Lesson video

Salvete omnes! Salve magister! This is not only the final translation lesson, but also the final lesson overall of the unit on the imperfect and perfect tenses.

So you will need all your past tenses skills at your at your disposal.

Intravistis! Cucurrerunt! I don't know.

Currebatis! All right.

All that, you'll need to be able to translate those off the top.

But, not only that.

The actual story we're translating is- Now I'm not meant to pick favourites, but it's probably my favourite of all the translation passages, of all the stories that are going to appear in this course, and it's about from Roman theatre, and it is not necessarily about human actors.

No, why would I make it about humans? It's about an animal actor, who was particularly talented and very good at eliciting both joy and sadness from his audience.

Maybe I'll be doing the same thing with you.

OK, let's have a look and see what this story is about.

Practise translation: The Clever Dog.

Our learning objectives are, can I translate fluently a Latin passage containing the perfect and imperfect tenses? We're now at the stage where we've done loads of work on the perfect tense, and we're going to be looking at- all the passages will include irregular stems and duplicated stems of the perfect, from Lesson 5 of the module unit and the second learning objective is have I consolidated core vocabulary? Before we move on, you know this bit, it's time to get your pen and paper.

Pause if you have to do so if you don't got those things, and now we're just going to get straight on with it and have a look at vocabulary.

These are the 14 most important words that you need to know in order to access today's passage, so the most frequent or the most difficult I'm just going to preteach these here: malus, mortuus, and cado, starting with malus.

Derivations: the English words we get from malus are anything with the prefix, so the bit that goes on the front of the word, mal-.

Words like malpractice or malicious or malevolent or maleficent.

All those things that you do with- If someone is guilty of malpractice are they good at their job? Nope.

They are bad at their job.

So malus is bad.

It is the opposite of what word beginning with a b that you will have done already? I would think, good in Latin is bonus.

So malus opposite of bonus.

All right? Mortuus.

This one does itself.

Come on.

So you might think it means mortal, so something that can die.

But you need to just take a step forwards.

We also get words in English like morgue, which is where dead bodies stay, and also mortician is someone whose job it is to study corpses.

Mortuus means dead.

All right? So someone who is immortal is someone who cannot die.

Mortuus, dead.

Cado we have looked at in the previous grammar lesson, but let's look at it properly now.

Derivations: interestingly are words like casual.

Let's just make a bit of a leap here, and also this word that you may well not have encountered, which is cadence.

Casualty, now, is a bit of a leap.

Casualty is somewhere you might go.

What did I do? Remember I cecidit coming down here when I was walking to my mother's house, and there was a lacuna, there was a hole in the ground.

I wasn't looking, and I cado.

I fell down.

I then might have had to go to casualty, which is when a fall or a happening happens, and you have to go to casualty, and cadence is a musical term to do with rising and falling of pitch.

If you lower the cadence of your voice it means you go speak lower.

OK, I fall.

The perfect tense, it duplicates, so cecidi is a weird word here.

It's worth just learning it like vocab.

You still got the c and the d, but the vowel changes.

Cecidi is I fell.

Cecidi, I, cecidi.

Good.

OK, let's see how it works.

Now, this bit, what we do, if you remember, is, just press pause here, and don't worry about learning every single word.

Just read what the 14 are, because we're going to do loads of practise before you do your little quiz.

But just pause the video, and take one minute to just read these words.

Off you go.

OK, now, hands completely free, ready for quizzing, let's have a little look.

What does canis malus mean? It's going to mean the, malus is bad, so it's going to be the bad dog.

What about canis mortuus? This one does it say it's going to be the- Good.

Be the dead dog.

My dog would be what? We have our adjective here, and it would be meus canis.

The dead dog, that's canis mortuus.

What's the difference between cado and curro? Just two seconds on this.

Two.

one.

Cado, like casualty is like fall.

Curro is I run.

Like a river's current is a thing that runs.

Here's how it river runs.

Est and erat.

What's the difference? In two.

one.

Est is present tense.

He or she or it is.

Erat is an irregular imperfect tense.

It means he or she or it was.

Ubi and subito.

What's the difference? In two.

one.

and.

Ubi means when and subito, don't think it means under, because that's sub.

Subito means suddenly.

Focus on the su here.

The su- beginning.

All right? Are you ready? One.

two.

three.

And v-u-x-s-i-ed.

And v-u-x-s-i-ed.

Now, what's the difference between.

There's your clue.

All right.

What is the difference between videt, videbat, and vidit? OK, five seconds.

OK, answer's in two and, there we go, now, v-u-x-s-i.

The letter i pronounced ee, means it's going to be the -ed form.

We don't say he seed in English, we say he saw.

So that's your perfect tense.

When I say ba, you say was or were, ba was or were, ba, was or were.

And that just leaves videt, from video, and that's the present tense there.

He or she sees.

What's the difference between dormit and dormivit? V-u.

Don't think that's perfect tense.

Off you go.

Answer's in two, and, so this is still present tense, even though it's got an i there, that letter i.

This is the perfect tense because that's in fact dormivit, with the v there.

So you're going to see dormit in the passage, and it's the present tense, and it means he sleeps, not he slept.

Cecidit.

Is is still there? It means what? What was cecidi? What verb did that come from? It's going to be he fell.

And what's the difference between conspexit and consumpsit? Think what the tense is here.

X.

s.

Answer's in two, and, This one's to do with eating.

Consumo, I consume.

This one has to do with noticing.

Someone's conspicuous, and you would notice them.

They're both perfect tense.

V-u-x, conspexit, s.

And then now you're going to mime to me what these words mean.

OK, so, are you ready? I'll give you three seconds.

What does malus mean? Mime the malus to me.

So show me, but don't say anything.

Show me what malice means in.

And it's going to be bad.

Mime intravit.

Now don't worry about the tense.

Just mime the action for intravit to me.

Off you go.

Yeah, its going to be.

It'll be like that.

It'll be he entered.

And now mime timebat for me.

Which way around is this one? We did a bit of work on this in this module.

Don't worry about the tense.

What's the meaning? In two.

one.

it'll be this one.

As opposed to terrere that would be when you scare someone.

So timebat, he was a afraid or she was afraid or he was fearing.

Subito.

Mime subito to me.

Great.

In two.

one.

and it will be a similar thing.

All right.

The idea of surprise.

Suddenly.

It will be suddenly.

Subito, suddenly.

OK, right.

Let's have a look and see how that did, writing 1 through 14 down the margin of your page.

Tell me what those, write down what those words mean.

Let's get 14 out of 14, pressing pause.

Off you go.

And switching to a different coloured pencil you can mark your answers here, pressing pause here to do so.

OK, now hands completely free.

Because we're going to move on to.

Now how did we do? Tell me how you did.

Fantastic.

I knew you'd do extremely well.

Of course you did.

If there's any words that you still didn't know off that, that's still fine.

Then I'd circle them in your different coloured pen, your green pen, say, and then you'll know when they come up in the passage, you can look them up on your page.

So it'll work like it's own vocab list.

Let's find out what we're going to be translating about today.

So, let me be back in the picture.

So, the story we're going to read about today comes from Roman theatre.

And it comes from a special genre of Roman theatre, which you may well have learned about called Atellan farce.

Atellan farce.

Atellan farce.

Correct.

All right? Now.

This genre, so farce, had what's called stock characters.

So this would be where the same character would keep, it's like Punch & Judy, say, or a pantomime.

The same characters would keep coming up and we'd keep getting into different adventures in each different play.

And here we're looking at two characters, one of which is called Pappus, Pappus, and the other one is called Maccus, Maccus.

Lovely.

Now, Pappus you could see here.

This is maybe what they would have looked like based on some terra cotta figurines.

All right.

You can see here he, now he's bald, he's got a receding hairline.

He's looking quite old.

Isn't he? Pappus is an old fool.

OK, does that make sense? Now the person who's always trying to fool him is this guy called Maccus.

This might be what Maccus looked like, who is the greedy clown.

All right? And, in this story, Pappus brings a third actor on stage, which isn't a human.

He's in fact a canis.

Is a dog.

What's so famous about this play, this story, is that it involves a very well trained and very effective animal actor, as well as these humans actors here.

Let's see how much that went in.

I'm going to do an impression of some of the characters.

Just do nodding your head or shaking it.

This character is greedy, nodding your head shaking your head.

This character is greedy.

This character is very old.

Pappus.

Pappus is old.

Nodding heads, shaking heads.

Be nodding heads This is the old guy.

OK I'm going to do an impression of one of the characters, and I'd like you to tell me which one it is.

OK, so let's do an impression.

Ooh, I'll do anything just to get a really good meal or to get a bit of money.

Oh, I love food all the time and I just, I can't wait to get any money.

That would be amazing.

Whoops.

Who's that going to be? Pappus or Maccus? That would be Maccus, wouldn't it? OK, let's do another impression.

Ooh, I'm very old, I'm very easily.

Oh this is ridiculous.

Maccus is always trying to get one over me, but he won't this time! Who would that be? That would be Pappus.

And then the final impersonation would be woof woof! That's obviously going to be your canis over there.

We've got the idea? Old fool, Maccus, greedy clown.

Sorry, old fool Pappus, greedy clown Maccus, and this dog here.

Next up, is we're going to look at this actual passage translation, and I will pick out.

Don't worry about this text here.

This is the passage you're going to be translating in a matter of minutes.

Before we do that, I'm going to pick out some tricky sentences.

We'll look at them together.

We won't look at the exact same sentences, because that would just be doing the work for you, wouldn't it? So I don't intend to do.

Instead, we'll look at stuff that looks similar, with some slight tweaks or changes, and one thing we're going to look at is sentences like these, where you have this conjunction ubi in here, which means you actually are translating two clauses in one sentence, which students can find tricky.

Let's move me over here.

So here we have the sentence, Maccus, ubi Pappus vidit, cecidit, and it's been mistranslated as Maccus saw Pappus when he fell.

OK, I'm going to give you 10 seconds to have a look at that mistranslation and then tell me why it's wrong, and your challenge is to tell me what's good about it, what's right with it.

Off we go.

And zero.

OK, time to get that pen at the ready.

So, let's follow these steps.

Maccus.

Ubi is when.

OK so we got a when in there.

Pappus, that's in there.

Vidit, saw is in there, and cecidit is fell.

So the student has translated all the words that are in the sentence, but the order is off, and that's because they really need to scrutinise these commas here.

The Romans didn't use punctuation when they wrote, but we put it in later sometimes.

And you must, must always use it to help you.

It's there to give you clues about how to set sentences up.

OK, so, Maccus, then we should have a comma.

Let's just rewrite the sentence down here.

Maccus, comma, there should be one there.

Now, saw Pappus when, and then he fell.

That should be a comma there.

So actually what's happened here is that we've got a mis-ordering of what's going on in this clause here, ubi Pappus vidit.

Now always remember that within your clauses, so when you see a conjunction, you still follow the order of nominative-verb-accusative.

So just forget ubi exists.

After your ubi meaning when, you should have a nominative, that -us there, you know it's nominative and there's no accusative, so it's just nominative verb, so it shouldn't be when, saw Pappus when.

It should be when Pappus looked, or something like that, when Pappus saw.

So the whole thing will be Maccus, when Pappus, looked makes more sense because he's not doing anything.

He's not, sorry, he's not seeing someone in this sentence.

And then do we need the second he? Maccus, when Pappus looked, he fell.

We can actually get rid of that second he there.

All right? We'll be doing loads of work on this.

I know we're just quickly looking at it now.

You're going to see sentences really similar to this, and just make sure that the, one, make sure that no words or verbs from outside the commas, these will go inside these clauses.

So always double-check that.

And, two, make sure that the, translate it like two sentences.

Make sure that the stuff within the commas makes sense on its own, if you get rid of the when word, say, which isn't the case here.

You've just got saw Pappus.

It should be Pappus looked or Pappus saw.

OK? So one more time this is Maccus, when Pappus looked, fell over or fell down.

All right? Say that for me? Maccus.

great.

Next.

Let's just get rid of that.

Our next thing that's tricky is this sentence here, somnium malum habet.

We're not going to do the exact sentence, because that's just going to be me doing that for you.

We're going to look at one that's similar.

We've got cibum malum habent, mistranslated as bad food had.

This is a classic student error.

All right? Mr. Furber, I'm finished.

Bad food had.

Well does that makes sense? No.

But the Latin up here.

Food bad had.

Bad food had! So I've done it.

Well there's two things wrong with that sentence.

Now you've got 10 seconds to find the two things that are wrong with that sentence.

Use the steps to help you.

Off we go.

Two.

one, and we're done.

OK, so.

Let's just go back up to the steps here.

We've got food we've got bad, we've got had.

That's fine, or have.

We'll find our verb.

Now this is where things need to get, this is where we really need to scrutinise here.

Our verb over here's habent.

Now, -nt on the end, whose doing that.

Work that out for me with me.

Finger in the air.

-nt, who's doing that? In one, two, three, o, s, t, mus, tis, nt.

We've got an -nt on the end, what's that one? That's going to be they.

That this one is missing a pronoun.

There's no they involved.

So we need to make sure we have they.

There's going to be a they that goes down there somewhere.

Step one's done, we're now doing step two.

There's going to be a they that needs to go in here somewhere.

The next thing is, habent has been translated here as had, so really well done if you spotted this.

We did loads of work on this.

Had is the perfect tense, isn't it? All right.

It's the equivalent of haved, which doesn't exist in English.

It's the -ed form, the perfect tense form.

But do we see a v-x-s-i here at all? The answer's no.

OK, when I say i, I mean the letter i, pronounced ee when we're in Latin.

All right? So, it's in fact what tense? Tell you screen what tense it is.

It is the present tense.

So it shouldn't be they had, but they have.

Now, if you were confused during that 10 seconds, and we're thinking what's wrong with it, can you now, given that clue, can you now tell me what the correct answer is? So combine that, we'll combining that with this somehow.

Tell your screen, have a look.

It's going to be, great.

Great.

OK, so we've got they have bad food.

So in Step 3, we know our accusative is, we've got ACC here.

There's another issue as well.

All right? So why is it we were able to figure that out? It was because this student didn't account for the fact that this was accusative, this -m, and what letter do singular accusatives end in? M.

And therefore put their accusative first whereas it should be, the accusative should be over here.

What they did do well was switch the order of cibum and malum in their translation.

A worse translation would have been food bad had.

All right? But at least they switched that around.

So that bad gets a little tick.

All right? OK, so nominative and accusative, we put it in the correct order, which we know is going to be they, now had or have? Correct.

They have bad, bear this in mind, you're going to see a sentence very similar to this in a matter of minutes.

In fact, well, any minute now.

OK, let's have a little look at that first paragraph to do with Maccus and Pappus.

Pappus, now is he the greedy one? Pappus, he's the what? Yeah, he's the old fool.

Pappus apud Maccum venit.

Pappus canem habuit.

Pappus dixit, 'cura meum canem! multam pecuniam accipies.

' I should do that in an old voice, shouldn't I? 'cura meum canem.

Multam pecuniam accipies.

' 'curo!' Maccus dixit, et Pappus discessit.

Now, when we go through I'm not going to do v-x-s-u-i for every single perfect tense verb here, so we're just going to do it now.

So we see we've got a whole bunch of perfect tense verbs here, we've got paravit, we've got v-i-u-x-s-i.

All right? V-u-x-s-i -ed -ed -ed.

So all of these are going to have -ed's on the end when we translate them, or the equivalent with the irregular perfects in English.

So, Pappus, venio is I come, so Pappus, good, I'm going to give you an incorrect translation, actually, here.

What's wrong with this translation? Pappus came to the house of Maccum.

What's wrong with that? Good! When we translate names we always make sure we write our names in translation we give the nominative singular version.

He's not called Maccum, he's called Maccus.

This just tells us that this is accusative, because he's receiving, or is on the receiving end of this preposition here.

So Pappus came to Maccus' house.

Pappus v-u-x-s he has a dog, he had a dog.

Pappus, tense, yeah, said, now 'cura meum canem.

' We know what meum canem means.

It means my dog.

Cura means care for, so look after my dog.

You will receive multam pecuniam, much money.

Does Maccus say yes or no? He says curo.

He says I'll do it, essentially.

I'm doing it now.

I'll look after him.

Maccus said, and Pappus, he leaves? He was leaving? He left.

Yeah.

Now the dog, now, ran, currebat, ran, it's going to be, yeah, was running and was latro, was barking.

Therefore Maccus v-u-x-s-i -ed -ed prepar-ed, prepared cibum, food, but what happens, sed Maccus, I'll read this: sed Maccus non animadvertebat, et venenum in cibum posuit! Oh no! So therefore the dog was barking, running around, he was thinking well you're hungry, so he prepared some food but he was not paying attention, Maccus, is he the old man? No, he's the greedy clown.

He's the one who also makes silly mistakes, and what did he do? He posuit, he put venenum in cibum.

He put poison in the food! What's going to happen to that dog? OK, so, here you go.

Don't worry, the dog's going to, I don't want to ruin anything too much, but the dog, you might think the dog's going to be, well let's find out.

I'm not going to give you any clues.

OK.

Off we go.

Get translating.

What's going to happen to that dog? Pressing pause here.

Go.

And for those who want to do a challenge, which really should be for everyone, you may translate ahead and do this final, trickier paragraph as a challenge.

What happens at the end of the story? Press pause here to do that.

OK, now switching to a different coloured pen, so that we can look at how this story went.

Let's have a look.

So the dog consumpsit, ate the food.

Suddenly, the dog was not running.

The dog fell.

The dog was dead! Maccus saw the dog and was afraid.

Suddenly, Pappus entered.

Pappus noticed the dog.

'The dog is sleeping!' Maccus shouted.

'Is my dog well?' Pappus asked.

Maccus, when Pappus was not looking, barked.

Really, well that's our one with that ubi practise that we were doing in our practise sentences.

Well done if you got that.

So Pappus turns away.

He's not looking, and Maccus barks, and he goes, 'listen!' Maccus said.

'The dog barked.

He's well!' 'But he's asleep,' Pappus said.

'He's having a bad dream,' Maccus replied.

All right? Respondit there, we didn't do, but that is perfect, that's another irregular perfect.

It's like vidit.

Is there anything else to say here? As usual, all right, if you used synonyms, so if you said look instead of see, or responded there, that's fine within reason, or was fearing, that's always completely fine.

Caught sight of the dog is also completely correct.

OK, so, use your initiative in terms of the use of synonyms in your English translation.

The main thing to bear in mind is that you must have translated this as ate and not was eating.

This must have been translated as was running and not ran.

OK? Tenses, tenses, tenses.

What's going to happen to Pappus and Maccus? Tum Pappus venenum vidit.

'noli videre! Fateor! Est venenum.

Tuus canis est mortuus!' Maccus clamavit.

OK, so then, Pappus, the old man, the owner of the dog, he saw, vidit, perfect tense, -i, -isti, -it, he saw the poison.

'noli videre!' 'Don't look!' 'Fateor.

' 'I confess!' It's poison.

Now say this with me.

'tuus canis est mortuus!' One more time.

'tuus canis est mortuus!' 'Your dog is dead!' Maccus shouted.

'Non est venenum,' Pappus dixit.

'est pharmakon.

' So, 'it's not poison,' Pappus said.

'It's a sleeping drug.

' Subito canis steti, et ad Pappum cucurrit, laetus.

Subito, suddenly, the canis stetit, now, a bit of vocab revision here, stetit from sto, so it's stetit, it stood up and cuccurrit, and ran to Pappus happy.

Now, that dog wasn't dead the whole time.

I obviously wasn't going to kill a dog off on this course.

That would be awful, it would be terrible.

But the next thing, there's layers to this story.

There's things for you to think about.

All right? And one of them is obviously that it's amusing that the story has a plot twist.

But the other thing to bear in mind is that were we reading a story that the Romans would have read about in at book? No.

This, you'll remember, comes from Atellan farce, or comes from the Roman theatre.

So bear in mind that that dog was actually a sort of trained actor.

And in order to do the role, it would have had to have been trained to eat some food and then pretend to stagger about and then pretend to die, and then at the cue, say, at 'est pharmakon,' the dog would have been trained to hear that cue and then stand up.

Woof woof! And then run over to Pappus, and then everyone would have cheered.

Right, and apparently this performance was so moving, that the dog that everyone thought was dead, and then came actually, the dog was fine, came back to life.

And that performance, when it was actually played, was so moving, that everyone in the audience started crying, including the original, who was part of the first audience, of that performance, the emperor Vespasian, who was responsible for building the Colosseum.

And he, when he saw the dog who pretends to die and actually came back to life again, he found the performance so emotional, he wept.

All right? So bear that in mind.

Do you find that as sad as that, I don't know.

Let's find out.

And so, once you have marked and corrected your answers, complete that exit quiz.

And, other than that, all that's left is to say goodbye to each other for the last time in this module.

So with me for the last time for now, I'll be doing it in other modules as well, but for the last time for now, v-u-x-s-i -ed -ed -ed.

OK, valete, very well done! There's loads more stories like that coming up.

OK, so keep tuning in and we'll see where things go.

OK, bye-bye, well done, bye-bye.