Could someone who knows "fix" this latin snippet for me?

[Tsyr]

My latin never really got above "page through a dictionary" level, I'm afraid... So could someone who's latin is better than mine correct this phrase for me? It's the title of a rather important book for tonight's game.

codex ex spiritus ex lunaris

I intended it to say "Book of the moon-spirit", but I think I mauled... well... just about every part of it, knowing my luck with latin.

 

[Henry]

My Latin is as rusty as an old gate-hinge, but I believe it's

codex ex spiriti lunae

for a very rough pronunciation guide:

KO-dex ex SPEER-ee-tee LOON-eye


The spirit and the "moon" adjective should both be genitive case. "Of the (moon) spirit."

this link may also help you with your future endeavors:

http://www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/languages/classical/latin/tchmat/grammar/s-gram1.pdf

It jogged my memory quite well - I think.

 

[drquestion]

Originally posted by Henry:
My Latin is as rusty as an old gate-hinge, but I believe it's

codex ex spiriti lunae

for a very rough pronunciation guide:

KO-dex ex SPEER-ee-tee LOON-eye


The spirit and the "moon" adjective should both be genitive case. "Of the (moon) spirit."

This is actually incorrect, Henry. You need to use "de" instead of "ex" as the preposition. That's the normal convention for Latin book titles. Also, both de and ex take the ablative, not the genitive (I don't know how much it matters to you, Henry, but you have the genitive for spiritus wrong, too., Spiritus is fourth declension, so the genitive is spiritus, with a long u. You probaly also want to use the adjective form of luna, which is lunaris)

So, taking all that into consideration, you probably want something like this, Tyr:

Liber de spiritu lunari

You probably want liber instead of codex, as liber is the word that means "book" in the abstract sense of a longer, written work, and was the word most often used in titles of this sort. Codex can mean book, too, but usually refers to a book as a physical object. So, unless you want to emphasize that the Book of the Moon Spirit is actually a book, as in something with a cover, a binding, and a bunch of sheets of paper inside, rather than, say, a collection of scrolls, you should use liber.

Other than that, it's just a matter of using the right preposition and putting the noun and adjective in the right case.

drquestion

edit: Henry beat me to it, so I added a response to him

 

[Henry]

rustier than I thought, I guess.

thanks, Drquestion! And why I didn't think of "liber" is beyond me - too fixated on direct translation, I guess.

One question though, for my own curiosity:

I thought we are talking genitive case, instead of ablative and using "de", which I always thought meant "of" in the sense of "from."

 

[DanMcS]

My latin never really got above "page through a dictionary" level, I'm afraid... So could someone who's latin is better than mine correct this phrase for me? It's the title of a rather important book for tonight's game.

codex ex spiritus ex lunaris

I intended it to say "Book of the moon-spirit", but I think I mauled... well... just about every part of it, knowing my luck with latin.

By 'of', do you mean, a possesion of (Book belonging to the moon spirit) or referring to (Book about the moon spirit). What you've got now is pretty much "The book from the spirit from the moon", but more grammatically wrong than that

The book belonging to the moon spirit would be Liber Animi Lunari.
The book about the moon spirit would be Liber de Animo Lunare. Something like those, I like animus more than spiritus for the type of spirit you seem to be implying.

 

[Tsyr]

Re: Re: Could someone who knows "fix" this latin snippet for me?

By 'of', do you mean, a possesion of (Book belonging to the moon spirit) or referring to (Book about the moon spirit). What you've got now is pretty much "The book from the spirit from the moon", but more grammatically wrong than that

The book belonging to the moon spirit would be Liber Animi Lunari.
The book about the moon spirit would be Liber de Animo Lunare. Something like those, I like animus more than spiritus for the type of spirit you seem to be implying.

The first is the meaning I want... It's supposed to be a spellbook penned by a celestial, long ago, who is known only by her writings as the "moon spirit".

 

[drquestion]

Originally posted by DanMcS:
I like animus more than spiritus for the type of spirit you seem to be implying.

I disagree, Dan. Animus means "mind" or "rational soul," or even "consciousness." It's not something that's separate from a body. Anima could mean a separate soul, so you could say Liber de anima lunari, but I think I still like spiritus better. Spiritus is the word used to refer to the Christian Holy Spirit, for example, which seems to me to be along the lines of what Tsyr wants.

drquestion

 

[Tsyr]

You probably want liber instead of codex, as liber is the word that means "book" in the abstract sense of a longer, written work, and was the word most often used in titles of this sort. Codex can mean book, too, but usually refers to a book as a physical object. So, unless you want to emphasize that the Book of the Moon Spirit is actually a book, as in something with a cover, a binding, and a bunch of sheets of paper inside, rather than, say, a collection of scrolls, you should use liber.

I was debating liber vs. codex... I chose "codex" because it's refering to (well, actualy, it's the title of) one specific book, but perhaps I got my usage wrong there. I had grand total of about a month of latin class, the rest is all from dictionaries, so my latin is horrid, as you noticed

 

[DanMcS]

I disagree, Dan. Animus means "mind" or "rational soul," or even "consciousness." It's not something that's separate from a body. Anima could mean a separate soul, so you could say Liber de anima lunari, but I think I still like spiritus better. Spiritus is the word used to refer to the Christian Holy Spirit, for example, which seems to me to be along the lines of what Tsyr wants.

Yeah, I was wrong, he's talking about a real critter, the spirit that wrote it, I thought it was a metaphorical title, a book about the heart of the moon or something.

 

[drquestion]

Originally posted by Tsyr:
I was debating liber vs. codex... I chose "codex" because it's refering to (well, actualy, it's the title of) one specific book, but perhaps I got my usage wrong there.

There's nothing gramatically wrong with using codex, Tsyr. It's just much more common to see liber in the title of Latin books. When something's has "codex" in the title, in my experience, it's normally a collection of some sort, typically a legal collection.