Latin/Time Lesson 3

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We are studying the Latin terms for time; in previous lessons we have talked about the days of the week and the months of the year. Today we’ll look at the times of day, and the seasons. I’m going to introduce some vocabulary that I won’t use in sentences yet, because we really need to know some numbers to use with them.

Notes on the vocabulary: “vesper = evening” is used both as a 3rd and 2nd declension noun, and its ablative singular/adverbial form can be either vespere or vesperi. I could not find out why. “ver = spring” has an ablative singular of “veri.” We will continue to use the ablative case to express the time when something happens; this is basically converting a noun into an adverb. The Romans counted the hours of the day from sunrise, so “prima hora” the first hour, would be about 7:00 am. We’ll use more modern conventions, after we’ve had the numbers lesson. A good overview of Roman timekeeping is found here

Practice
Next time we will try to have a lesson on numbers, at least the basics. As always, we hope you enjoy them and find them helpful. Habēte bonam fortūnam!