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9:20 PM

-13

A: Was the word "nigger" an expletive in Mark Twain's day?

Personally, I believe that calling somebody by their nationality, ethnicity, or skin color is prejudiced in and of itself. We're all homo sapiens, after all. While they may be accurate descriptions, terms like Irish Twins and Muslim Dress are all prejudiced in their motivation, however thinly...

Not an answer.

But if so many people feel that way, why aren't there more delete votes?

Cerberus

@tchrist The -a- is not exactly part of the stem, but you could say that, yes.

The imperative is (now) basically the stem without any endings.

The subjunctive -e- in verbs of the -a- conjugation is I believe a contraction.

tchrist

I think of it a bit like "switching the theme vowel".

But contraction?

For the subjunctive, I mean.

Not saying time for timeo.

But timeat in lieu of timet introduces the "foreign" theme vowel, a.

Amet for amat. But the imperative is ama.

Well, the normal tu one.

People learning Romance ask why it works this way.

I have no other answer for them beyond that it does. It just "sounds right" to me because I've so internalized it for so long.

And I'm sure that's complete nonsense.

"Because the Romans made us do it" might work better.

Mitch

9:39 PM

@ktm5124 Gah! Which one? We need to know which one to avoid!

tchrist

@Cerberus What do you mean?

Cerberus

@tchrist Oops! I meant the subjunctive.

I think subjunctive -e- is a contraction of -a- and...something.

ktm5124

10:08 PM

@Mitch Hehe. I'm learning from a textbook which is actually not on that Quora thread. It's called Latin via Ovid. It's really interesting, and is great for learning Ovid, but I'm not sure whether it's good to use as one's main introduction to Latin.

I find that I'm learning a lot of mythology from the textbook, but I'm not getting a really solid grasp of grammar.

(That could be my fault, not its.)

Cerberus

10:22 PM

Hmm.

Why not?

João Paiva

10:56 PM

Hey :)

Cerberus

Hola, João.

SmokeDetector

11:15 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected: Are "whores" and "horse" homophones? by Ann on english.stackexchange.com

Mitch

@ktm5124 I also recommend Wheelock for elementary grammar.

There's a lot of grammar to learn with Latin. remembering word endings for gender and declensions and conjugations and blah blah blah.

unlike English where it is mostly spelling

tchrist

@Mitch Lo! I said that already.

Mitch

11:34 PM

which is why I said 'also'

Cerberus

I think he knows elementary grammar.

ktm5124

@Cerberus Might have to do with the book's organization. The chapters seem to be organized around a myth, rather than a topic from grammar.

Cerberus

That's nice.

ktm5124

@Mitch I once had a copy of Wheelock's but I sold it years ago, and have been upset with myself ever since!

Cerberus

Oh, I apologize.

ktm5124

11:44 PM

@Cerberus I love the organization of my Greek textbook, and it's shown me how much of a difference a textbook can make.

Each chapter has a subtitle which introduces the topic to be learned. And it doesn't cram too many topics into each chapter.

Mitch

But I actually recommend something that is just not available any more which is a 'programmed learning method'. I think it was encyclopedia britannica or something in the 70's

@ktm5124 I don't think it is expensive, paperback.