Latin
Except the main case (Dativus), there are several other kinds:
- Dativus finalis with the meaning of purpose, e.g., auxilio vocare - "to call for help", venio auxilio - "I'm coming for help", accipio dono - "I receive this as a gift" or puellae ornamento est - "this serves for the girl's decoration";
- Dativus commodi (incommodi), which means action for somebody, e.g., Graecis agros colere - "to till fields for Greeks"; Combination of Dativus commodi and finalis (double Dative): tibi laetitiae "to you for joy"
- Dativus possessivus (possessive dative) which means possession, e.g., angelis alae sunt - literally "to (or for) the angels are wings", this is typically found with a copula and translated as "the angels have wings".
- Dativus ethicus (ethic dative) indicates that the person in the dative is or should be especially concerned about the action, e.g., 'quid mihi Celsus agit?' ' What is Celsus doing' (I am especially interested in what it is)?
- Dativus auctoris, meaning; 'in the eyes of', e.g., 'vir bonus mihi videtur' 'the man seems good to me'.
- The Dative is also used to express agency with the gerundive, a future passive participle that, along with the verb to be, expresses obligation or necessity of the action being performed on the noun with which it agrees, e.g., 'haec nobis agenda sunt,' 'these things must be done by us'
Read more about this topic: Dative Case
Famous quotes containing the word latin:
“Whither goest thou?”
—Bible: New Testament Peter, in John, 13:36.
The words, which are repeated in John 16:5, are best known in the Latin form in which they appear in the Vulgate: Quo vadis? Jesus replies, “Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.”
“But these young scholars, who invade our hills,
Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,
And travelling often in the cut he makes,
Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not
And all their botany is Latin names.
The old men studied magic in the flowers.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words.... Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)