On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 17:16:23 -0700, Alan Gomes wrote:


Brian's comment: I wasn't miffed. Honest....:-)

Anyway, the way I wrote it was correct. It is "in mare."

"In" as a preposition with a noun in the ablative case can (among its
possible meanings) mean "on." Though with a Mac 26X it could well be
that it's meaning with the accusative ("into") could work also. ;-)

"Mari" is the ablative for "sea." This word does not follow the normal
3rd declension pattern for ablatives. (If my memory serves me, this is
called an "i-stem" noun, but my Latin grammar is not in front of me as I
write this and I am going by memory.)

Vale,
Alan

Salve!

It appears you are saying that 'in mare' implies mare is in the
accusative case, suggesting 'into the sea'.

It appears you are saying that 'in mari' implies mari is in the
i-form ablative case, suggesting 'upon the sea'. And I confirm that
your memory of the i-form neuter serves you well enough.
Though it looks like you are wriggling a little on the hook,
it is my pleasure to relay a paragraph below from the following Latin
grammar.

This Latin grammar URL [below] offers some rules for detecting i-form
3rd declension nouns.

Why a Hong Kong site, I wandered? My best guess is that this is a
legacy of a British colonial past that educated children in the
classics, so that like Indian students they too have lofty educational
objectives at times: for similar reasons....


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http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Wheelock-Latin/lat14.txt
I. Rule for Detecting Neuter i-stem Nouns

(a) If a third declension noun is neuter, and
(b) if its nominative case ends in "-al", "-ar", or "-e",
THEN the noun is a neuter i-stem.

This is fairly easy. You look up a noun and the dictionary tells
you this: "animal, -is (n)". "Animal" is the nominative case.
The next entry tells you the genitive, from which you spot any
stem changes and learn the declension of the noun. The "-is"
entry tells you there are no stem changes and that the noun is
third declension (since "-is" is the genitive ending in the third
declension). The final entry is, of course, the gender, and for
"animal" it's neuter. Therefore, you have a neuter noun of the
third declension whose nominative ends in "-al". So the noun is
an i-stem. Simple, isn't it. So if you remember this rule,
you'll be able to spot, from the dictionary entry alone, all
neuter i-stem nouns of the third declension: if it's a neuter
noun which ends in "-al", "-ar", or "-e", then it's an i-stem.
And how do neuter i-stems decline? They differ from non-i-stem
nouns in four cases:

(1) the ablative singular is a long "-i" instead of the
normal short "-e";
(2,3) the nominative (and therefore the accusative) plural
is "-ia" instead of just plain "-a";
(4) the genitive plural is "-ium" instead of "-um".

Let's have a look. Decline the following neuter i-stem nouns,
and compare them to a regular neuter noun of the third declension
"corpus, -oris (n)":

corpus, -oris animal, -is mare, -is exemplar,-is

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On this basis, I conclude that Alan Gomes is no worse at Latin Grammar
than he appears to be.

Brian Whatcott Altus OK