Help with translation into Latin please.

[Chrystelia]

Hi,

What is "the city of lamentation" in Latin please?

Thanks

[dustinzgirl]

Do you mean, historical-biblical? It would be Jeruselem, where Jeremiah weeped his lamentations.

Lamentations in Latin is lamentationes or Threnoi (which also means tears)
City of, could be: urbs or civitas, Id est = it is/of

So you could put it as

Id est civitas Threnoi

or

Id est urbs lamentationes

ect, ect

[Sephiroth]

Using the genitive case for lamentation, I think it would be:

civitas ploratiae (or urbis ploratiae)

or

civitas luctae (or urbis luctae)

Ploratio is mourning, weeping, lamentation in a more personal sense, I think. Luctus is lamentation, mourning, grief. It would take an expert, like Giovanna Clairval, to tell you what is more appropriate.

[Chrystelia]

Thanks dustinzgirl and Sephiroth..

What I have in mind, is more to personal grief, sorrow, loss, remorse.

[Sephiroth]

Well, since plorator refers to a mourner, the former might be best.

You're welcome, but be sure and get another opinion! I wouldn't want to be wrong.......

[Mary Hoffman]

You don't need any "id est" which means "this is". If you just want a phrase for City of Lamentations on its own, it should be "urbs (or civitas) luctuum".

Urbs is the nominative singular of a third declension noun and luctuum is the genitive plural of the fourth declension noun "luctus", which means lamentation, grief etc. Otherwise you could use "civitas" for city. And if you really want lamentationes, they would need to be in the genitive case, lamentationum.

Mary

[Giovanna Clairval]

If it's metaphorical, why not

luctui locus ?

A place of sorrow...

The genitive case is almost always before the noun it complements.

[Sephiroth]

Waaah....see? I actually don't know what I'm talking about!

For some reason, with Latin, I just can't help having a go, anyway.

Now, Giovanna, a question on word order - what the heck is the story? I keep seeing things written different ways, and I can't make any simple sense of it....

I take it luctus is masculine....

And my declensions are all wrong.....

[Giovanna Clairval]

Hi, Sephiroth,

The genitive case it's not always before the noun. A different example is
the Malleus Maleficarum, The Hammer of Witches, even if this famous treatise was not written in classical times at all, but in the late 15th century, if memory serves. As you can see, the genitive is placed after the noun. I think it's a matter of emphasis: before the noun = non-emphatic. And also, long words go after the modified noun.

Moon! All my books are in boxes, which means that boxes are artfully wrapped around my books. I don't know which is worse.
I'm gonna freshen up my knowledge, and the I'll answer in a more scientific way.

[dustinzgirl]

Originally Posted by Mary Hoffman

You don't need any "id est" which means "this is". If you just want a phrase for City of Lamentations on its own, it should be "urbs (or civitas) luctuum".

Urbs is the nominative singular of a third declension noun and luctuum is the genitive plural of the fourth declension noun "luctus", which means lamentation, grief etc. Otherwise you could use "civitas" for city. And if you really want lamentationes, they would need to be in the genitive case, lamentationum.

Mary

Ah well I was close. I suck at Latin anyways, LOL.....well, I do now that I'm old. As a kid I totally rocked it (grandma made me, silly Catholics) and Mexican Spanish

We should form a Latin club. That would be cool.

[Sephiroth]

Moon, indeed!

*repeats the mantras*

Before the noun is non-emphatic...

Long words go after the modified noun...

*concentrates*

I also thought I was using the (feminine) genitive singular, but I seem to have oversimplified matter there, too.......

Thanks.

[edit] *likes the idea of a Latin Club*

I can always do with strengthening my woefully inadequate knowledge of this beautiful language...

[Chrystelia]

A place of sorrow...

I think that's what I want.

Thanks.

[Giovanna Clairval]

We are happy when we can be of help.

Are we going to see the context of the sorrow (a story, the chapter of a novel)?

[Aes]

On a related note, I have yet to find any decent online resources for finding latin definitions/translations, yet I always find myself wanting to convert a phrase or two into Latin for kicks. Might any of you know of any good resources off the top of your heads?

[Peter Graham]

The great thing about Latin is that it is so heavily inflected that word order is not that important. There were/are certain conventions (Giovanna isolated one in her Voyage Around The Genitive), but ultimately the meaning of a Latin sentence should be the same irrespective of word order. This is something you can't do with a non-inflected language like English - "Dog Beware!" or "Beware Dog!" actually mean two different things, but the Latin version - "Cave Canem" or "Canem Cave" actually means the same thing whichever way the words are expressed.

..or at least so our old Classics teacher never tired of telling us (and he should know, as he fought at Lake Trasimene). He also had a joke:-

A Greek man of letters goes into a tailors shop with a pair of torn trousers, which he hands to the tailor.

"Euripides?" says the tailor.

"Yes", replies the man. "Eumenides".

Regards,

Peter