quick Latin question! (also editing. SO MUCH editing)

[edenfalling]

I just realized I forgot to ask for editing advice about this specifically, whoops. Ah well, better late than never?

So okay, there is one point in the remaining unpublished sections of "Secrets" wherein a person is stopping and counteracting a bit of malfunctioning magic. The words I used are "finite, pace, dormare," -- the intention is roughly, "cut it out, calm down, go to sleep," or more formally, "stop, pacify (yourself), sleep."

I don't speak or write Latin, though, so while these may be the right general verbs (I hope, anyway), I am fairly sure I screwed up something about tenses or conjugations or whatever. (Latin, why so complicated???)

If you know Latin, please take pity on me and tell me how to correctly say what I am trying to say.

I fling myself upon the goodwill of the internet!

ETA: Finite is taken straight from HP canon, as in "finite incantatem." lady_songsmith and animus_wyrmis both suggested quiesce for the "calm down" part, which sounds awesome to me. Thank you! I do not know the difference in nuance between dormire (imp. dormi?) and domo (imp. doma?), so any further advice would be greatly appreciated.

(Note: these commands are addressed to a single inanimate enchanted object that was activated by accident.)

ETA2: Thank you, via_ostiense! My three words are now officially finite, quiesce, dormi.

You are all wonderful and I am very, very grateful. :-D

---------------

I have both beta responses back and am busily adjusting stuff in response to corrections and suggestions, btw. This means that, following my pattern of posting one chapter per day to AO3 -- today is ch. 12 ("Into the Dark," aka hello there, Chamber of Secrets that we won't actually see until ch. 13 because, you know, possession) -- chapter 15 and the epilogue will go up on both AO3 and ff.net on Saturday. So exciting!

I am posting ch. 15 ("Open Doors") and the epilogue ("Isis Alone") together because the last paragraphs of ch. 15 feel so conclusively like an ending that if I don't have the epilogue right there for readers to segue into, I think the idea of the story continuing may wrong-foot readers. Which is why I waited to get ch. 15 edited until I'd finished writing the epilogue as well. They are really kind of part A and part B of a single final chapter, but the setting changes so drastically -- from Great Britain to Egypt -- and the characters involved are so different -- yes, this does mean Bill and Charlie! -- that I wanted the separation to acknowledge that shift.

...

Saturday is July 27th. I posted the first chapter of "Secrets" on FictionAlley back on May 22nd, 2002. So it will have taken me eleven years, two months, and not quite one week to finish this story. Also about 157,000 words, holy shit. That is more than twice as long as "The Way of the Apartment Manager," which up 'til now has been my only finished novel.

I mean, I knew from the word go that "Secrets" would be a novel, and probably a long one at that. I think I was figuring about twelve chapters and 100,000 words, but I had to chop both ch. 6 and ch. 14 in half (thus creating ch. 7 and ch. 15) and I tacked on an epilogue... which, come to think of it, would only make fifteen chapters. I am not sure where the sixteenth came from. *hands* It is a mystery! But still. A lot of words, a lot of work, a lot of world-building, and way more discussion of ethics and prejudice and the differences between guilt and responsibility than I'd expected. Plus an excess of italics and a lot of commas and ellipses that were, in retrospect, very weirdly placed. (I have been attempting to weed the worst of those out as I cross-post.)

I lost the thread of this post at some point. That keeps happening to me when I try to put my feelings about finishing "Secrets" into coherent words. It's been too big an albatross for too much of my life to really see it clear and whole just yet. Maybe by Christmas I'll have some perspective.

But right now, I have things to edit. So I will go do that. Because editing is good for the soul. :-)

Comments

[jjhunter]

I can whip out the Latin present imperatives you're looking for if you tell me whether one or multiple people are being so commanded.

[edenfalling]

One inanimate object!

[animus_wyrmis]

My Latin's pretty rusty but I will give it a shot!

For domo:
Singular: doma
Plural: domite

For "to stop," I think desiste/desistite, to leave off, desist from.

For "to calm down" I think maybe you want quiesco? The imperatives for that are quiesce/quiescite, rest, keep quiet

[edenfalling]

Yes, quiesce seems to be what I am looking for. Thank you!

Question: is domo (presumably the infinitive form? with doma the singular imperative?) the verb "to sleep" or is it the verb "to fall asleep/go to sleep"? Because I want the latter, but I don't know if they are different words in Latin, or if the concepts are distinguished by helping verbs (as they sometimes are in English), and have no way to tell them apart on my own. :-/

[via_ostiense]

Dormire (imperative dormi) means to fall or be asleep.

Domo (first person present indicative singular; domare is the infinitive) means to tame, crush, subdue.

[edenfalling]

Thank you!

[animus_wyrmis]

Omg, that is so embarrassing, thank you for the correction. I am sure of the others, though!

Dormi/dormite are the correct imperatives. From my dictionary it looks like dormio is "to rest, sleep," but I'm not sure about a verb for *falling* asleep. Maybe obdormio? That can be falling asleep, but can sometimes also mean death. It looks like Cicero has used it for sleep, though. Hmmm.

[animus_wyrmis]

Also, re: your comment to Song, I bet the joke about addressing a table involved the noun, not the verb -- in Latin there are specific noun forms depending on the use, as Song says, and the vocative, which is used for direct address, can be especially annoying because it tends to get forgotten until you have to write it out for a quiz. /bitter

[via_ostiense]

Lewis and Short don't cite an example of dormi being used in the imperative, but it says that it means fall asleep. Given that it's persisted in Romance languages ("a dormir!" = "go to bed/sleep!" in Spanish), I'd stick with dormi. L&S says that obdormisco is "rare but [used in]" Classical Latin, which means that usage is probs just Cicero being Cicero.

ETA: re: "pace" -- Pace is a noun, not a verb, so quiesce is definitely better.

ETA2: Actually, Quiesce could be better for "fall asleep!", per Lewis & Short, again.

ETA3: Nm--L&S says quiesce is used more in the sense of "stop doing [verb]!", in the imperative: "B. Neutr., to cease, leave off, desist from any thing: quiesce hanc rem modo petere, Plaut. Most. 5, 2, 51"

[edenfalling]

I think every language has its particular impossible quirks when you are learning it academically rather than by osmosis in childhood. *is still kind of bitter about German adjective endings*

[edenfalling]

Cicero being Cicero. He liked to coin words, I take it?

Thank you for the links; they are very interesting.

[animus_wyrmis]

Cicero is kind of the worst/best. :(

Of course all the Latin discussion might be kind of beside the point? JKR tended to use it more as inspiration than actual grammar, so you're probably fine whatever you pick as long as it sounds right.

[jjhunter]

And I wake up to see you've already been taken care of. :o)

[edenfalling]

Sleep is so inconvenient... *wry*

[via_ostiense]

Not so much coin words as write in a highly eloquent fashion that is occasionally more complicated than it needs to be, complete with highfaluting diction.

[via_ostiense]

JKR tended to use it more as inspiration than actual grammar

ahahaha, so true.

[lady_songsmith]

Re: Latin, I assume you want the imperative? 'pace' is a noun, peace. The infinitve for 'pacify' is pacere so the imperative is 'paca' but it's not reflexive, you'd be ordering them to go pacify something, you'd need, I think it's te in this case -- te paca.

You might do better with residere - sit down; settle; abate; subside, quieten down -- imperative form 'reside'. Other options: tranquilla (tranquillare: calm, quiet), quiesce (quiescere: rest, keep quiet/calm, be at peace/rest; be inactive/neutral; permit; sleep)

And the imperative for dormire is dormi. Finite is fine as it is. :)

[edenfalling]

Oooh, quiesce sounds good. And yes, these are commands so they would be imperatives.

One further question: does it matter that these words are addressed to an inanimate object rather than to a person? (I have a vague memory of reading something where a person learning Latin complained about having to memorize a special form for, essentially, addressing a table as an object of an ode or something along those lines. Which may have just been grumbling for effect, but I have no frame of reference to distinguish joke-complexities from real ones, alas!)

[lady_songsmith]

I don't recall any such rule... there's a difference in form for things like the ablative ('he was hit by the man' and 'he was hit by the rock' take different constructions) but I'm pretty sure that the imperative has no odd cases. Hm. Latin poets do it enough, let's see what I can dig up to check.... Catullus addresses water and a city with the standard imperative. *shrug*