Quote:
Originally Posted by Rizla
@Pulpmeister
Well said. And well said, again.
I knew these rules were wrong, but your details on the causes (i.e. Latin) I didn't know.
You state that Latin is insensitive to word order. I thought Latin was big on cases (word order) in order to change meaning (like German). But then, my understanding of Latin-derived languages is that they don't seem to use cases, so I imagine you're right. I read a primer on Latin once, which is where I got the (mistaken?) idea.
It's sort of fun and scary to see the ensconced grammarians on writing forums speak with great authority on grammar, when clearly they don't have a clue what they're talking about.
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It has been a long, lo-ooo-ong time since I took high school Latin, but Latin doesn't depend on word order for meaning.
"Amo te." and "Te amo." mean the same thing (I'm pretty sure) -- "I love you." Since "Amo" is the active, indicative, first person singular, present tense form of the verb that means "love," and "te" is the second person, singular pronoun in the accusative case (it receives the action of the verb, whether it precedes or follows that verb) that means "you."
I'm working off memory here, and leaving myself wide open to correction/ridicule.
I say this knowing that Mr. Cork, my old high school Latin teacher, and Jesuit drop-out, is watching me from somewhere.