I think the learning Latin thing has been going rather well overall. That is, aside from the frustration provided by my substance dependency issues which appears to inhibit my ability to engage in rote learning as easily as I once did. For the most part it has been an interesting and engaging endeavour and I’m wondering why I never did it years ago… oh yeah, that’s right. My school never taught Latin (Go! You good Catholic things! Go!) and my previous University never taught Latin either. We have been learning lots of useful vocabulary – furcifer – rascal; sceleris – villain; lumbrīcus – worm; merterīx – prostitute; serua – slavewoman… and all good stuff like that, which will no doubt come in handy when buying a ticket on the Metro one day.
But the one thing I have been finding excessively frustrating is the umpteen different ways of saying a single word depending on whether it’s masculine, feminine or neuter, singular or plural, whether it’s in the nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative or ablative case, whether is past or present tense, what mood it’s in, active or passive voice and oh dear gods immortal, save and protect us! So there’s literally 36 different words that can be used to say ‘my’ or ‘mine’… that we’ve been shown so far. And instinct is telling me that we haven’t encountered all the variations yet! :S
This week we were told we’d be learning Latin numbers and and counting, and I thought, surely here we’d be in the clear. I studied French in highschool and later at Uni, and if memory serves the ‘un, deux, trios, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neruf, dix’ was simple and straightforward enough, and foolishly thought that would be the way of it. But no, no, no! Even though French is a gendered language to the best of my recollection (which admittedly is fuzzy at best), numbers in French do not possess gender. In Latin they most certainly do… and fucking ‘huzzah’ for that! 😐 So anyway, I figure that it sort of makes sense, the ‘ONE’ in question could be referring to a masculine, feminine, or neuter object so we’ll just have to run with it.
Unfortunately that particular thought (however fleeting), was a stupid, stupid rookie mistake! Because ‘ONE’ can also be in the nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative and ablative case!!! Argh! So, I was thinking… 3 by genders, 6 by cases that’s 18 ways to say the number ‘one’, how absolutely ridiculous and completely redundant is that?!? So while I wrestled my indignation to a more manageable incredulousness, I idiotically thought we had landed and would be safe with that, only to find that further insult was to be added to injury, because… wait for it, there’s more!
Somehow in Latin, there are specific circumstances where the number ‘ONE’ is PLURAL. That’s right! The very word whose inherent meaning refers to a singular item or object when counting can be PLURAL in bloody Latin! Which means now we have the 3 gender options, as well as the 6 case options, and singular and plural options, giving no less than THIRTY-SIX DIFFERENT WAYS to say the number ‘ONE’.
How fucked up is that! I am now thoroughly convinced that I am destined to never to master this language.
Is the Latin equivalent of “yous” as in “yous people” – Latin yobs?