in_Eng...
[3] Grammar School Statistics:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01...
Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?
#277I'm really sad at how much Latin I've managed to lose since my school days. It's really an incredible language and this stack exchange post shows some of that versatility. Because the words in Latin contain dense grammatical information in their spelling, you can be much more flexible with word order. This gives classical poets the ability to do crazy things with word ordering to create "word pictures" where the stru…
I'm curious about why you've added what I assume are stress marks in the Latin. I studied it (admittedly, a while back) all my way through school and have never once seen this used, including in this poem. In no way a criticism of me trying to make a thing about it - is it an American thing?
They’re length markers. There’s also the rarely used ˘ to show that a vowel be read short instead of long.
At least in my gymnasium in Switzerland we had the length markers for all the words, from the very beginning, and in all texts we read and all grammar forms we learned.
Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?
#278I wonder if the original question -asking if a popular song lyric could be translated into Latin - was asked because someone wants a tattoo of it. I know a Latin teacher and she gets several emails a year from strangers asking her to translate phrases into Latin because they want them in a tattoo.
People trusting the advice of a stranger over email to permanently etch their skin? What a world...
If you think Latin tattoos are bad, check out the kind of shit people get tattooed with in (what they think is) Chinese:
Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that there are complex concepts that translate to a single syllable in some languages but requires a lot of context or explanation in other languages. Would these be "single instructions" or multiple? Then when you really break it down, many concepts are used grammatically but are not required based on their context. Should you count that as extraneous or not? An example is that some languages use a ca…
> single syllable in some languages but requires a lot of context or explanation in other languages then don't these other langs do a 'bad job' at compression ? > That doesn't seem feasible In general maybe not. But for some restricted 'assembly' ? "The cat is on the table" has no ambiguity. And in some langs like Polish it compresses better : "Kot jest na stole" (Cat is on table), same info, better syllable-wise com…
Kedi masada.
In Turkish if you say kedi you mean the cat. The copula is in the third person is conveyed by an empty word at the end of a sentence.
Masada bir kedi var.
There is a cat on the table. A cat is on the table. A cat is said as one cat = bir kedi.
*Bir kedi masada.
Doesn’t work. This says a cat on the table. It’s an ellipsis.
Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?
#280syllable count english 10 - She said goodbye too many times before latin 6 - nimium valedīxit polish 7 - Zbyt często się żegnała german 10 - Sie hat sich schon zu oft verabschiedet french 11 - Elle a dit au revoir trop souvent avant italian 12 - Ha detto addio troppe volte prima portuguese 11 - despedira-se demasiadamente (user tail_exchange) 14 - Ela despediu-se demasiadas vezes antes (deepl) nb: the target sentence…
slovak
7 - Priveľa sa lúčila
8 (with "before"/"already") - Priveľa sa už lúčila