Finishing up Unit 1

Oh my.  A week has gone by and I have not yet finished this first Unit up.  I am not quite sure how that happened!

Let me do some selected problems in the Exercises on p. 12 and then we'll move on to Unit 2.

The exercises in section I are concerned mostly with using the proper case after a preposition.

1) cōram familiā - in the presence of family (ablative)
2) ad missam - to Mass (accusative)
3) ā missā - from Mass (ablative) (here you can see the difference one little 'd' makes in meaning)
4) cum pāpā - with the pope (ablative)
5) prō ecclēsiā - for or on behalf of the church (ablative)

I'm skipping a few . . .

8.  pāpae ad glōriam; ad glōriam pāpae 

This one is weird because 'papa' which is so masculine takes a feminine ending!

I think both phrases mean the same thing, but in Latin they can be in a different word order.  The first phrase if translated exactly is 'of the pope to glory. ' The second phrase 'to the glory of the pope' makes more sense to us in English, I think.

10.  nātūrā; in nātūrā - here we see the difference between having the ablative form of the verb without any preposition - nātūrā - so this could mean all the of ablative meanings (we just have to pick which one makes sense in the context of the sentence - here we can't tell) from/by/with/in vs. in nātūra which of course comes out and states that we are taking about 'in nature.'

12. in ecclēsiārum terrīs - in the lands of the churches.  here the word for churches is plural genitive and the word for lands is plural ablative.

15.  et vita et aqua - the two 'ets' strung together like that mean 'both life and water.'

16. vita aquaque - with the -que ending though it now means life and water (no idea of 'both')

17.  super terram; super terrā - here again we see the difference between the accusative ending after a preposition and the ablative one.  super terram means over the land while super terrā means about or concerning the land.

20. ecclēsiae prō doctrinīs - on behalf of the doctrines (teachings) of the church.  the word for church is singular genitive and prõ is a preposition meaning on behalf of and takes the ablative - here the word is plural.

II

1.  in behalf of the family of the pope - ok, we need to form two genitives here for the phrases 'of the family' and 'of the pope'

prō familae pāpae

2.  in the presence of the pope - cōram pāpae 

3. without life - sine vitā

4.  at the hour - ad hōram 

5. for the purpose of the glory of the church - I found this one tricky.  To me both glory and church follow 'of' so I thought they should both be in the genitive case.  However, how do we show the case following the preposition then?  Well, I resorted to the answer key which translates the phrase as ad or in gloriam ecclēsiā.  So glory takes the accusative and church takes the genitive here.