Christiana 2, questions/corrections

[homemaker98]

Quiz 21 asks the student to decline mare, but they never learned to decline the neuter i-stem nouns.
Lesson 22 and quiz 22 ask student to decline fons, which is also listed as a neuter i-stem noun on the flashcard and in the back of the book, although it's listed as a masculine i-stem noun in the lesson. Which is it? This also affects the answer for translation in LN 22, B.3 "The fountains..."
LN 22 B. 4 also asks student to translate "at the gates." I couldn't find anywhere that they learned that the latin word "ad" can mean "at". They learned that "ad" means "to, near, toward". And since the object of the preposition, gates, isn't showing forward motion, wouldn't it be declined "portis"? The answer key says "portas."

[pobrien]

1) mare. The neuter i-stem declension of mare is now in the latest edition. For those of you who do not have this edition, the declension goes: mare, maris, mari, mare, mari; maria, marium, maribus, maria, maribus.

2) fons. Fons is masculine - we will correct this in the vocab section of the book. It is also what is usually called mixed i-stem, meaning that it has the i-stem form of the genitive plural (fontium) but is otherwise normal 3rd declension.

3) ad. The preposition ad always takes the accusative.

[jeremiah213]

We should not have put mare into that quiz, nor fons so for both quizzes I would merely choose another word... perhaps cor, cordis for quiz 21 and iter, itineris for quiz 22.

Now to ad... one of the definitions of at is "at" and we neglected to include that in the instruction on ad..., good catch!... it reminded me of the use of a similar preposition in Hebrew. The Lamed in Hebrew is used as a kind of catch-all preposition but literally can be rendered "the son that is to/towards you" instead of the better English vernacular "your son." The connection between to and at seems related even there... since there is a motion/proximity idea inside of ad.

You mentioned the motion towards idea being ablative but there also that motion towards sense or what I call "referential location" sense in acc. prepositions... but at the end of the day... ad takes the acc. and that's that.

thanks again...

[mwa]

In LC II, Lesson 10, where "ad" is introduced, the saying is "Hannibal ad portas" which the students learn translated as "Hannibal at the gates," so there is some exposure to that meaning.