II. It is my intention to keep as closely to the original Latin or Greek word order employed by the author as much as possible. I feel that many times an author's genius is perverted by the limiting and dull structure of modern English syntax.
For example:
Interea ea legione quam secum habebat militibusque, qui ex provincia convenerant, a lacu Lemanno, qui in flumen Rhodanum influit, ad montem Iuram, qui fines Sequanorum ab Helvetiis dividit, milia passuum XVIIII murum in altitudinem pedum sedecim fossamque perducit.Keeping the original word order intact and merely translating the word based upon its syntactical function gets us something close to the following:
-C. Iuli Caesaris Commentarii De Bello Gallico Liber I.8
Meanwhile with that legion which with himself he had and with his soldiers, who from the Province had gathered, from Lake Geneva, which into the Rhone River flows, to the Jura Mountains, which the borders of the Sequani from the Helvetians divides, for nineteen miles a wall in height sixteen feet and a ditch he leads to completion.
To many modern English-speakers, this hyperbaton is problematic. But English has been employing such multi-varied word order for some time now:
Kickass! Check out that imagery! The picture practically paints itself.High on a Throne of Royal State, which far
Outshon the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showrs on her Kings Barbaric Pearl & Gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit rais’d
To that bad eminence; and from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue
Vain Warr with Heav’n; and by success untaught
10His proud imaginations thus displaid.-Milton, Paradise Lost Book II.1-10
It's only rather recently that our language has becoming so syntactically rigid - and boring.
There actually exists a website which "translates" Milton's English into...English, or "Plain English" as the site claims. Here's their translation of the above Milton:
Satan sat on his throne. It was fancier than the richest kings of Persia or India had.Holy shit, how depressing.
He had become the king of evil.
It was more than he hoped for, and now he was greedy for more.
Instead of learning from his defeat, he just wanted to fight God some more.
So he began to tell his dream to the assembly.
Here's the above Caesar passage rendered into today's vernacular:
Meanwhile he built a wall nineteen miles long and sixteen feet in height from Lake Geneva, which flows into the Rhone River, to the Jura Mountains, which divides the borders of the Sequani from the Helvetians, using that legion which he had with him and with soldiers who had gathered from the Province.Caesar's style, his Latin's soul is gone, for his Latin word order unpacks the actual actions of the scene in the chronological order it happened:
First Caesar had his legion with him (before he even started building the wall), and then he had some soldiers, they've come from the Province, and he starts at Lake Geneva, which flows into the Rhone River, and finishes at the Jura Mountains, which divides the Sequani land from the Helvetians. This wall (once it's built) runs for a distance of nineteen miles, and in height, he made it sixteen feet. Oh, then he decided on a ditch. And then he built it.
The English actually has to pervert the chronologically laid out events in order to make sense to many modern readers.
III. Whenever possible I shun a Franco-Latin cognate in favor of a Anglo-Gerrmanic one. This often leads to surprising (and illuminating) results in comparative linguistics.
For example:
The Latin tu, "you", the 2nd person singular personal pronoun, is etymologically the same word as the Germanic du/thu, which appears most regularly in Anglo variants as thou and in English as you. Likewise the derived possessive adjective tuus -a -um is the same as the Anglo thy/thine (thy appearing before words beginning with a consonant and thine for vowels).I have attempted to retain as much as possible the older style of English declension. Some English pronouns still decline just as Latin:
Latin English
- Nominative tu thou
- Genitive tui of thee
- Dative tibi to/for thee
- Accusative te thee
- Ablative te with/from/by/in/on/about thee
And, keeping in mind that any 2nd person singular Latin verb should be translated as "thou verb", then by retaining these case forms in translating, we are allowed to employ a freer word order which can follow more closely the Latin:
Fuisti igitur apud Laecam illa nocte, Catilina, distribuisti partes Italiae, statuisti, quo quemque
Thou were, then, at Laeca’s that night, Catiline; alloted thou the parts of Italy; decided thou thither to those places whomever
proficisci placeret, delegisti, quos Romae relinqueres, quos tecum educeres, discripsisti urbis partes
it pleased thee to depart; chose thou those whom at Rome thou wouldst leave behind, whom with thee thou wouldst lead forth; wrote thou down the city’s parts
ad incendia, confirmasti te ipsum iam esse exiturum, dixisti paulum tibi esse etiam nunc morae, quod
to be set aflame; made sure that thou thyself already by then would depart; spake thou that there was for thee a little bit of --yes, even still now!--a delay: I suppose given the fact that
ego viverem.
I still lived.
-Interlinear - M. Tulli Ciceronis In Catilinam Oratio Prima 9-10 with my own - ANF
In the same manner, the Latin vos, the 2nd person plural personal pronoun, is etymologically the same as the Germanic ihr and its Anglo brother ye. The Southern American dialect has the closest rendition as "y'all", though this author has heard it used to address a singular, following a similar path as other languages - another digression for another time. The possessive adjective vester, vestra, vestrum is the Anglo your/yours.
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