Expert: Maria - 7/7/2007

Question
Milady Maria,

First thank you for your quick response to my last inquiry, In spite of my
calling you Julie.  I humbly ask you forgiveness for that.

While I was typing my first question a rather annoying acquaintance of mine
kept trying to talk to me while I was typing my question. During my
distraction I glanced down at the page and say the words - Dear Julie.  It was
from an answer you had given a previous applicant. In my haste I parroted
that greeting.

Immediately on hitting the send key I realized my mistake and tried to correct
it. Unfortunately your status changed to 'maxed out' and I could not follow
up. I did post an apology to the tech staff at AllExperts and asked that it be
forwarded on to you.

Again please forgive the carelessness on my part.

Now to my question, questions as I have two if you would not mind please.

I am a member of the SCA. (Society for Creative Anachronisms) A world wide
organization who recreate things medieval. My particular persona is that of a
11th century Norman Knight.  Recently I've begun to study latin to further
enrich my character.
One of the things that I find fascinating is while a good deal of english is
based in latin there are often no direct translations. One has to know the
context of what is being said in order to make a correct translation.

My orginal question was how would you say "Don't Laugh. Your Daughters
Might be Inside."

You responded with "Noli Redére."
And while "Your daughters" could be Tuae filiae?. you said that you needed an
explination of might be inside.  The "inside" refers to the inside of a tent,
where my friend stays during our summer reenactment in August.
So I guess another way to say what we want is, "Don't Laugh. Your Daughters
Might Be Inside This Tent." (It is a Mongol style Yurt actually.)
And again i assure you nothing unseemly is going on inside said tent, but
because of her flair, panache and independence all of the girls in our camping
group (from ages 3 to 15) want to grow up to be her. (That and all the really
cool stuff she brings to camp to decorate the inside of her yurt.)

If you could help me with this I would be in your debt.

Also recently this same young lady suffered the loss of her horse due to
extreme old age. It was a Percheron and she asked to translate "The War
Horse is Dead."  I came up with "Equus Bellator Mortuus" Is that correct?
Or should it be Equus Bellator Mortuus Est?
Also where does the "tor" come from on Bella. While the dictionary states that
Equus Bellator  means war horse, I can not find any reference to explian that
ending.

Thank you for your time, I hope I have put you to sleep with my long
message, Again I apologize for the earlier mix up
Your Most Humble Servant
MarK Drutarosky

Answer
Hello,

No problem at all. You are forgiven, of course!

As for your first question, i.e. "Don't Laugh. Your Daughters  Might be Inside" in the sense of “inside of a tent”, here’s the translation:

-“Noli ridère. Filiae tuae intus esse possunt”.
Or with a different word order:
-“Noli ridère. Intus  tuae esse possunt filiae”.

If on the contrary you want to traslate “ "Don't Laugh. Your Daughters Might Be Inside This Tent", you can say:

- “Noli ridère. In hoc tabernaculo (or ‘in hoc tentorio’) tuae esse possunt filiae”
Or:
-“Noli ridère. Filiae tuae in hoc tabernaculo (or ‘in hoc tentorio’)esse possunt ”.

I must however point out that POSSUNT for ‘might’ corresponds to a conditional mood. But, if ‘might’ is a past tense of ‘may’, you should say POTERANT, i.e.:

-“Noli ridère. Filiae tuae intus esse poterant”.
Or with a different word order:
-“Noli ridère. Intus  tuae esse poterant filiae”.

- “Noli ridère. In hoc tabernaculo (or ‘in hoc tentorio’) tuae esse poterant filiae”
Or:
-“Noli ridère. Filiae tuae in hoc tabernaculo (or ‘in hoc tentorio’) esse poterant”.

Note that in my previous answer  I wrote "Noli Ridère", NOT “Noli redére”, as 'redére' does not exist in Latin.


As for "The War Horse is Dead” the correct translation is "Equus Bellator Mortuus Est " .

Finally with regard to the ending –tor  in “equus bellator” or “ bellator equus” just meaning ‘war horse’, as we read in Vergilius‘ Georgics, book 2, line 145, note that the noun “bellator” derives from BELL- which is the stem of the verb BELLO ( 1st.conjugation) meaning “I fight”, plus the suffix –ATOR which indicates a noun derived from a verb.
See also AMATOR (lover)  from AMO (I love).

Hope all is clear enough.

Best wishes  to your character, i.e. the  11th century Norman Knight!
Maria
________________________________________________
GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS

-The War = BELLATOR (nominative masculine, 3rd.declension)

-Horse = EQUUS (nominative masculine, 2nd.declension)

-Is Dead =MORTUUS  EST (past tense of  MORIOR, 3rd.conjugation)


-Don't = NOLI (imperative, 2nd.person singular of NOLO)

-Laugh = RIDERE (infinitive of RIDEO, 2nd.conjugation)

-Your = TUAE (nominative feminine plural of TUUS agreed with FILIAE)

-Daughters =FILIAE (nominative feminine plural of FILIA, 1st.declension)

-Might = POSSUNT ( 3rd.person plural, present of POSSUM) / POTERANT (past of POSSUM)

-Be = ESSE (infinitive of SUM, I am)

-Inside = INTUS as an adverb

-Inside = IN (preposition which takes the ablative as an Ablative of place where)

-This = HOC (ablative neuter singular agreed with TABERNACULUM/ TENTORIUM)

-Tent= TABERNACULO (Ablative of TABERNACULUM, neuter, 2nd.declension) /TENTORIO (Ablative of TENTORIUM, neuter, 2nd.declension)

As you can see, Latin word order  can be variable and often depends on writing style of an author. Anyway Latin declension by cases gets everyone (i.e. a reader or listener) to  discern the case of a word.