Lesson video

Thank you.

So, this is the translation lesson for nominative plurals.

So, look, obviously we're going to be translating loads of nominative plurals.

Not just that though, we're also going to be looking at a fable, are we not? Now, you may have translated the fable from unit one about the tiger queen, and the fable we're doing today is sort of the twin, the sibling of that fable.

The tiger queen was about a regal animal that asked an especially difficult question to her subjects, all right, be they animal, be they human.

And this is a very similar story, not about a tiger queen, but instead about a monkey king.

Practise translation, "The Monkey King".

Our learning objectives are, discenda, are: can I translate fluently a Latin passage containing nominative plurals and have I consolidated core vocabulary? Press pause here if you need to get any of the items required for today's lesson.

Thank you very much if you came prepared, that's great.

Right, it's vocab time first.

You'll remember that these are the 14, are the most frequent or most difficult words that you will need to have at your fingertips.

The expectation's that you know every single one of these words.

Don't worry though, you will know all of them, don't worry.

But I'm not going to just test you on them now without any practise.

Two things are going to happen.

First of all, we're going to have a look at these one, two three, four, five, six up close, and then we're going to have loads of questions on it, and we'll be fine.

So, first of all, what's up with these words here? So a civis.

Civis is a noun.

Now, this is where the difference between derivations and translation is extremely important.

Civis is the root of the English word, civilian, all right? You are not allowed to translate civis as civilian.

You have to translate it as citizen.

What you do is just focus on the CI there.

You think civilian and then you jump one over, and you think civilian to citizen, all right? Civis, citizen.

Rex is in the title.

It's Simius Rex, is the name of this translation story, it's the monkey rex, the monkey king, all right.

Now we get English words like regal.

This goes to reg in forms other than the nominative, like regum or regis would be the plural.

So things like reign, regal or royal or reign or regicide, things like that.

It's linked to, we've also seen Regina in the past for that tiger queen, all right? Regina is the feminine.

Now Rex would be the masculine king, okay.

Rex, king.

Simius, I've mentioned this now already.

Now we have done, if you have done that lesson on the tiger queen, then you're sort of, then you've already seen the simius, haven't you.

Now derivation is simian.

And if simian is an adjective that can either be used to describe someone as being like a monkey, or just to be used to talk about, you know, there's different families of monkeys, different species.

Simians would be different kinds of monkey, right.

It might also include apes, I think.

Doesn't it, simians? I dunno.

That's one for you to look up, okay.

Simius, monkey.

Simius, monkey.

Primus and secundus, all right, don't get baffled, this is actually very, very simple.

So, look, this is where we get English words like primary and secondary, all right.

Secundus means second.

Okay.

That's the easy one.

The one that can be a bit tricky is primus, which means first.

Primus, first.

It doesn't mean primary, doesn't mean one.

Primus is first.

Secundus, the easy one, is second.

Rogo, last one.

If you interrogate someone, then you ask them questions.

Interrogate, therefore rogo is I ask, okay.

What we do now, you'll remember, is you press pause and you just read the 14 words over one time and you do not fret if you don't know them all immediately, that's what we're here for.

So press pause here and read them over once.

It takes about one minute, doing that now.

Okay.

Hands completely free.

It's questioning time.

What's civis mean? I think civis means civilian.

Am I right or am I wrong? Nodding heads, shaking heads, in two and shaking heads.

All right civis means, don't tell me, a citizen, doesn't it.

Civis, citizen.

Civis, citizen.

Rex is that king or a queen? And it's king.

A iuvenis, which of these two? A iuvenis is a juvenile, isn't it, someone who is young, a young man.

Primus.

Does primus mean one.

Nodding head or shaking heads? Shaking heads.

What does primus mean, tell me? Primus means, good, it means first.

Lovely.

What's the difference between civis and cibus? The answers in three, two.

Don't confuse these two, all right? I mean, I suppose you've got CI on the front, haven't you, but other than that, the actual meaning's very different.

Civis is citizen, we did that.

And cibus, food.

Now these two do get confused.

Inquit and rogat, what's the difference? Answer in two, and so inquit is he or she says.

It looks a bit like inquires, which means you might think it means he asks, but he asked we now know is rogat.

Okay, it's he interrogates, he asks.

Okay.

Quis and quid, that's a tough one.

Come on, you'll be fine.

Three, two, and quis is who and quid is what.

More time to practise that coming up.

Stant, which of these two? Two, one.

It's going to be stant is they stand, isn't it.

Great.

Now, rogo.

Rogo means what? In three, two, and I, thank you, I ask.

Now, what am I asking? Well, rogo: quis es tu? Rogo: quis es tu? What am I asking? I ask who are you? Good, it's not what are you, that'd be quid es tu.

Quis es tu, who are you? And then what's the answer to that question? Well, it is, well, sum magnus rex.

What's that going to mean? Okay, so quis es tu, who are you? Sum magnus rex.

Tell me who you are.

Very nice.

It'd be I am a great king.

Or you might say I'm a big king.

Let's go for I am a great king.

If you didn't get that, well, maybe what about this answer? Sum primus rex, I am what? I am a.

? I am the.

? Good, I am the first king.

What about sum laetus rex? I am a.

? Good, I am a happy king.

Ah, simii, time for some plurals practise.

Simii, singular or plural.

Singular or plural, in three, two, one.

Plural.

It's just like a fungi or cacti, okay.

Monkeys.

Note the spelling of monkeys.

It looks like that.

Iuvenem, though.

Don't think everything's plural.

Well, that's giving the game away.

Iuvenem, is that singular or plural? Singular.

Let's do, singular accusatives end in em, singular accusatives end in em.

So that's just the one young man receiving the verb.

Civis, is that single or plural? That is singular.

It's not been changed in any way.

That's the form that I've taught you, civis means citizen.

Cives means, two, one.

there's your plural.

Cives, citizens.

Now cives means citizens, what does iuvenes mean? Good.

That's plural, young men.

Lovely.

Now.

This is where I come in.

I'm going to pick some words from all around here.

Let's start off with, which word am I miming here.

I'm going to do, and I'm not pointing up.

I'm going to do, and I'm not doing but, which word am I miming when I'm doing that? As opposed to that, but just that one.

That's going to be.

Primus.

Now does that mean one? Primus means, tell me, means first.

Thank you.

We've knocked one down here, primus is first.

Now, can you pull a laetus face for me? Can you pull a laetus face in three, two.

It's going to be.

Going to be happy.

Now I'm going to mime, I'm going to mime another one.

Now I'm going to mime that.

What's that? Who am I pointing out? I'm pointing at tu! I'm pointing at you, aren't I.

That's you.

You.

Okay, can you mime you to me? That's me and the word for me isn't on here.

Mr Ferber, for goodness sake.

Right.

Okay, what's this one here.

I'm not pointing.

It's going to be.

Going to be down there.

Nunc, meaning now.

Okay.

Right.

What am I miming now? It's going to be three, two, one.

That was.

I stand.

Okay, good.

Now what does primus simius stat mean? Primus simius stat.

One more time.

Primus simius stat.

In three.

Two.

One.

It means the first monkey stands.

Good.

What about laetus simius stat? Laetus simius stat.

One more time.

Laetus simius stat.

Laetus simius stat will be the happy monkey stands, you may see it as simius laetus.

Good, fine.

One more time.

Point at, well, who am I pointing out? Pointing at me? No, I'm pointing at tu, is you.

And what's this one? That's going to be now, nunc.

Great.

Okay.

Pen at the ready.

What do those 14 words mean? 1 to 14 down the margin, off you go.

Tell me.

Okay, different colour pen at the ready.

Were you correct? How did we do? Of course you were fine.

Excellent.

Fantastic.

Right, pen down.

Let's have a little look at the context.

What's our fable going to be about.

Now, there's not really much for me to say in way of introduction.

I think this fable works well if you just get chucked in the deep end here, in terms of the context right now.

It's about a monkey king, simius rex, here potentially.

This is a statuette of the Egyptian god Thoth, right.

How about that? Who was both a king and a god.

Anyway.

Now the fable is taken, as always, from Aesop, all right.

In Latin, Aesopus.

We don't know, more particularly from a rewriting of Aesop, which is done by this poet called Phaedrus, who wrote fables, who was Greek, but who wrote fables in Latin.

Got a monkey king, that's what I'm going to tell you in terms of context.

Now, we're going to move on to looking at what's, there's a bit of grammar practise before we get started.

Before you translate on your own.

So this will be the paragraph, you're familiar with this format by now, yeah? This will be the paragraph that you do on your own.

And the first thing we're going to look at will be sentences.

I'm not going to do the exact same sentences, okay, that would just be me doing your job for you.

We're going to look at sentences like this one, which have adjectives in them, okay.

Sentences which might have plurals, but will definitely have adjectives.

So, here we have the sentence primi cives stant.

Primi cives stant.

And it's been mistranslated as first the citizens stand.

Now for this one you may have some ideas.

Tell you what actually, I'm going to give you five seconds to just think about why that's wrong.

What's gone wrong here.

Okay, all right.

And off you go, five seconds.

One and done.

So let's have a little correct.

Word beginnings, we've got a word for first, we've got a word for citizens, we've got a word for stand.

And then look, we've even verb person, it's the words they stand and that's been done correctly because number cives, citizens is correct.

How delightful.

The case is correct, okay.

Because the citizens are the ones doing the standing.

So that's fine.

But then oh no.

It's this adjective that we need to look at.

Now, first the citizens stand.

That's the use of first there is in fact adverbial, right, cause it's actually describing the verb, isn't it, what first is doing there, but we've got an adjective here.

So how are we going to change things around in order to make this make sense? Well, the answer is, okay, so what's this look like in terms of our labelling up here? We've got a verb and then we have our nominative plural, then this is an adjective.

Now the way adjectives work in Latin is you're not allowed to put words when you translate them between the adjective and the noun.

They have to form their own sort of units like that, okay.

So do we see that first the citizens doesn't work because it has to be, in fact, the first citizens.

We need to swap these two around, okay.

You're not allowed.

So you've got primi cives and then once you found out what sort of, they're in their own group, they what's known as agree, yeah? Once you've found out what, they're both plural, once you find out which adjective agrees with what noun, they're both plural, they're not allowed, they cannot be split apart.

They're best friends, they're melded together.

So first the citizens stand is wrong because they have to be next to each in the translation.

And it's the first citizens stand, okay.

Do we see this? Look, the first citizens, sorry, the first citizens stand.

That's why first the citizens can't work.

They have to be together.

Yeah.

Right.

Let's have a look at another example that's gone wrong.

Let's see if this one also makes sense.

So here we've got rex secundum iuvenem rogat.

Mistranslated this is the second king asks the young man.

Five seconds, what's gone wrong there? Go.

One.

And a bit longer.

Another two.

Two and let's have a look.

So similarly, step one's all fine.

It's not as if rogat's been asked as, you know, translated to says or something.

Similarly, our verb that's oh, as to he, and then the king is the nominative and that is what's, that's the person who's doing the asking.

So that's fine.

Now we have a look at our adjectives.

We haven't got any plurals here, okay.

So that's fine.

And actually the case is correct too.

So it's our adjectives that are a problem.

Now.

Secundum.

Secundum.

Is secundum describing? Is it an adjective? Acc.

Nom.

Verb.

Is that describing? Secundum, is that describing the king or the young man? The king or the young man? Tell me your answer in three, two, one.

It's going to be the.

Great.

The young man.

Do we see this, look.

Do you remember for last time they were both plural, weren't they, primi cives, all right.

Now here they're both, cause em on them, and they're both accusative.

And that means that they go in their own little group and they can't be split apart.

And what we got here? Oh, no.

Second and young man have been split apart.

Now that's not allowed.

They must be translated as the, the sort of the phrase, the second young man, must be uninterruptedly in that translation.

So we still do the same things as before, nominative, accusative.

When we get to this young man here, we must include that adjective.

The second young man.

What this person has done here is they've gone, they've got everything up right up to the adjectives, okay.

But then they've gone, 'well, you could muck around with the word order in Latin, so actually I'm going to put that adjective over here.

' Cause I mean, you can move, look you're jumping around sentences all the time, aren't you.

You go from the first word to the last word.

I can put that word first if I feel like it, whatever.

No, okay.

Those two agree; you cannot tear them apart.

The king asks the second young man.

Okay.

And then that's how we get our right answer.

What, however, has gone wrong here.

We've got simius es magnus, and there's a mistake in the translation, which is the great monkey is, okay.

Five seconds.

Five slow seconds.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Right, can we see what happened here in terms of this student.

Quite interesting where this person who's attempting this sentence has gone well, well, adjectives, adjectives, now I've been quite mean actually, and there they've gone so thing about adjectives is you find out which adjectives had the same endings and which agree.

And then they're not allowed, they're best friends, they're joined at the hip, they're not allowed ever to be rent apart ever, ever, ever, okay.

And then, so here we've got simius and magnus.

So these two are joined together and they're not allowed, they're not allowed to be torn apart.

And so that's why, Mr Ferber, in my translation down here, I've got the great monkey is.

And I know it probably means the monkey is great, okay.

But you told me that when you find adjectives like this one, okay, and you find the ones, they've agreed, they've agreed, haven't they, same endings, you are not allowed to tear them apart.

So I didn't tear them apart, okay.

So why, why are you saying that I'm wrong, Mr Ferber, why? Okay.

So, if you were to write this, I'd be delighted that you followed the rule with that level of rigour, all right.

But there is an exception to the never tearing adjectives apart rule.

And that is when you've got est, okay.

Because, or indeed, sunt, okay.

Because that means you just go back to the form of sentence that you're used to translating with adjectives, which is where it's going to be nominative word for being, or is, whatever, and adjectives.

And so here, it's not going to be the great monkey is.

It's going to, in fact, this is the one exception where you're allowed to tear apart the adjective and the noun, even though they agree.

And it's going to be the monkey is great.

So that can go over there.

Okay.

The monkey is great.

Or the monkey is big.

Let's say that the monkey is great.

What does primus iuvenis rogat mean? In two.

One.

The first young man asks.

Good.

What's primus simius iuvenem rogat mean? Take your time.

Okay, answer in three, pause if you need to, two, and still the first one there.

The first monkey, primus simius.

They're a unit, it's going to be the first monkey, you can't tear them apart.

Right.

The first monkey asks the young man.

What about this one.

Simii primum iuvenem rogant.

Answers in three, take your time, pause if you need to.

Answers in three, two, and it's this one down here, the bottom right.

The monkeys ask the first young man.

Look, primum, iuvenem, okay.

The phrase, the first young man will occur in this translation because they've got the same endings.

They cannot be separated.

As it is, they're accusative singular.

And that's the one where they're accusative singular.

Magnus civis simium rogat.

What do we think, take your time.

Okay, first things first.

Who's big, is it the citizen or the monkey? Well, look.

Magnus and civis, they both nominative.

And actually, they're next to each other, okay.

All right, so we know it's probably going to be, or it definitely is going to be the big or the great citizen.

Now, second of all, I ask myself is it singular or plural.

Well, I remember that the plural is not civis, but the plural will be like, canis goes to canes, so the plural is cives, all right.

So I need singular, and singular and we've got a great citizen.

So it's going to be, point at the right answer, that one, top left.

A great citizen asks the monkey.

What's this one going on.

What's that about? Okay, answer in two, and so here look.

We've got two plural endings, haven't we, all right.

So we've still not got a great monkey.

There's no great monkey going on because we know that cives and magni agree.

So we cannot split them apart when we translate them.

And it's the great citizens ask the monkey.

Right, now it's time for you to do an example yourself.

And it's going to be magni iuvenes stant.

Okay, pressing pause.

Give yourself about two minutes as usual.

If it helps to write out those three lesson words on your page, then please do that.

But I'm not expecting you to do that for the actual translation.

Off we go, press pause.

Okay, answer in, different colour pen at the ready.

Let's have a look.

So we've got the great young men plural stand or are standing.

Delightful, press pause here if you need to.

If you want to just check.

Look, I'm not expecting you to do all this working here, all the different steps.

This is just for you to check anything.

Just to check your steps, essentially.

Yeah, all right.

Okay, so sort of check if anything went wrong, okay.

Any point you can see oh, well I missed out the they.

Or, well, I didn't get the plural here on step three.

Okay, so let's have an actual look at that translation at the end of this story.

So let's have a little look.

Hmm, right.

How many, we've got duo, so two.

So it's not going to be two young man, is it? All right, this plural is done for you.

Two young men are perditi, are lost, and the primus iuvenes, so first the young man, first young man will be the, tell me, good.

Now the first young man, he semper est mendax, he's always a, mendax you may remember is a liar.

So he always tells lies.

But the secundus iuvenis, the second young man, always, what's he always do? He is always truthful.

He's always truth-telling, right? Now, the young man is it? No, iuvenes singular or plural? Singular or plural? Three, two, one, plural.

So the young men, over to our verbs, see a simium.

This is a, what? They see a monkey, didn't they, all right.

And the simius est magnus, remind me what he is.

Is he, what is he? He's magnus, he is big.

He's great, okay.

Now, the simius magnus in throno magno sedet.

Now, this is a tricky sentence, this is where we go for the magno simius, the big monkey or the great monkey and we jump to our verb.

The great monkey sedet, sits in and then in this order, in magno throno.

He sits on a magno, on a great throno, is a throne, isn't it.

All right, so he's sitting on a big throne.

Now post, behind the simium magnum, behind the great monkey, simii, singular or plural? Singular or plural? Plural, isn't it.

Monkeys stand.

Monkeys are standing.

And now, this simius primum iuvenem rogat.

I think this means the first monkey asks the young man.

Thumbs up, thumbs down.

Thumbs up, thumbs down.

I think it means the first monkey asks the young man, it's going to be thumbs down, thank you.

Because, let's look if I've got it wrong, the monkey asks.

Now, primum, iuvenem, those go together.

The monkey asks the first young man.

And he always says the same question to any newcomers in his kingdom.

And he says quis sum, who am I? And who, qui also means who.

It's almost like quis means who, qui means who, who stands post, behind, me.

So in your best monkey king voice, can you tell me in English.

Let's do the Latin first, actually.

What does the monkey King always ask newcomers to his kingdom? He always says in Latin, after three, three, two, one.

And in English, it's going to be who am I, who am I, who stands behind me.

Who stands behind me.

Okay, now he's asking, let's just go over the story.

He's asking the first young man.

Now, the first young man, I think he always tells the truth, doesn't he.

Does the first young man tell the truth? Thumbs up, thumbs down.

Nodding heads, shaking heads.

Shaking heads! The first one is the liar.

Always telling lies.

Okay, so the first one is a liar.

The second one is the truth-teller.

So we've got the response of the first young man coming up to the question who am I and who stands behind me? And it's going to be a lie.

Hmm, right! What's that response going to be? What then is the second truth-telling young man going to say about it.

Off you go.

Okay, now, if you translated that, interesting.

What happens? You've just got, quick, everyone should do this, come on.

So, take's about five minutes to do those few sentences there, to keep that story going as a challenge.

What happens at the end? Okay, switching to different colour pen.

Let's have a look.

So I love to read out the Latin.

I always do it.

Right, the primus young man, the first young man replies, you are a great king, if you wrote you are a big king, that's okay.

But I prefer great.

You're a great king.

Now he's the liar, isn't he.

So a monkey is standing in front of him and he says, you're a great king and magni cives, great citizens stand behind you.

All right, his question was, do you remember? He always says, who am I? Who stands behind me? So he says, well, great king, and you've got some great citizens, all right.

Now the monkey is happy.

And the monkey releases the young man.

You're free to leave, okay.

Now the monkey asks the second young man.

Now the second young man, is he the liar or is the truth-teller? He is the truth-teller.

Now, if the liar, what's that young man thinking? Now, sorry, let's do the question first.

And the monkey always says, who am I? Who stands behind me? Now, pause there for a second or stop there for a second and have a think.

The first one's the liar, and he gets released, doesn't he? He's absolutely fine, okay.

So the second one who tells the truth, he's thinking, well, if he, that guy tells a lie and he got rewarded, if I tell him the truth, I'm going to have a great time.

Let's see what happens.

The second young man replies.

He says you are monkey.

And monkeys stand behind you.

Let's see what happens.

The monkey is, how's he feeling? The monkey king or the monkey here is iratus, he's angry.

And then the simii sunt irati.

The monkey, now, the monkeys are angry.

And the monkey king shouts necate, he says kill the second young man.

No! So that young man got killed by a kingdom of monkeys because he told the truth.

Now I've taught this fable to numerous students and they always have interesting things to say about it.

And you will too.

Have a think about the moral of that.

The most interesting thing that a student said to me was, but he was actually a king, okay.

He sat on a throne.

He has the power over those young men.

So in a sense, he sort of as a king, I suppose.

Have a think, what does it mean? Is Aesop saying that you should lie all the time? Hmm, I'm not sure.

Have a little think.

You will be able to express, you'll be able to think the moral of that when you do the exit quiz.

Before you do the exit quiz, it's important for you to say goodbye to me, and for me to say goodbye to you.

And not in English.

No, no, no.

In Latin.

So.

Valete.

Very well done, and I look forward to teaching you for the rest of this module.

We've got accusative plurals coming up, okay.

It's great, the sequel, I'll see you there.

Valete, bye bye.