Brian Whatcott wrote:
On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 18:20:31 -0700, Alan Gomes wrote:


Was the "wiggling" to which you referred my typo (subsequently corrected
immediately after I hit "send"--you saw that correction, right?), in
which I (wrongly) typed, "It is in mare" rather than my intended "It is
in mari"?


I had not seen your correction until now.

Anyhow...here's the bottom line:
(1) The ablative for the word "sea" in Latin (mare) is
"mari."

Yes...


(2) The way you would say "on the sea" in Latin is "in mari."

Yes...

So my original translation, which started this discussion, is correct.

Regards,
Alan Gomes

It seems to me that either form would be usable.

I was exceptionally disappointed to not find an instance of either
usage from the classical authors at Perseus/Tufts however.
The wine-dark sea, and all that....

Ah well.

Brian W

Thanks, Brian.

This has been fun (for us, at least), but apologies to the rest of the
group for morphing this thread into a discussion on the joys of i-stem
nouns!!!

But at least Scotty, who asked the original question that REALLY got all
this going, got his money's worth!

--AG