Latin/Time Lesson 2

Salvēte omnēs! Welcome back to Latin for Wikiversity. Here you can peruse a new lesson in Latin, in a simple format. If you would like to catch up, you can find a directory of lessons, a classified vocabulary list, and Memrise courses at the links on the right.

We are studying the Latin terms for time; last lesson covered the diēs hebdomadis (days of the week), and now we will go into the mēnsēs annī (months of the year). We’ll keep it simple for our sample sentences, and you can go directly there if you wish. The least you need to know: The Roman calendar is the basis of ours, but it started out with March as the first month of the year and only 10 months. In about 700 B.C. January and February were added – this is why September through December are the 9th through 12th months of our calendar instead of the 7th through 10th, and it also explains why leap year days are added at the end of February. And in 45 B.C. Julius Caesar reformed the calendar to be close to our current, Gregorian form. The months Quintilis and Sextilis were renamed July and August after Julius and Augustus.

If you want a fuller explanation, this is a helpful site, as well as this and the Wikipedia entry. The Romans counted backwards from the Kalends, Nones or Ides of each month; to record dates as the Romans did would be very complex and most modern sources simplify it. For example, the Latin Vicipaedia and the Nūntiī Latīnī both give their datelines in this format:
 * Veneris die 25 mensis Martii 2016 (“on Friday 25 of the month of March 2016” literally translated).

But at Nova Rōma, which tries to recreate Roman culture as authentically as possible, the same date is given
 * hodie a.d. VIII Kal. Apr. MMDCCLXIX a.u.c or “today the 8th day before the Kalends of April, 2,769 years from the founding of the city” (with Rome being founded in 753 B.C.)

We are not going to make anyone count backwards to determine the date, because it is likely to make your head hurt. One more thing; the names of the months can be expressed as masculine nouns, but originally they were adjectives, and agreed with the nouns they modified – so they are technically masculine adjectives to agree with the unspoken noun mēnsis. In some older forms the adjective form is still used and may be feminine, as in Cavē Īdūs Mārtiās. I list the noun form first, then the adjective form. They are either 2nd declension or 3rd declension in form.

Practice
Other than the odd names for the fixed points of the month (which are by no means essential for every Latin student to master), the names of the months are pretty easy for English speakers. Next time we’ll go into some of the other time vocabulary, and we should probably also start learning numbers soon. Valēte et habēte bonam fortūnam!