Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 April 26

= April 26 =

Latin translation
I've encountered the following phrase in a Presbyterian ecclesiastical text from 1807, but I'm not sure that it's transcribed correctly (I'm looking at a manuscript), and Google produces more gibberish than I'd expect if it were transcribed accurately."An notæ dentur veræ ecclesiæ et quæ sunt?"(1) Is this likely to be good Latin? (2) What does it mean? Google renders it Is known church are true and which are not?, which I suppose could mean "Is it known which churches are true and which are not?", but rendering dentur as are doesn't seem to make much sense (what little I remember of schoolboy Latin includes sum and sunt for forms of is/are, but nothing close to dentur, and dentur gives it as a completely different word), so this in particular may be a transcription error. Also, Google produces different results if you switch æ to ae, so again I'm unsure whether it's a Google error or a transcription error. Finally, I've found bits of the original 90-page manuscript online (excerpts were printed in the late 19th century), but a Google search for this phrase finds nothing; another thing making me wonder if I made a mistake. Nyttend (talk) 01:22, 26 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Dentur is a passive subjunctive verb form meaning roughly "they may be given". (The exact meaning of a subjunctive verb depends on the construction in which it occurs.)  Something about whether true churches are known and which ones they are, though I can't really figure out how dentur fits into the sentence... AnonMoos (talk) 03:46, 26 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I can't find that particular phrase on Google, but I see a Theologia dogmatico-polemica by Carlo Sardagni (who appears to have been Catholic, so it's not the same work as yours), which raises various questions like "An dentur notae verae Christi ecclesiae, et an illae sint sincera praedicatio verbi Dei, et legitimius sacramentorum usus?" In that case it means (roughly...this is probably too literal) "Whether signs of the true church of Christ are given, and whether they are sincere preaching of the word of God, and legitimate uses of the sacraments?" The verbs are subjunctive because they have to be after "an" ("whether"). Similarly, your phrase looks like it should mean "Whether signs of the true church are given, and what are they?" "Dentur" is being used impersonally, it might be more natural to simply say "whether there are" in English. I assume this goes back to Reformation authors trying to figure out how to tell whether any particular church was the true church, but AnonMoos could probably speak to that better than I could. Adam Bishop (talk) 11:12, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you. A presbytery instructs a seminarian to write a Latin discussion on this topic in order to develop his ecclesiology and his Latin skills (I got this from a scan of the presbytery's minutes), so this particular situation wouldn't appear online unless the presbytery's documents were online.  And thank you for the grammatical discussion, which is what I was seeking; though Adam, I'm a little confused by your use of "are".  Does Latin subjunctive not translate easily into English, i.e. is "are given" better than "be given"?  Nyttend (talk) 12:08, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Latin uses the subjunctive much more frequently than modern English. Here "an" is an indirect question in a subordinate clause, I suppose with an implied finite verb (e.g. "I ask whether..."), so the subjunctive is required. We could say "whether it be" in English but that sounds pretty archaic. Hamlet for example says "whether it be bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple" - but he also says "whether 'tis nobler in the mind" etc, so even back then it was starting to disappear. We just don't use the subjunctive very much in English anymore, so a lot of Latin subjunctives sound more natural with the indicative in English.
 * By the way, another interesting grammatical thing here is that "an" is actually the second half of a classical construction, "utrum...an" ("whether...or") - it's actually the "utrum" part that means "whether". In neo-Latin it's common to just use "an" alone as a question. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:44, 26 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Adam Bishop -- Dentur as marker of an existential clause makes sense (analogous to German es gibt), thanks... AnonMoos (talk) 07:34, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

How can be these two types of adjective groups distinguished terminologically?
I found this question on stalkexchange and I'd like to know what is the answer for this (since there's no answer there for that question). "How can be these two types of adjective groups distinguished terminologically? In adjectives there are two main groups: First Group: adjectives that their 3 grades (base, comparative and superlative) are changed whether regularly (nice > nicer > nicest) or irregularly (good > better > best). Second group: adjectives that their 3 grades, are changed by adding "more" or "most" (e.g. "more expensive" or "most expensive" rather than expensivier or expensiviest). Then my question is how these two groups are distinguished terminologically? or in other words what are the terms for each of these two groups? Based on some research, the terms "synthetic adjectives" (=in the first group) and "analytic adjectives" (in the second group) refer only to the comparative degree rather than to the all 3 grades together (positive, comparative and superlative adjectives). Isn't it?" 93.126.116.89 (talk) 01:43, 26 April 2018 (UTC)


 * First off, the three "grades" are more often called "degrees of comparison". Second, there doesn't have to be any established single words to describe each of the two groups.  If asked to coin phrases, I would come up with "adjectives taking inflectional comparison" vs. "adjectives taking syntactic comparison"... AnonMoos (talk) 03:30, 26 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Or comparisons made by affix vs. comparisons made by syntax. -- Jayron 32 15:03, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Possibly suppletive. Bazza (talk) 15:41, 26 April 2018 (UTC)


 * There are a few suppletive comparisons, such as "good/better" and "bad/worse". That term does not cover either type of regular comparison... AnonMoos (talk) 20:57, 26 April 2018 (UTC)


 * How about adjectives that inflect for comparison and those that do not inflect for comparison? The vast majority of those that inflect also have periphrastic equivalents ("purest", but also "most pure"); only a very few sound odd (?"more far", ?"more mad"). NB periphrasis is used for any adjective when in a particular kind of construction: "She is more mad than inspired" (not *"She is madder than inspired"). -- Hoary (talk) 06:29, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

If English is not mey first language how can I get a writing help?
I really need help with writing as English is not my native language. Can you advise me something?


 * I think the best help for writing in any language is reading. Read newspapers, magazines, books. The more, the better. —Stephen (talk) 21:57, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * If you want to check your English for correctness, try language exchange sites and apps. My personal preference is hinative. Шурбур (talk) 07:20, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Perhaps one of the active volunteers at the Guild of Copy Editors might be willing to assist you. Cullen328  Let's discuss it  07:31, 27 April 2018 (UTC)