[HPFGU-OTChatter] slightly less hurried now

[Jen Faulkner]

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003, Iggy McSnurd wrote:

> > Well, it does have a direct translation.  It means "barking;" it's the
> > present (active) participle of latro, latrare, 'bark'.
> Hmmm... From what research I did last night I got the following:
>
> latrator : a barker (such as a dog)
> latratus : barking
>
> In every on-line Latin to English translator, there was no result found when
> I entered "latrans" into their search engines.   (I visited at least 10
> different sites to check this out...)  The only translation I have found
> where "latrans" would mean "barking" is in direct relation to canis latrans.

That's the problem with online dictionaries/translation engines for
highly inflected languages in a nutshell: they can't find forms that
aren't the first (dictionary entry) form.

Think of it this way: if you want to look up an English word, it's
fairly simple to figure out what its base from is.  For example, you
would know not to look "kicked" up under that form; you'd look for
"kick" instead.

Same with Latin, only there are many, many more endings that can be
attached to the base form.

So the verb bark, in English, has four inflected forms: bark, barks,
barking, and barked.

In Latin, it's got more than 50.  Latro, I bark.  Latras, you bark.
Latrat, he barks... and on and on.

Latrans is one of these forms.  Just like 'barking' the participle (an
adjective made from a verb) is easily formed from the English verb
'bark', so is 'latrans' from 'latro'.

canis latrans 'the barking dog'
canis latrantis 'of the barking dog'
cani latranti 'to the barking dog'
canem latrantem '(e.g. I love) the barking dog'
cane latranti '(e.g. from) the barking dog'

canes latrantes 'the barking dogs'
canum latrantium 'of the barking dogs'
canibus latrantibus 'to the barking dogs'
canes latrantis '(e.g. I love) the barking dogs'
canes latrantibus '(e.g. from) the barking dogs'

And you wouldn't find any of those in a dictionary.

If anyone is interested in trying to find Latin inflected forms online,
you can use the Morphological Analyzer at the Perseus Project
(www.perseus.tufts.edu):
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/resolveform
It'll take a form like latrantibus and tell you what it's from, which
should help some.  It won't translate it for you, though it will tell
you what the dictionary entry form means (e.g., it'll tell you
latrantibus is the dat/abl pl. m/f/n present active participle of latro,
which means 'bark').  I highly recommend it over *any* other online
source, because it's done by Classicists and is based on authoritative
sources (the Lewis and Short dictionary).  There's a dictionary lookup
tool in addition to the morphological analyzer.

--Jen, who really misses teaching Latin and Greek and begs indulgence
for her tendency to go on about this sort of thing. :)

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