Does the verb have to come at the end in Latin? | Latin word order

[@3kcozadurnylol]

For me, as a polish speaker, flexible word order in sentence is absolutely natural. I remember english lessons at school, where the teacher was saying "English is so simple! You just have to put verb here, object here, subject here!". And I was thinking "Why the hell I have to always think where put words to make a sentence?!" 😂 It was taught by grammar rules method so I learnt much more from the Internet than from the school

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Haha well said! Dzięki

[@The0Stroy]

Well - I'm Pole as well, and since it is true, some orders of words sound weird and awkward - more like taken from cheap poetry than the way that normal people speak.

[@michaelheliotis5279]

@@The0Stroy To some extent that's true in English as well. There's a number of ways you can shuffle around the word order a bit in English, but they'll often sound like you're reading Shakespeare or some 15th Century poem.

[@Nikelaos_Khristianos]

Literally chatted to a Polish teacher yesterday about this very thing. English starts simple, but it can get so picky about word order so quickly and it can render someone unintelligible at worst. I remember learning Afrikaans at school, and it also has very particular word order, whereby if you get it wrong, the other person can't help but stare blankly at you. I can relate to people who learn English as a foreign language to some extent because of this. He was equally critical of the grammar rules method too. Although, free word order can absolutely still be a weird concept for people who speak languages with fixed word order. I still vividly trying to explain to a friend that Latin has this. However, I don't think I did a good job, as they still insisted to me that there MUST be a "correct" word order.... and sure, well, yes and no. It's relatively free, but there are conventional ways people tend to phrase things that avoid the "sounding like cheap poetry" pit-fall. Cześć! 😊✌

Same with czech (which is not surprise). The flexible word order is one of the things I really like about latin.

[@danyf.1442]

I remember while translating Cicero in high school I had the feeling that he was constructing his sentences in the craziest and most illogical way possible just to mess with those who were going to study his works in later times. I am joking...but not really😂. Great work Luke!

[@HasufelyArod]

That makes sense

[@HasufelyArod]

Then Cicero was everything and a troll

[@danyf.1442]

@@HasufelyArod ante litteram troll😂

[@michaelheliotis5279]

From what I recall when my uni Latin class was doing Cicero, he had a tendency to nestle the subject very far down a sentence, which made it very difficult when we were doing out loud translations. We all grew accustomed to this inevitable pause when it was someone's turn to read as they played "hunt the burried nominative", or in the all-too-frequent instances where it was near the very end, someone who'd read ahead might supply it for them.

[@commentfreely5443]

weren't the commas and fullstops only invented hundreds of years later?

[@ThomasWhichello]

A vexed question appears to be to what extent, if any, the verb final was “standard” in Latin. Wikipedia quotes some curious statistics from Linde (1923). Apparently, the 2nd book of Caesar puts the verb last in 84% of main clauses, and Sallust chapters 1-36 does so in 75% of main clauses; whereas Cicero, de Re Publica 1-32, does so in only 35% of main clauses. Which is a remarkable degree of variability. Quintilian has an interesting passage on this subject. He says that “If the demands of artistic structure permit, it is far best to end the sentence with a verb: for it is in verbs that the real strength of language resides.” He even goes so far as to say that “In every case where a verb does not end the sentence, we shall have an hyperbaton.” (i. e. an inversion of the normal order of words, often for the sake of emphasis.) Speaking of word-order in general however, he adds that “a reverse order is often adopted with excellent effect,” and calls the ideal of a perfectly-fixed word-order “extravagant pedantry.” (Inst. 9.4.24-26) If the verb final really was standard in Latin (or even mostly standard), then, to my mind, deviations from that standard would generally impart a special significance. For an analogy, our standard word-order in English being subject-verb-object, when Shakespeare places the verb last, and writes: “Thy soft hands, sweet lips, and crystal eyne, Whose full perfection all the world amazes,” our attention is drawn much more to the concept of the world’s “amazement.” As opposed to the more "neutral" effect of the “neutral” word-order: “Whose full perfection amazes all the world.”

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Great quote!

[@antoniousai1989]

The Sardinian language still has this. It's technically SVO, but it can be inverted to SOV for a different emphasis.

[@the_demiurg]

Especially when making questions

[@esti-od1mz]

Great video! In Sicilian we also usually put the verb at the end of the phrase

[@fritzgeissel8832]

I study Classical philology since three semesters now but feel like I've learned more from your channel than in Uni

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very kind! For my part, I’m self taught in this subject. Your university studies will serve you well, but one can always learn more outside of the classroom

[@racheleraanan5133]

@@polyMATHY_Luke - I think formal, structured study provides the scaffolding upon which the language is then constructed. While it is certainly possible to build a foundation independently, it is so much easier with a knowledgeable guide. BTW, I love your Latin pronunciation. I am happy to see classical pronunciation being taught and used more.

[@michelefrau6072]

Unsolicited commentary on Sardinian language: While most Romance languages are strictly SVO languages, with some exceptions, Sardinian is more fluid in its structure, the verb and even the auxiliary can be at the end of a sentence, especially in questions Manicadu as? you ate? Or in the passive form Su gatu su cane at sikidu The cat was followed by the dog This feature is also a common trait with Sicilian and Romanian

[@Aditya-te7oo]

Michele Frau When I was reading about Sicilian on Wikipedia I got to know this (Sicilian and Sardinian have the Latin's SOV word order).

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Beautiful

[@AnAverageItalian]

@@marvinsilverman4394 I think the most prevalent theory is that Sardinians are actually autochthonous

[@michelefrau6072]

@@Aditya-te7oo just search "Sicilian and Sardinian focus fronting"

[@antoniousai1989]

@@marvinsilverman4394 We're descendent of neolithic farmers present in Europe before the Indoeuropean migration. Like Minoan people or (maybe) Etruscan people. Our DNA sets show genetic isolation.

[@HasufelyArod]

Some languages do that: verb always at the end . Latin, as you said, seems fairly flexible.

[@HasufelyArod]

Korean and Japanese, for example. I don't know about Mongolian.

[@HasufelyArod]

This reminds me of a meme about word orders showing Yoda and Hungarian. I mention this because I saw a meme saying What if Yoda is a Hungarian who never learned the proper word order in English?

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Heheh right!

[@HasufelyArod]

@@polyMATHY_Luke I'll transcribe the meme and show you

[@FoundinAntiquity]

Thank you for the shout out to my video! It's enjoyable watching you put theoretical statements about what is "normal" in Latin to the test with real literature. I find that another even more common kind of word-order misunderstanding is thinking that the adjective "generally" follows the noun it describes, when statistically in both Cicero and Caesar, it's more usual for the adjective to come before the noun. Great work here as always!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Salvē, Carla! I really liked your video too. That’s a really good point about the adjective too. I find the variety is yet more flexible there than even the verb. Romance languages, naturally, are more fixed.

[@PedroMachadoPT]

What I’ve learned on Latin was: verb at the end, adjective before the noun.

[@oriomenoni7651]

Based on my experience of studying Latin at Lyceum and University, the verb at the end of the sentence appears to be the normal habit, i.e. the way sentences are constructed when the speech is normal, not having any particular emphasis on anything. It seems to me that when the verb leaves the end of the sentence, it's because for various reasons that verb has to appear more important, or even key, in the understanding of the meaning. For instance, when there is a vocative in a sentence (when a person is called), and the verb is in imperative mode, the verb is placed right before the name, to emphasize the command. There can be many different situations when a verb's meaning or role has to be emphasized, and moved away from the end of the sentence. If you pay attention to the meaning of the sentences, to their importance in the speech, you'll find that sentences with verb in the end are the "zero degree" of the conversation...the normal, not particularly emphasized, standard sentence. And the fact that the majority of Latin sentence has the verb in the end is a proof of that in my opinion: emphasis, accentuations, happen more rarely, and rightly so, because they have to stand out from the speech. The rest of the speech is normal, colloquial, somehow "emotionally neuter" tone, and the verb in the end communicates that feel of the sentence being "standard" and not particularly important.

[@Glossologia]

This is true for most verbs and authors, especially Caesar and to a slightly lesser extent Cicero, but for the verb 'esse' in particular SVO seems to be the unmarked order, and some authors have far lower frequency of verb final sentences.

[@ardentspy]

It is. Cicero was writing in a particularly florid style that it's very unlikely reflected how anyone spoke.

[@MAC-vm1td]

One taught me that the normal word order for latin sentences is SOV. But the other positions are possible to emphasize on some words.

[@oriomenoni7651]

Exactly. The position of the words in the sentence are the main way to communicate connotations via a strictly denotative language such as the written language.

[@STOCathain]

Follow up question: because the syntax is so flexible, are there or conceivably could there be examples where Latin would have been written using the sentence structure of regional languages by L2 speakers? Thinking of if Latin came into contact with some of the Celtic languages in Gaul, Britannia, Hispania, etc. seeing as Celtic languages tend to stick to VSO order.

[@stevenv6463]

I mean people changing Latin syntax is one thing people did that lead to the creation of the Romance languages.

[@FoundinAntiquity]

I haven't looked into it much myself, but if you explore the wording of the Vulgate Latin Bible, it very closely mimics the word order of the Greek texts it was translated from, kind of copying the style. In turn, scholars have debated whether the Koine Greek of the NT has a particular style (eg. verbs usually come at the start of sentences) because of the influence of Semitic languages that the community had as their first languages, or whether it was a natural development within Koine Greek itself.

[@stevenv6463]

@@FoundinAntiquity Jerome liked matching his Latin to the Greek. On the other hand Jerome's Latin is more understandable to a Romance language speaker than classical Latin

[@danielvortisto6324]

Hi Seán, for this question to be answerable, you should specify the time period, the region, and how well people spoke Latin then there. I would not assume there to be a grammatical shining-through in the time period between Cicero's oldest writings and Nero's fall, unless we have commentary from contemporary sources. As for word order flexibility, I disagree with Polýmathy. In 2000 years, a person might speak a language in which whatever is called a verb is always at the second position in present clauses and at the last in past and future clauses for all modes of interaction (questions, statements, commands, offers as well as the responses to them). That person might study English and come to the conclusion that English has flexible word order because one can say: 1. "These shoes I don't like." 2. "I don't like them" 3. "... nor do I like them." 4. "Do I like them?" 5. "I do like them, but..." 6. "Like them like truly like? Oh no." 7. "Like I care." He would be right if he thought that the word order was one of many different ones. However, he will probably not understand the reasons why we order words the way we do despite the fact that the reasons for word order are quite evident to us. As a linguist, I would hope that this person does not come to the conclusion that word order is meaningless and only serves to mark an author's style. That would be a wrong conclusion for English as well as for any other modern language I have studied. There is no reason to believe that this would be right for Latin. Despite this disagreement, Polýmathy's content is supperb and I truly enjoy it. Please do not think that it is any less correct than the state of the art in Latin studies. He is a master of the art. The problem here is that there are many things about Latin that we do not understand anymore. The meaning of word order in Latin is one of them. :-)

[@spellandshield]

Only Insular Celtic is VSO. Continental Celtic tended towards SOV. Insular Celtic likely was subjected to substrate influence on the isles that was not present on the continent.

[@MarkRosa]

I first learned Latin at a Japanese university, and almost everyone in my class used SOV ordering when constructing sentences just because that's what their native language does. Now I'm learning Latin again on Duolingo and it feels like it's all SVO there by default but they are very accepting of other orders.

[@birthe9439]

In one of my courses on Latin linguistics, we learned that while stylistic choices can of course play a role in the placement of the verb in Latin, there are also patterns as studied in pragmatics. I'm referring to the topic-comment structure (or thema-rhema), or analyses like the one used in the positional approach to reading (frame/decor-core sentence-specifying, and within that core sentence main "player"-fellow "players"-relation), which don't necessarily match syntactic functions. In a Greek linguistics course, we saw an even more detailed analysis of the influence of pragmatic functions on word order. Nevertheless, I still struggle to write or speak Latin with a word order that sounds natural, despite knowing how free it is and what influences it.

[@sikoyakoy2376]

I have to say that I don’t really understand a lot of what you wrote because of how technical it is but I think I understand that you’re saying that word order does have some influence on the meaning of a sentence (e.g. what is being emphasised). As a heritage speaker of Tagalog (wherein it could be said that all word orders have their use even outside of poetry), I would say that is definitely the case in some languages. I actually think “flexible” is quite misleading because some word orders can be awkward depending on what is to be emphasised (I am speaking particularly about Tagalog but I am quite confident this is the case with other languages which make use of multiple word orders a lot). I think the best way to learn natural word order is to observe native speakers’ word order (though, in the case of Latin, you would probably need to read authentic material) which would probably take some time but eventually come natural (but instead of consciously learning all the rules and explanations, let your mind naturally acquire it subconsciously and then perhaps refine it afterwards by reading explanations). It would be more accurate to say that some languages have very variable word orders depending on emphasis and maybe some other things. The reason why Latin is called an SOV language may be because the SOV word order is considered the most neutral word order (in terms of things like emphasis). In Tagalog, VSO (and maybe also VOS) is the most neutral word order but even OSV and OVS have their uses in ordinary speech. Though, I read that the “S” in Tagalog may be more accurately termed the “agent” (a) or something like that.

[@birthe9439]

@@sikoyakoy2376 Emphasis is definitely a part of what I meant! The topic-comment pattern has to do with what has already been mentioned before and what the people involved already know, and what is new information or the "focus" of the message. There are other factors too. As a student of Latin and Ancient Greek for almost ten years now, I've read my share of authentic material, which is how I can recognise my word order isn't always natural. I definitely get it right sometimes, but because our education system is mostly focused on reading these languages, I still regularly struggle with natural word order in my production of Latin (and Greek). And yes, you're definitely right that SOV is the most neutral (and common) word order in Latin. I'm a native Dutch speaker and Dutch is SVO, but we have a lot of cases where we use inversion (so SOV or VSO structures), so it's never so strict.

[@sikoyakoy2376]

@@birthe9439 I see hehe… I am only an amateur in linguistics (if I can even be called that)… basically, I know a bit of linguistics from reading in my free time and trying to make sense of what I read with the languages I know so I’m not that familiar with some terminology. But I do understand quite a bit of what you’re saying. Interesting 👍🏼 I guess I could read up on those terms to understand better. Learning natural word order may be somewhat tricky for ancient languages like Latin but if you can read enough prose (not poetry which often makes use of unusual word order), that may help you get a better feel for it. As I said though, I recommend gaining an intuition from examples first and then refining that intuition later on by reading some explanations if you think you need it 🙂 But yes, I think you should try practicing making your own sentences to learn better, though I guess it may be more tricky unless you can get a very skilled Latin speaker to give you feedback. Well, this is what I think 🙂 I didn’t know Dutch was not so rigid in word order. Actually, even some varieties of English frequently make use of different word order based on emphasis.

[@birthe9439]

@@sikoyakoy2376 Pragmatics is definitely very interesting if you'd like to know more about language *usage* (eg. things like the speech act theory). Reading classical authors requires energy that I need more for the texts I have to read for my uni courses, so I'm hoping to find some easy Latin and Greek to improve my speed and "intuition"/sense of what is natural. Our uni library has Traupmann's Conversational Latin and Orberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, so I might look into those too. To be fair, some things are not free at all, but we have some types of clauses where pretty much everything can be at any position within the clause.

[@pilgrim42]

From my own limited experience Latin Syntax of early and late antiquity seems more stable than later medieval Latin. I'm not referring to the Latin of Aquinas or earlier scholastics, but of a slightly later time. When studying Latin in college we had to translate a work from Martin of Denmark called De Modis Significandi, and the syntax was very different compared to classical Latin writers, so much so that it seemed chaotic. I now wonder if this was due to the influence of the native language of the speakers, as opposed to some idiosyncrasy on the part of the writer.

[@buhoahogado2993]

I don't know if this happens in English books, but in Spanish it is very common that translators of classic texts try to imitate the SOV structure in their works even if it isn't in Latin or Greek. I remember that threw me off a bit in college when my class was reading the Illiad and the Oddyssey in Spanish and a lot of sentences were constructed with the verb at the end.

[@rtyria]

No, that is not done in English / Latin textbooks.

[@cristianespinal9917]

Haha, now I'm going to spend hours trying to find examples of Spanish translations of Latin that maintain an SOV word order to see how strange it looks.

[@Gcatano65]

En 8 minutos aprendí algo nuevo. Gratias tibi ago! Greetings from Cali, Colombia.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Gracias!

[@MitchMV]

I don’t speak Latin, but I do speak some Esperanto which has just a couple grammatical cases. I love free word order languages. They allow you to express yourself in such flexible and personally expressive ways.

[@_caniche_2405]

Great analysis! I wonder if the word order in Latin carries some inherent meaning, like stress or emphasis, or if it's just style? For example in Portuguese "Eu vou." and "Vou eu." have a different meaning, the first meaning "I go" the second meaning more like "Other people don't go, but I do.".

[@rtyria]

It can be for emphasis, but at times I suspect it is just style.

[@TarebossT]

Wow, same as in Romanian: Eu merg vs. Merg eu.

[@cosettapessa6417]

Same in italian. Vado. Vado io.

[@swhite6051]

Thank you. I am just now my small knowledge of high school Latin to resurrect starting. Your videos, very helpful they are. My planned goal is to work hard for a year or two, then go to Kentucky for the summer camp, and then make a pilgrimage to Vatican City and use a cash machine in Latin.

[@umkemesic]

Dude, I was just thinking yesterday what if latin was taught in SVO, and ypu make this video 😆 🤣 😂

[@hone3134]

Nice video as always. I saw this video coming in my recommended videos page a lot of times but I only decided to watch it today, because a few minutes ago I was reading the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language 2nd edition and it mentioned that although the most common word order in Latin is SOV (subject, object, verb), it is a very free language in terms of word order. So I remembered of this video and thought it would be a great video to clear this up.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Wonderful! Great timing. Thanks for watching and for the comment.

[@aurelfarkasovsky]

I'm thinking that it might not be only due to a certain writing style of the author, but rather it having something to do with stressing or highlighting some words or parts of the sentences. For instance, in my mother tongue, Slovak, which works pretty much like Latin in declensions and stuff, we put the stressed or highlited words at the end of the sentences. Here are a few examples: mačka - (a/the) cat (nominative) zjedla - (she) ate myš - (a/the) mouse (accusative) 1. SVO Mačka zjedla myš. (neutral word order/myš highlited - the cat didn't eat any other animal or anything else, it ate the MOUSE specifically) 2. OVS Myš zjedla mačka. (mačka highlighted - it wasn't any other animal or human that ate the mouse, it was the CAT specifically) 3. SOV Mačka myš zjedla. (zjedla highlighted - the cat didn't perform any other action to the mouse, it specifically ATE the mouse) Note that: OSV Myš mačka zjedla and VOS Zjedla myš mačka and VSO Zjedla mačka myš are all viable as well, all of them carrying a certain nuance of stressing parts of the sentences, also depends on the way the reader or speaker says it, and on the context it's used in. In a nutshell, it's complicated, as the Kurzgesaght guys say, but the rule of the thumb is, that the last word is stressed/highlighted as described above. In any case, was just interested to hear whether anyone knew about anything like this being the case in Latin as well.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Well said. Yes it’s like that

[@Nejvyn]

Okay so what I get is: *First Latin lesson in most languages **_(apparently):_* Well, the verb comes at the end, that's quite unusual. *First Latin lesson in Germany **_(where verbs are frequently at the end):_* FREE WORD ORDERRRR!

[@leonhardeuler7647]

Indo Aryan languages also have preferred word order SOV. And as someone who speaks multiple Indo Aryan languages( i.e. Indo European languages descended from Sanskrit), I was surprised to see that it seemed to be the case in Latin as well, since all other European languages I had seen had SVO. Now, don't get me wrong, I am very comfortable with SVO, but there is just something about seeing the verb at the end in Latin sentences that is so satisfying to my native SOV brain. It just feels very "cosy", for lack of a better term, - like something I would write if I were fluent in Latin. When I saw the appelantur at the end of the first sentence, I was like "yeah boi".

[@talideon]

A quick aside: Describing them as being "descended from Sanskrit" would be a little inaccurate. Vedic Sanskrit is simply oldest member we have evidence for. The various prakrits had older forms that were contemporaneous with Sanskrit, but lacked the same cultural cachet, and were highly influenced by Sanskrit. We know they weren't descended from Sanskrit because they retain I-E features that Vedic and later Classical Sanskrit lacked.

[@pawel198812]

@@talideon Tell me more!

[@manuelapollo7988]

I know there are languages where the verb at the end of a sentence is basically a rule (languages of the turk-mongolian group should work in this way, as a kazak friend of mine mentioned me). This friend of mine told me that this system has weakness but also a strength. The weakness is that you are forced to listen the sentence until the very end to understand what a person is talking about. The strength is....well, basically the same. You are forced to listen until the very end before you can interrupt a person. Listening to other people before to interrupt them doesn't happen that often in western languages (and especially in italian for what I can tell🤣)

[@erkinalp]

Indeed, the sentence gains the meaning only after you get to hear/read the predicate.

[@cleitondecarvalho431]

Embracing the svo order proudly since now. Thanks, thanks, thanks.

[@Vaalin]

I remember distinctly having rightly guessed a text we were translating in an exam in high school was by Cicero just by the style. Being a proponent of concinnitas he is easily spottable in his structures.

[@daciaromana2396]

In Romanian, all word order variations are possible although it’s more proper to use a mix of subject-verb-object and subject-object-verb in specific cases. In poetic writing, you can play around with almost any variation.

[@carmensavu5122]

I've noticed a tendency to go VS with intransitives, especially unaccusatives. The neutral order is "a venit Maria", and "Maria a venit" sounds more marked, like there is emphasis on "Maria" and I half expect it to continue with "și Ana a plecat".

[@HeWhoComments]

Cool video as always Señor Luke

[@UTF016]

A Baltic speaker here. Baltic (and Slavonic) languages are that much flexible as well and putting the verb at the end of a sentece is grammatically correct. But in most instances it would be considered colloquial and stylistically improper to do so in any official text. But you can do that once in while for emphasis or if you want to mimic colloquial speech.

[@umkemesic]

I saw something on quora claiming ceaser had higher SOV than Cicero which was in the high 60s

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

That seems reasonable

[@tarquin4233]

aliud attractīvum “video” ā Magistrō latīnō nostrō 🙂

[@weirdlanguageguy]

Just so you know, the main word for video used in modern Latin is "pelliculum"

[@ironinquisitor3656]

In Medieval French the word order was still flexible due to the preservation of the dual Nominative-Oblique endings for a few centuries.

[@davigurgel2040]

It's interesting to me that, even tho we lost the grammatical cases that allowed latin to have free word order without ambiguity, in portuguese we still have many hold outs of that freedom. In poetic language specially, free word order is used very often. the national anthem of brazil uses some very fancy language, that the average brazilian has no idea what half of the anthem means, it starts: Ouviram(verb) "do ipiranga as margens(noun) plácidas"(Subject) "de um povo(noun of the adjective phrase) heroico(adj, refering to "povo") o brado " (noun) retumbante"(object) it could he rewritten as: as margens pácidas do ipiranga ouviram o brado retumbante de um povo heroico other than the verb conjugation, and the preposition "de(do, da)" meaning "of", none of these words are inflected to mark it's function, you have to interpret by context. in casual language, there are also many instances where you would deviate from SVO order like: Pra espanha eu nunca fui(OSV), mas já visitei Portugal (VO). "to spain i never went, but i have visited portugal" dinheiro, que é bom, a gente não tem. "Money, that is good, we don't have" the most common use is with clitic pronouns, where in brazil you would always put it before the verb, like eu te amo (i you love) In Portugal and Africa, they would put it after in most cases(eu amo-te) and before in specific contexts (alguém te ama)

[@zoushuu]

I was wondering about this and then I thought maybe you had a video on it, and you sure did, that's kind of cool, you must've covered a lot with these.

[@talideon]

I think the problem here is more that people forget what "default word order" means. It doesn't mean it's the only one, just that it's the one people will default to unless there's some need to do otherwise for stylistic reasons. This is why going on what authors do is maybe unwise, as authors are more likely to use marked word orders for the sake of a bon mot, but wouldn't necessarily speak the way they write. I mean, if you wanted to, you could find plenty of examples of English using OSV word order, and those are grammatically correct, but they're examples of a marked word order and don't contradict the fact that a corpus of English as it's normally used would show. If we'd a similar corpus of Latin as it was spoken, we'd probably see SOV dominating, in spite of the flexibility that the case system gives. That tends to be the case just about any language with relatively free word order in daily use.

[@ardentspy]

This is exactly right. I'd put money on it that Cicero in fact predominantly used SOV when he *spoke* Latin almost exclusively. You can vary word order in English too but that doesn't mean English is not an SVO language.

[@nnnn65490]

He should do an interview with Dr Joshua Bowen on Sumerian / Akkadian. Dr Josh is great

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Who is that?

[@nnnn65490]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Salve! He and his wife are both assyriologist who know several ancient near eastern languages. They have a channel called Digital Hammurabi where they did a pretty popular series on how to read ancient Sumerian. I think he knows ancient Greek as well, maybe Latin, but im not sure. You should check them out!

[@Elochai_]

Someone ought to travel back in time and let Góngora know about this.

[@axisboss1654]

In most Germanic languages, Dutch, German, and Swedish for example with the exception of English the verb often comes at the end especially if there’s more than one verb. It’s called SVOV.

[@sikoyakoy2376]

As someone who knows a few languages with “flexible” word order, I would say that just using any word order randomly is like randomly putting the stress on any syllable of words in languages with “free” stress. It doesn’t work that way. Actually, languages with flexible word order require you to learn which word order/s* is/are appropriate in any given context (this tends to be dependent on what is to be emphasised, in my experience). *In many cases, more than one word order is suitable. Also, it would actually probably be more bothersome if word order could be completely random. I’ve learned some Japanese - including several kanji - and the kanji I found hardest to remember were the ones whose stroke orders I didn’t remember, the ones which I wrote with random (improper) stroke orders. I actually remember getting a bit stressed each time I was beginning to write those because I would end up having to quickly make a mini decision of which stroke to start with. Interestingly, even if I thought I may have forgotten the kanji whose stroke orders I had learned properly, I would find that I actually remembered them as I began writing; I would start with the first stroke and the rest of the strokes would come back to memory as I continued. A tip would be if you are unsure which word order/s is/are suitable, just use the neutral word order, which in the case of Latin is SOV. This will lessen your chances of inadvertently emphasising the wrong element in a sentence. In some cases, this could still result in awkwardness but there is less risk of emphasising the wrong element. You can gradually learn more word order usages with exposure and by asking native speakers.

[@nunorican]

i found this channel yesterday and can´t stop watching your videos, you do a really amazing job, Luke! As a Romance language native speaker without prior contact with Latin except for things like "Alea jacta est", "In Vino Veritas" or "Pax Vobiscum", it didn't make much sence the way these sentences are constructed, I have now a better understanding thanks to your great work, but in any case, it's mind-goggling how different modern Romance languages have become from Classical Latin... for instance, it is possible to end a sentence with a verb in Portuguese or Spanish, although not very common, but how do you go from "Pax vobiscum" to "Peace be with you", which is the same structure we'd use in Portugal (A paz esteja convosco) or Spain (La paz sea con vosotros) for this same sentence? literally, "Peace you be". I know languages change over time but seems like a giant leap! Pax vobiscum! :)

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks! Pāx vōbīscum literally means “peace with you.” The “be” part is understood. You could also say pāx vōbīscum sit

[@nunorican]

@@polyMATHY_Luke thank you for your kind reply and clarification! In my ignorance I was looking at it as vobis+cum (as in PT "com" or ES "con", meaning "with") !

[@alaksiejstankievicx]

Well, I don't want to really contradict your video, because in general you are correct, that Latin has free word order and your demonstration via showing pieces of some classical text is good proof for that. However, it is really not enough material to any more broad linguistic conclusion, like which order is more frequent (you show only someones limited analysis (in any author it was less than 10000 sentences to analyse) of authored text from few authors, with very long-tailed distributions in languages (hello Zipf law) this is not enough for conclusions about the language itself), or what is more natural/non-emphatic order. Being a native speaker of two free-order languages (Belarusian and Russian) and having a limited experience of teaching them foreigners, I need to say, that free-order doesn't mean being absolutely free but flexible and elastic structure (very difficult to acquire, BTW). E.g. in both Belarusian and Russian grammatically order in adjective-noun pair is free, however, a commoner (I have heard about people and one time even actually met one, who speaks in poetry in every situation, so let not include them in commoners) in casual situation will never say "budynak šeryj" (noun adjective) instead of "šeryj budynak" (adjective noun, both sentences mean "a grey building"). "Noun before adjective" is very emphatic. In poetry contrary this emphatic is very common, probably even more common then non-emphatic one. So if some native speaker will accidentally use emphatic order it definitely will do this on purpose, however, in mouth of foreigner in most cases it sounds usually "aaah, he/she again struggles with our free-order, let downgrade my subconscious alarm to emphasis". The order of subject, object and predicat is less strict and you find essential variety in casual speech, however, only SVO is really neutral/non-emphatic. And which particular order is non-emphatic could differs even between related languages, e.g. in Polish non-emphatic is exactly "noun before adjective" (might be influence of Latin in the middle of 2nd millennium), but as non-native speaker of Polish it is difficult to me to analyse structure of free-order in Polish more. Also it is important to define well methodology even in strict-order languages as English. SVO doesn't mean that verb will be the second word in sentence, in reality the second mean functional non word place. The function of subject can play a sole word, a word with article, a word with definition and even sentence converted to nominative construction. So functionally all these case should count as one place. It would be interesting if teachers (especially rhetors) had left some prescription for their students in Roman school system what order is more preferable and so on. On the pure corpus method, however, I'm afraid we will never gather enough material without time machine to make essential conclusion about thin structure inside free-order in Latin language.

[@kodekadkodekad4380]

We actually do have some information about that. I know that Quintilian adressed this topic, and if my memory is correct he was a quite strong advocate of placing the verb at the end of the sentence and described it as the most elegant variant in most instances. By the way, thanks a lot for the very lengthy and informative comment, I agree with every aspect you mention. I think it's very important to stress that free-order does not mean absolute freedom of structure, as I have the feeling that speakers of very rigid languages like English often imagine that you can basically do whatever you want in free-order languages, which is absolutely not the case. No matter how flexible they are, all languages have a favoured, non-emphatic syntactic way of expressing a statement.

[@ardentspy]

You are absolutely correct. It's true even of English. You can say "Little did I know what he wanted", which is OSV, or "should you go there", which is VSO, but English remains fundamentally an SVO language.

[@pawel198812]

Polish native speaker here. The order of constituents in a noun phrase in Polish is a bit chaotic in comparison to other languages in the same Sprachbund. However, in general: 1) in a NP with a head noun and a dependent noun (via preposition or an oblique case), the head noun comes first, the dependent follows (e.g. opinia eksperta = the/an expert's opinion, spacer w lesie = walk/stroll in the woods/forest). In such cases the head noun can often be a gerund or a deverbal noun and thus the phrase mimics a VO word order 2) demonstratives, possessives, ordinal numerals almost always precede the noun; reversing word order is marked 3) attributive adjectives usually precede the noun, especially if they pertain to an opinion or an accidental quality of the head noun. 4) attributive adjectives follow the noun if they pertain to absolutes or essential qualities. If there are two or more essential attributes, one adjective is placed after the noun, the others before. Therefore: 'goryle górskie' (highland gorillas), mitolgia sumeryjska (Sumerian mythology), muzyka ludowa (folk/traditional music). This is a less strict of a rule, sometimes placing the adjective first is preferred (starzy znajomi = old friends/acquaintances) and people will occasionally disagree on which word order sounds more natural. In things like official names and titles the adjective is usually placed after the noun: Filip Macedoński (Phillip of Macedon), Stany Zjednoczone Ameryki (USA), Republika Federalna Niemiec (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) but not always: Islamska Republika Iranu, Zjednoczone Królestwo (the UK) Now, whether this Romance looking word order was influenced by Latin, I can't really tell. It does apper quite early in literature. However, before the Renaissance, there was hardly any literature in Polish to speak of, so who can tell?

[@alaksiejstankievicx]

@@pawel198812 Thanks, it is exactly level of details, I cannot provide for Polish, but can suspect from my native languages perspective. And yep your observation confirms that free-order isn't absolutely free, rather an elastic structure.

[@pawel198812]

@@alaksiejstankievicx Free word/constituent order simply means that every arrangement is grammatically correct and communities the same stare of affairs. It does not mean that every word order has the same value/meaning in discourse. Things like topic-focus-comment structure, tone, modality are all very important, but harder to conceptualize. Is there a framework for that? Relying on exposure and intuition is good and all, but it can only get you so far

[@SethDavisPiano]

I was just about to comment about how Japanese verbs come at the end pretty much always, which I found interesting in how two countries so far apart share grammatical formulas..annnnnd then you mentioned it. 😂 Yet another informative video Poly.

[@NUSORCA]

Half of world’s languages deploy SOV order. Yet the SVO we are most familiar with is no more than 1/3

[@sikoyakoy2376]

My comment is very long but the point of it is this: The word “flexible” to describe word order in many languages may not be that accurate or is not understood properly. It would be more accurate to describe them as having “very variable” word order or something depending on things like emphasis. I actually think that the reason why Latin is called an SOV language is possibly because SOV is the most neutral word order (in terms of emphasis). As a heritage speaker of Tagalog wherein it can be said all word orders have their use even outside of poetry, I am quite confident that it is something like that. Style may be somewhat relevant but I think emphasis and maybe some other things would be more significant to the chosen word order. The best way to gain an intuition for the most suitable word order in a foreign language would probably be to observe authentic material and let your mind naturally and subconsciously learn it, then later on perhaps refine it by reading some explanations. In Tagalog, the appropriate word order/s (in many cases, more than one is appropriate) depends on what is to be emphasised and some word orders may be awkward depending on what is to be emphasised. The most neutral word order in Tagalog is VSO (and maybe also VOS) but even word orders like OSV and OVS have their uses in ordinary speech (Though, I think I read somewhere that the “subject” (S) may be more accurately called the “agent” (a) or something for languages like Tagalog). For this reason, I think the word “flexible” is quite misleading (or misunderstood) and it would be more accurate to say that such languages have “very variable word order” or something depending on emphasis.

[@giannifois8948]

This is one of the coolest things about latin: word order is very flexible, and this is also true for ancient greek (and even modern greek)

[@georgios_5342]

Great job as always Luke. In Greek word order is even freer, this has to do with the case system. Every learner needs to understand this: Latin is a language! It's not code 😅. In actual normal languages, rules are made to be broken.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks! Actually the word order in Ancient Greek is slightly more rigid; the verb does not come at the end quite as much as in Latin though. The article makes word order less free in AG

[@Matt_The_Hugenot]

From Middle English on verbs often occur at the end of a sentence in poetry, whether this was done in imitation of Latin I'm not sure.

[@guillermorivas7819]

Gallia est omnis divisa in tres partes. Toda la Galia está dividida en tres partes. Or Toda la Galia se divide en tres partes.

[@BinkyTheElf1]

Thank you, Luke, for this me showing.

[@garychisholm2174]

you had me at OG Yoda.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Good that is

[@ikbintom]

I would disregard "est" (and maybe also other forms of the copula) when looking at verbs, since it was often phonologically reduced, which might hint at that its syntax was not that of an ordinary verb anymore. There's a reason many languages don't have a copula at all, they're quite likely to first stop being verbs and then sometimes disappear altogether. Of course this did not happen in the evolution of Latin, but it's still something to be wary of.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

This video is mainly a response to those know it all’s who have said that all Latin verbs come at the end.

[@ikbintom]

@@polyMATHY_Luke yes, a good point which I don't dispute of course ;)

[@maatheizzda3751]

I learned from an other ancient indo european language, slavonic, that there is a tendency to use the conjugated verb in the end. However if there are objects that use prepositions, the verb will often be set before the prepositions: I'm at home. - Domū esmi. I'm in my home. - Esmi v domū mī. (Also possible: V domū mī esmi.) Also, if you want to elevate the importance of that word, you set it in the end: I eat bread at home. - Domū hlēb jām. I eat BREAD at home. - Domū jām hlēb. (Or also: Jām domū hlēb.) I eat bread AT HOME. - Hlēb jām domū.

[@madjames1134]

In Portuguese, there is Subject-Verb-Object, but in poetry the verb often goes to the end (verbs are easier to rhyme). Also, when the object is a pronoun, verb goes to the end. To make things more interesting, Portuguese also has some ergative constructions, probably calques from Basque. In these cases, there is no subject at all, only verb and object (like intransitive Basque verbs).

[@shellyharry8189]

I've noticed in English that verbs typically cone at the end of the sentence when one is asking a question.... what are you eating? are you coming? where are you going? what are you doing? how fast was he driving? etc...

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

In interrogative sentences English and German reverse the verb-subject

[@TheMule71]

Well. English is quite strict about the order s - v - o, but you can change it for emphasis. Latin is just a bit more flexible. So verb at the end of the sentence is a general rule, you actually demonstrated it. It applied 85% of the times. With exceptions of course. "Esse" is a good candidate, as you point out, since obviously you tend to stress what someone/something is or who/what is something, rather than 'is'. A simple statement on something being something w/o emphasis is kinda rare. So "esse" is the verb that contributes most to the exceptions: "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres", emphasis is on three. "Gallia omnis divisa in partes tres est" doesn't sound right while "Gallia divisa est" sounds better, because is a plain statement. In the sentence that follows, emphasis is on the name of the people, Belgae, Aquitani, Celtae, "incolunt" not being the point being made, so it doesn't occur at the end. In general, speeches are bad examples of grammar rules, for the very reasons that a much greater frequency of figures of speech is to be expected, compared to everyday speech, and some of them involve violating rules deliberately. We do that in English which is - again - less flexible to begin with. "Gone are the days" instead of the more s-v-o "The days are gone". Does that mean there's no s-v-o rule in English? No, it means people sometimes break the rules on purpose, as a common rhetorical device. When looking at Latin literature, with the purpose of deriving grammar rules, we should pay great attention to what kind of material we're looking at. Is that a speech? a poem? Not the best source of grammar rules, unless, you identify rethorical devices and take them out of the sample. For example take a chiasmus: "io solo combatterò, procomberò sol io". That tells nothing about word order in Italian, since it's altered on purpose to create a figure of speech. I don't agree on Yoda. He doesn't put the verb at the end to imitate Japanese. He isolates the most important words at the beginning and at the end of the sentence, and not necessarily the verb. "Size matters not." "Luminous beings are we" "Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side are they." "Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future." "Hard to see the dark side is." At the extremes in Joda speech are important words. Anyway the point is, in doing statistics on the English language should we use Joda speech as datapoints? Or should we recognise that word order has been altered on purpose for an effect? and thus, in a way, being a confirmation of the rule, rather than an exception? Rule do exist, but we can break them at times, as they are not absolute. Don't we know that only a Sith deals in absolutes?

[@demezon6572]

Both Latin and Polish are indeed extremely flexible. As a speaker of several languages I do enjoy the nearly impossible flexibility of the Polish language a lot. It fosters a certain uniqueness which renders one's writing recognizable even under tens of thousands of speakers. In a way, English developed itself into quite a suitable means of mass communication (McLuhan). English got thoroghly standardized, very firm, algorhythmic to the T. In the process it ossified, got inflexible, devoid of individual style. Meanwhile Polish, Russian, and certainly Latin as well are means of INDIVIDUAL communication. Certainly they can be used for mass information exchange. For example: Cicero's works survived to this day because of their universal appeal. However, they were always guarded by individuals only, by those who deemed Cicero worth preserving. I think there was never a uniform group who thought Latin to be a language of theirs. Take Russian: it did, as a means of mass indoctrination, fail miserably. On the contrary, as a means of poetry (Pushkin, Lermontov) Russian shines to this day, and always will. So, what makes Latin/RU/PL different? What is different there is that each one of the speakers of the Latin or Slavonic (słowo/slovo = word, Slavic = "people who speak" or "people of the word") languages frequently does either inadventerntly or deliberately develop and use his very own linguistic style. All correct, all within the respective corpus linguæ, but all recognizably individual. This is the strength of Latin. Polymathy: I think you know it, too. Cheers.

[@MingoMash]

Rock-solid examples of how variable it can be! I noticed what I think is an error in your video description: you write "exclusively SOV (Subject Verb Object)", so it seems that 'Verb' and 'Object' inside the parentheses should switch places, right? Unless you're just demonstrating how flexible the verb placement can be in latin, hehe!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks! Fixed

[@fraternitas5117]

I'm a patreon supporter. Content like this is why.

[@rtyria]

So what I was taught was that the more basic the sentence is, the more likely it is to follow the general rule of SOV. The exceptions are when the verb is being emphasized, or when the pronoun (verb ending) is the subject. Are there any other exceptions?

[@Glossologia]

'esse' is also usually not used in SOV constructions, and some authors use far less SOV than Caesar or Cicero.

[@jelmar35]

I see the only authors you haven't checked out are Vitruvius and Seneca the Elder. Any particular disdain towards these authors? :P

[@joligej]

Luke, I translated the song Daisy Bell into Latin and was wondering if you would like me to send it to you, so that you can sing it and put it on KZbin. Thank you for responding!

[@dimitrifilonov9707]

Great video! Gratias tibi ago, Luci!

[@tatrankaska2305]

*sad Vitruvius and Seneca Maior noices*

[@value___]

sorry luke, do you know any digital library like the one you showed but for greek authors? thank you, awesome video like always; keep it up!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

TLG

[@value___]

@@polyMATHY_Luke thank you! always love your videos! buona giornata :)

[@odietamo9376]

I wish that when I was studying Latin in high school many years ago that it had been taught like this. I would have learned a lot more a lot faster. After three years I remember little more than frustration and anxiety. I felt I had learned but little. (And I was far from the worst student in the class.) If the school, or the teacher, or who taught the teacher, had started out to design a way of teaching Latin to make it as boring, opaque, and complicated as possible, they couldn’t have done a better job.

[@joffrethegiant]

I think of the meme claiming that if you start translating a Cicero sentence on the morning of December 31st, you'll reach the verb as the New Year is ushered in.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Haha. That’s why I don’t translate

[@raskolnikov9067]

Just like the peculiar German habit of the verb at the end of the sentence place.

[@mmmmmmmmmmmmm]

I wouldn't call something that nearly every Germanic language has peculiar

[@HasufelyArod]

Das stimmt

[@bakters]

One of those times, when it lucky feels, to Polish be.

[@trodat07]

In that aspect and the lack of articles, similar to Korean language Latin is.

[@kalebl.4917]

While Latin grammer is super flexible, are there any word orders that you would consider truly "bad" and hard to read/listen to?

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Not really. There are some formulae

[@rodolfoviegas8504]

Portuguese has SOV and SVO orders, tho some time you can see the OSV one, like: "A água, aquela que tomei".

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

English has that too

[@KC-vq2ot]

For highly inflected languages, like Latin, it is important to understand there are common and special word orders. Think of Russian for a second. It is also a highly inflected language (even moreso than Latin) and it allows for almost arbitrary word sequencing. But, while speaking, 80% will always conform to a standard SVO word order. Sometimes pronouns would be dropped. That's it. Special word order is reserved for special occasions. In fact, if you abuse breaking the common SVO order, you will put a strain on another speaker who will be able to piece together what you say, but it will sound odd and unnatural. Like, compare "я ем торт" -- "I eat a cake" and "торт ем я" -- one of the possibilities (!) "It is I who eats a cake". Meaning is preserved, but it sounds odd to the point of being laughable Latin had SOV in common speech (still preserved as Romance reflexive verbs: Yo me llamo (lit. I me call)), but that order was broken as needed In fact, English also is not as rigid as many people think I give a bone to a dog I give to a dog a bone (I give dog a bone) To a dog I give a bone To a dog a bone I give A bone to a dog I give A bone I give to a dog All 6 are acceptable and correct. Some just sound like something from Shakespeare

[@Romanophonie]

Thanks for the awesome video, Luke! Very informative. Is there any particular style you tend to follow? Or do you just randomly pick word order?

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks! No particular recommendations, other than imitating authors you like

[@urielamauri7633]

In Spanish the most common order is SVO. However, I've also noticed that VSO is used when announcing news (e.g. "Falleció tal persona a los 120 años"); could this be due to Arabic influence by any chance, which also uses VSO?

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Good question. I’ve observed this in trout Romance languages, so I would conjecture it is simply a natural aspect of many of them. Contrary to common belief, Arabic’s influence on Spanish is quite small, especially when it comes to grammar and syntax, which is almost entirely common with broader Romance

[@filippo6157]

I've been thaugt that it's the most used position, but that it's not fixed. Also, in the translations you can see it, the verb is often at the end, but not always

[@CreativeOven]

Ceasar writes very simple O: that is nice...

[@PataponyX]

I wonder why most romance languages today seem to prefer SVO structures. Language evolution is weird sometimes.

[@tylere.8436]

Keep in mind the Romance languages still have traces of SOV through enclitic pronouns, like you would say "te veo" in Spanish and not "veo te".

[@SiddharthS96]

This was really interesting! I guess it's because Latin is such a synthetic language. This is also the case with Sanskrit, where word order is very flexible, despite almost all of its descendants being SOV languages.

[@leonhardeuler7647]

Well, technically, depending on the tone and emphasis in the sentence, you may change the word order in Indo Aryan languages.

[@Anna-mc3ll]

Many thanks!

[@Gorillarevolta]

Does this mean you're doing a Latin dub of Star Wars?

[@epicurius1]

Just a quick question about Cicero and his writings. Something like the Cataline Orations were transcriptions (polished ones, at least) of speeches, while his letters to Atticus were private correspondence. Do we see differences in things like word order and so on in the speeches, where's he's deliberately adopting an oratorical style versus a more casual style when he's writing to a friend?

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Same type of syntax

[@davidecorda7392]

In sardinian language we still have this tendency, even when we speak in italian. It's not uncommon hearing sentences like 'Andato ci sei?' or 'Il pane portato me l'hai?', and, as it happens for latin, everyone in Italy is convinced we end every sentences with a verb as a fixed rule, even if is not like that.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Well said

[@Glossologia]

Does it only happen with auxiliary verbs (essere and avere) or also with main verbs?

[@davidecorda7392]

@@Glossologia As far as I can tell there's no difference between auxiliary and main verbs, even if I'm sure that there's some hidden rule that sometimes allows this phenomenon and sometimes prevents it. What I know for sure is that the speaker wants to put more emphasis on the first words of the sentence and less in the last ones.

[@karlcarlsen9664]

But also when the rule isn't totally strict it is certaintly helpfull to say: first look at the end of the scentence. Also one question i am not sure, because i have love for Latin but kind of like Karl the Great loved reading, aren't irregular verbs specaily esse but also ire, ferre etc. a specail case when it comes to the positioning in the sentence also? Edit: okay you adressed it.

[@spellandshield]

Gloria tecum sit, magnus magister lingae latinae!

[@PHILOLAVS]

Sounds beautiful when you put the verb at the end, but it’s not a rule

[@JRJohnson1701]

Is there a general rule for where to place the verb? Does it change for subordinate clauses, direct/indirect speech, subjunctive /optative, etc?

[@ardentspy]

Yes. Place it at the end. You are not Cicero.

[@petelobl]

This is very interesting - thanks! Is there a reason all? Romance languages abandoned that Latin word order and associated declensions? I imagine Vulgar Latin must’ve begun that process and brought it far along… guess it’s just how languages develop or change over time.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

I have a video coming out soon about this. It’s about the invention of the article.

[@carmensavu5122]

Very interesting. I find verb-final to be funny, but not nearly as funny as verb-second. I was learning Norwegian, which is pretty much verb-second across the board, except in questions. We were taking a test, and me being used to relatively free order and SVO, I wrote my page-long essay at the end of the test with all the verbs in the wrong place. Then, at the end, I was like oh crap, verb second! And then arrows, arrows, arrows! And when I told this tale to an esteemed linguist colleague, he said I should have taken all the verbs and put them after the first sentence! The mock V2 parameter! lmfao.

[@strafrag1]

This is how German scribes began putting verbs at the end in subordinate clauses. They, after all, were translating Latin works.

[@milanfanas]

I've watched a few videos of people speaking latin on YT and I've noticed most of them make use of a SVO structure. I wonder if ancient romans were speaking that way and writing differently or oral and written production were similar in ordering the words. What I can say it's that Lithuanian language is much more difficult to read rather than to listen to since they tend to overcomplicate sentence structure. Informal spoken language is often SVO.

[@ardentspy]

Romans almost certainly predominantly used SOV just like other IE languages at the time. Cicero would have simply sounded weird to listeners if he insisted on writing the way he spoke. Caesar was writing for a less high-flown audience so his writing much more closely reflects what you'd expect.

[@Kenboss-nv6ey]

love the videos!

[@Domciskas]

We have that in Lithuanian too although most people who know English prefer SVO unless they want to point something out or put emphasis on a specific part of the sentence. Just Indo-European things I guess 😎

[@RobertRanieri]

So clear

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Grazie, papà!

[@angelb.823]

So, it depends on the context and the usage of a verb in the context of a sentence (e.s. the verb "sum"), or it has many exceptions depending on the situation?

[@Hand-in-Shot_Productions]

Often wrong, the myths are? I found this video informative! I didn't know just how flexible Latin is! For the video, thanks!

[@TheStickCollector]

A

[@michaelheliotis5279]

Someone asked this in my uni Latin class. The instructor told us that the verb is generally preferred to end the sentence in prose writing unless there's some reason, such as emphasis, to move it earlier in the sentence, but then that all goes out the window when you read poetry, where the meter is usually the primary governor of verb placement for all but the most skilled of poets who can occasionally accomplish both at once. I have yet to identify these poets. 😂😂😂

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Not really. The syntax in Latin is extremely flexible by nature, not just in poetry. Poetry can leverage that flexibility quite a bit, but it’s not something unnatural to the language

[@Cyclonus2377]

Off-topic question, but one I figured you might be able to answer... Is it true that the letters μ and ν are actually pronounced "mi" and "ni," in Modern Greek? As opposed to "mu" and "nu" in Ancient Greek? I sat in on a lesson on Modern Greek, and during the spelling portion the student was pronouncing those letters as such. Which caught my ear.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Yup, actually in Classical thru Koine varieties of AG they should be pronounced /my:/ and /ny:/. The vowel υ > /i/ in all dialects by the 20th century, a process which started a few hundred years ago.

[@Glossologia]

In the earliest forms of Greek from ~3000 years ago or more, the vowel υ was pronounced [u]. By Homeric Greek it had begun shifting, probably to [ʉ], which is the vowel a scottish person would pronounce in the word 'food' or 'good'. By classical Greek it was fully fronted to [y], like the French 'u' in 'lune' or the Turkish 'ü'. Starting around a thousand years ago, this sound then began to lose its rounding and merge with /i/. This of course started in some dialects and eventually spread to almost all dialects, with the last dialect to preserve the /y/ sound dying out in the 20th century. That said, some dialects took the /y/ sound and split it into /ju/ (sort of like the English word 'you'), and this pronunciation still exists today.