more Latin

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

Morris's dictum, he tells us, should be expanded to read: "Truth comes in
small segments (doses) to he who is aware and in attune." "Dose" is
potio, potionis (whence "potion"); the ablative plural, to be
substituted for partibus in my original, would be
potionibus. The next part would be ei, dative of the
third-person personal pronoun is, ea, id--and the English is
him, not he. You would never say, "give it to he," would
you? So why suddenly get hypercorrect and use "he"? It's as bad as
"between you and I."
Rendering "is aware" gets more complicated, since though there are
adjectives (gnarus, sciens, the last being the participle meaning
`knowing') there are also two verbs (at least; this is just from a
rather sketchy dictionary) meaning "to be aware of." But in both Latin
and English, you really need to say "Aware of whatever." The concept, and
hence the syntax, is incomplete without the further idea. And "in attune"
is even more difficult. One can be "in ture with" another person or a
climate of opinion or something like that. Or one can be attuned to
something. Clarify the idea and I'll have a shot at rendering it into
Latin. (Actually, trying to translate something into another language is
often a good test of how clear it is in the original. And this kind of
nitpicking is what you get if you're so imprudent as to ask this kind of
question around yours truly. Ask my best friend and former boss, who put
up with it for a dozen years.)
Patricia