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COMIC LATIN GRAMMAR
DECLENSIONS OF NOUNS ADJECTIVE
ОглавлениеSome nouns adjective are declined with three terminations – as a pacha of three tails would be, if he were to make a proposal to an English heiress – as bonus, good– tener, tender. Sweet epithets! how forcibly they remind us of young Love and a leg of mutton.
Bonus, bona, bonum,
Thou little lambkin dumb,
Boni, bonæ, boni,
For those sweet chops I sigh,
Bono, bonæ, bono,
Have pity on my woe,
Bonum, bonam, bonum,
Thou speak’st though thou art mum,
Bone, bona, bonum,
“O come and eat me, come,”
Bono, bonæ, bono,
The butcher lays thee low,
Boni, bonæ, bona,
Those chops are a picture, – ah!
Bonorum, bonarum, bonorum,
To put lots of Tomata sauce o’er ’em
Bonis – Don’t, miss,
Bonos, bonas, bona,
Thou art sweeter than thy mamma,
Boni, bonæ, bona,
And fatter than thy papa.
Bonis, – What bliss!
In like manner decline tener, tenera, tenerum.
Unus, one; solus, alone; totus, the whole; nullus, none; alter, the other; uter, whether of the two – make the genitive case singular in ius and the dative in i.
RIDDLES
Q. In what case will a grain of barley joined to an adjective stand for the name of an animal?
A. In the dative case of unus – uni-corn.
Uni nimirum tibi rectè semper erunt res.
Hor. Sat. lib. ii. 2. 106.
Q. Why is the above verse like all nature?
A. Because it is an uni-verse.
The word alius, another, is declined like the above-named adjectives, except that it makes aliud, not alium, in the neuter singular.
The difference of unus from alius, say the London commentators, like that of a humming-top from a peg-top, consists of the ’um.
N.B. Tu es unus alius, is not good Latin for “You’re another,” a phrase more elegantly expressed by “Tu quoque.”
There are some adjectives that remind us of lawyer’s clerks, and, by courtesy, of linen-drapers’ apprentices. These may be termed articled adjectives; being declined with the articles hic, hæc, hoc, after the third declension of substantives – as tristis, sad, melior, better, felix, happy.
It is not very easy to conceive any thing in which sadness and comicality are united, except Tristis Amator, a sad lover.
Melior is not better for comic purposes. Felix affords no room for a happy joke.
Decline these three adjectives, and others of the same class, according to the following rules:
If the nominative endeth in is or er, why, sir,
The ablative singular endeth in i, sir;
The first, fourth, and fifth case, their neuter make e,
But the same in the plural in ia must be.
E, or i, are the ablative’s ends, – mark my song,
While or to the nominative case doth belong;
For the neuter aforesaid we settle it thus:
The plural is ora; the singular us.
If than is, er, and or, it hath many more enders,
The nominative serves to express the three genders;
But the plural for ia hath icia and itia,
As Felix, felicia – Dives, divitia.
