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Is it not the case that the old style Latin is different than what is used today!
Not sure if that explains it well, but a few years back I new a chap who took Latin at Uni level and he said that the old Latin could be interrupted in so many ways and the exact meaning can be - to coin an old phrase - lost in translation...
Anyway just a another hurdle for those trying to clear up the Avicularia jigsaw puzzle.
it has, like most other languages, a different word order and one word can mean different things, for example **runs off to get latin book** 'fabula ab actoribus in theatro agebatur' means 'the play was acted by actors in the theatre' this could also mean (it doesn't but it could) 'a story was shown from actors' or (literally) 'play by actors in theatre was acted'. and in German a bicycle is 'ein fahrrad' but that literally translates as 'a travel wheel'. also many of our English words are based on Latin such as actor (see above) and 'alibi' is Latin for 'elsewhere'.
Stuarts right, Latin was such a "wide-descript" language and is not as simple as just translating the words logically.
We had to do Latin at school as a conpulsary subject, i never thought (at the time) that it would be any use but here we are in the world of scientific names.
One hinderence when translating will be two (often more) words having the same basic meaning.
an example of this would be pulchra (beautiful - as in good looking) and formosa (beautiful - as in from a beautiful place (country / island etc))
As Mark's said there's a good few hurdles to overcome in this enigma
Don't forget to learn what you can, when you can, where you can.
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