I'm trying to understand the rules but I don't seem to find a proper pattern. The main problem is my Spanish and French conflict with Italian... Io voglio andare a USA? Io voglio andare ai USA? Io voglio andare in USA? In Spanish I would use a, in French I would use aux, which is ai... but wha...

I would like to know, regarding standard and literary Italian, on what letters and in which letter positions the circumflex character (^) can appear in: standard Italian literary or archaic Italian Perhaps, the given answers do not fully cover my question, which, as stated, also asks the foll...

L'etimologia di manifattura è "fatto a mano", da manufactus (latino). Oggi però il termine ha perso il senso originario e si riferisce a qualsiasi mezzo produttivo: mani o macchine. Mi suona strano però associare questa parola a quelle tipologie di industrie che si servono quasi esclusivamente d...

prosciutto (n.) Italian spiced ham, 1911, from Italian, alteration (probably by influence of prosciugato "dried") of presciutto, from pre-, here an intensive prefix, + -sciutto, from Latin exsuctus "lacking juice, dried up," past participle of exsugere "suck out, draw out moisture...

trattoria (n.) "Italian restaurant," 1832, from Italian trattoria, from trattore "host, keeper of an eating house," from trattare "to treat," from Latin tractare, frequentative of trahere (past participle tractus) "to draw" (see tract (n.1)). I ask only about the 3rd bolded line ...

I am trying to understand an ancient inscription which a French professor has translated in part as: ...et a fourni de l'aide pour tout le sejour du gouveneur Rutilius Crispinus et pour les vexillations en visite... Which I undestand to mean in part: "...and provided help for the entire s...

Ô fantôme muet, ô notre ombre, ô notre hôte, Spectre toujours masqué qui nous suis côte à côte, Et qu’on nomme demain ! [ Victor Hugo, Napoléon II - ds. Les Chants du crépuscule, extrait ] Dans le deuxième vers de l'extrait, on a un sujet (spectre) et un pronom relatif (qui) qui y f...

Je pense la question est assez claire. Voici une phrase à titre d'exemple : Joël Stein in Catalogue de l'exposition 72, douze ans d'art contemporain en France... ou bien: V. Vasarely in catalogue de l'exposition Lumière et mouvement, Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1967. U...

C'est la devise de la ville de Paris. Comment est-ce que les Français la prononcent - en particulier, est-ce que l'on prononce le « t » à la fin de fluctuat et le « c » à la fin de nec ?

Je connais les différences d'usage entre X vs Xée, où X = an, jour, matin, soir. Je désire connaître les conjectures, origines et les raisons qui expliqueraient pourquoi X et Xée diffèrent. Le suffixe « -ée » les a-t-il causées ? La page consacrée sur Wiktionary n'expose pas ses effets dans ce...

In English, quid pro quo refers to a barter-style exchange. I'll do this for you and you'll do something for me. There is this quote from the movie The Silence of the Lambs(1991) where Dr Lecter says: [...] If I help you, Clarice, it will be "turns" with us too. Quid pro quo. I tell you thi...

This question is related to this one and this other one, both regarding the same matter but from distinct points of view. After reading the above posts I remained unsatisfied because of what I see as a restriction of the scope of the question. So let me explain how I would like to expose i...

When you start a sentence with acronyms such as i.e., e.g., or similar, how do you capitalize them? "I.e., ...", or " I.E., ..."? Thanks.

Source: pp 158-159, The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, by Brian Davies, Brian Leftow What Anselm describes himself as looking for here he believed he had found when reflecting on the idea that God is "something than which nothing greater can be thought" (aliquid quo maius nihil cogitari ...

Source: Historia Anglorum [...], by Henry of Huntingdon, edited by Diana E. Greenway [p 496, online English translation:] Tell me, I pray, what gain has it been to us to have been great or famous? [1.] We had no fame at all, except in God. [2.] For if we are famed now in Him, we shall still ...

When I asked my teacher for the gender of Mensa, she replied that it is feminine, because the Latin word mensa is feminine. When it comes to words that share the same spelling in both German and Latin, is this generally true?

Um auf die Frage zum Plural von Status zu antworten, hätte ich gerne ähnliche andere Beispiel durchgedacht, mir sind aber keine eingefallen, daher meine Frage: Welche anderen Wörter der lateinischen U-Deklination werden im Deutschen verwendet?

I don't know how much and deep school kids in Germany actually get in touch with Latin. For some areas of studies it seems to be a prerequisite. In US literature, also scientific, it has -to my opinion- a kind of elitist touch. I don't see Latin phrases quite often here except a simple per se ...

Es gibt viele Wörter, die wahrscheinlich aus dem Lateinischen stammen, die im Deutschen mit zwei verschiedenen Endungen möglich sind. Ich rede von den Endungen -ierung und -ation. Beispiele: Registr-ierung / Registr-ation Isol-ierung / Isol-ation Realis-ierung / Realis-ation Form-ierung / Form...

When using Latin nouns or phrases in a German text, what is the best practice to decline them? Take, for example, the word Col­le­gi­um mu­si­cum, which is to be declined as follows: das Collegium musicum; Genitiv: des Collegium musicum, Plural: die Collegia musica (Duden) Yet, it seems to...

Illegitimi non carborundum, mock-Latin for "don't let the bastards grind you down", dates to early WWII, and later in the war was adopted by Gen."Vinegar" Joe Stillwell as his motto. For more, including variants, see Wikipedia. Do users have any other well-known examples of this type: an Englis...

Some Latin abbreviations as 'i.e.' and 'e.g.' are always followed by a comma. For the Latin abbreviation 'viz.', sometimes it is followed by a comma, sometimes it is not. What is the rule for inserting or not inserting a comma just after 'viz.' ?

Can anyone explain how predicament from the Latin word family dicere ‘to say’ and praedicare, can develop the meaning precarious situation? Etymonline can't. early 15c., "category, class; one of Aristotle's 10 categories," from Medieval Latin predicamentum, from Late Latin praedicamentum "qu...

At work I have seen "ante" being used for referring to previous pages of notes written by staff. For instance, when one has to refer to something on previous note, he/she would write, "Refer observation of Mr. XYZ on noting page 1 ante". I have searched on the web but couldn't find anything concr...

In criminal cases, there exists two elements: a guilty mind (mens rea) and a guilty act (actus reus). Do these two Latin terms require a preceding article, and which would it be (definite/indefinite)? Here is a contextual example: [The/An] actus reus can be proven in this instance; [the/a] m...

I was watching the anime Black Butler the other day when a song was played. I looked up the song to see what the lyrics were. I came across several sources that read the same and was sung in Latin. From the song Si deus me relinquit, all the sources I've come across has used the word terribilissi...

[OED:] The primary sense was ‘away’, ‘away from’, a sense now obsolete, except in so far as it is retained under the spelling off (see off adv., prep., n.1, and adj.). All the existing uses of of are derivative; many so remote as to retain no trace of the original sense, and so weakened as to ...

When I learned Latin we were taught classical pronunciation. When it came to the letter "v" we were taught to pronounce it as /w/. It was also explained that many people (my parents, for example) had learned the ecclesiastical pronunciation in which the letter "v" is pronounced /v/ the same as it...

Did Latin have lower-case letters and a full stop at the end of sentences in the 1st century AD? Googling doesn't seem to yield a definitive answer.

In Latin, a common way of expressing when an action is happening relative to another action is to use an ablative absolute, consisting of an ablative noun and an ablative participle. As an example, servo laborante could be translated as 'with the slave working'. In the English translation, we use...

I work for a product company and some of our documents are translated from English to Spanish. I noticed that the translator had translated Latin abbreviations like 'i.e.' and 'e.g.' to Spanish as 'es decir' and 'ejemplo dado'. My understanding was that they were Latin abbreviations and so they ...

When the Moors conquered Spain did Spaniards already speak Spanish? Or were they speaking a different language like Latin?

The sentence is this one: «Hay que tener presente aquí que el infinito de que se trata en las vías es un infinito metafísico(...) y no un infinito matemático(...) ni físico, en el que las causas son unívocas y explican, en todo caso, el fieri del efecto.» I've also seen the expression 'fieri' so...

I use explicate (the cognate of explicar) to mean 'conjecture or explain possible reasons or origins', rather than books like Breaking Out of Beginner's Spanish and 1001 Pitfalls in Spanish which only state the difficulties with no explication whatsoever. What books explicate Spanish's difficu...

Is there any hint to guess, when I hear an unknown word, if is is spelled with ll / y ? Is there any hint to guess, when I hear an unknown word, if is is spelled with g / j / x ? I mean any kind of rule of thumb, a hint based on other Roman languages, based on the word origin etc.? Maybe somet...