How do you ask how someone is feeling in Latin

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Jim Bryan
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How do you ask how someone is feeling in Latin

Post by Jim Bryan »

I know words for some feelings, miser, tristis, iratus, timidus, laetus etc. But how do you ask how someone is feeling? This is a typical question after a reading in English.
How did the girl feel when the witch locked her up in the tower? I'm looking for some questions and answers in reasonably easy Latin. (Maybe the ancients didn't ask this sort of question? Or maybe I'm stuck in an English idiom?)
Thank you
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Re: How do you ask how someone is feeling in Latin

Post by Carolus Raeticus »

Hello Jim,

I suggest that you have look at John C. Traupman's Conversational Latin for Oral Proficiency. Some examples:
  • How are you doing?--Quid agis?
  • How are you?--Ut vales?
  • How are you?--Quî vales?
Vale,

Carolus Raeticus
Sperate miseri, cavete felices.

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Barry Hofstetter
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Re: How do you ask how someone is feeling in Latin

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Jim Bryan wrote: Sat Nov 23, 2019 6:44 am I know words for some feelings, miser, tristis, iratus, timidus, laetus etc. But how do you ask how someone is feeling? This is a typical question after a reading in English.
How did the girl feel when the witch locked her up in the tower? I'm looking for some questions and answers in reasonably easy Latin. (Maybe the ancients didn't ask this sort of question? Or maybe I'm stuck in an English idiom?)
Thank you
Jacobulus
So what you are really asking is how to ask about the individual's emotional evaluation of the current state of affairs. I'm not sure you are going to find anything quite of that nature. What you do see are general questions about the state of affairs themselves. So a line from the Colloquia (which contain a lot of interesting greetings):

Quomodo res tuae? Omnia bene?

Now, this is just speculation, so take it cum grano salis, but I think questions about feelings reflect popular current conceptions of psychology. A question I've never seen in any ancient literature is "How does that make you feel?" It's my impression that the ancients viewed emotions more as actions, or as reactions in response to circumstances, and not so much an internal state. You are talking about people who were quite willing literally to deify Ira and Amor... But having said this, I think the closest to "emotion" that we get in Latin is motus animi, although it can refer to any kind of mental activity as much as "feeling," and motus by itself in such a context usually has the connotation of disturbance. Maybe something like "Cum maga eam in turrim includeret, qui motus animi puellam ceperunt? Quae egit?"
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Re: How do you ask how someone is feeling in Latin

Post by Hylander »

quomodo palpas?

digitis.
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Re: How do you ask how someone is feeling in Latin

Post by Jim Bryan »

Thank you everyone
I think there are a few problems in what I was asking.
1 In English we have the "meaningless do" as in "Do you have a hat?", all the other European languages ask "have you a hat" (except English, Welsh and Cornish). I think we sometimes us a "meaningless feeling". Sometimes we ask "How are you feeling?" When "How are you? would mean the same thing.
2 I think we are much more interested in emotions (feelings) than previous ages. I can't think of any one asking how someone feels in the Bible. They may ask "Why are you angry?" or comment that someone is angry, or sad.
So I recon Quid agis? Ut valēs, Quī valēs? Quid tibi est? (What's the mater?) quō animō tulit? (How did he take it?)
"Quomodo se habet/habuit ______________," which can not only be asked for people, but also body parts. 'Quomodo sē habet pes tuus hodie?' 'Pes male sē habet...' (Familia Romana) and others
The answer to most of these could be health, a situation or a feeling.

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Barry Hofstetter
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Re: How do you ask how someone is feeling in Latin

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Jim Bryan wrote: Mon Nov 25, 2019 9:33 am Thank you everyone
I think there are a few problems in what I was asking.
1 In English we have the "meaningless do" as in "Do you have a hat?", all the other European languages ask "have you a hat" (except English, Welsh and Cornish). I think we sometimes us a "meaningless feeling". Sometimes we ask "How are you feeling?" When "How are you? would mean the same thing.
It's not meaningless. It's the modal of choice in English when asking information questions using transitive verbs. It's a bit like using -ne for the construction in Latin, not absolutely necessary, but idiomatic and preferred. We can say things like "Have you any scones today" when we walk into the restaurant, but it sounds distinctly old fashioned or literary.
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Re: How do you ask how someone is feeling in Latin

Post by seneca2008 »

Jim Bryan wrote: I think we are much more interested in emotions (feelings) than previous ages.
Barry Hofstetter wrote:A question I've never seen in any ancient literature is "How does that make you feel?" It's my impression that the ancients viewed emotions more as actions, or as reactions in response to circumstances, and not so much an internal state.
The first word of the Iliad is "μῆνιν" and it starts an obsession with emotions which continues to our own time! (how about Burton's anatomy of melancholy as a way point en route?)

Whilst this question may never be explicitly asked it is implicit in Tragedy both by the Greeks and Seneca. It's clearly in Medea's mind as she taunts Jason at the end of her eponymous tragedy or Atreus Thyestes (we certainly know how Seneca's Atreus feels: "Aequalis Astris gradior et cunctos super/ altum superbo vertice attingens polum. 885-6 ( Peer of the stars I stride, out-topping all, my proud head reaching to the lofty sky. Fitch)

Seneca was of course enormously interested in emotions. In his brand of stoicism emotions are "wrong (perhaps deceptive) judgements". They were of course mental acts. The fear of death was one of his favourite topics and that surely is "an internal state" as opposed to say fear when confronted with an armed assailant (although even when confronted with real imminent slaughter S. counsels us to regard the fear as illusory. He provided an exemplar of this in the way he approached his own forced suicide.)

There is an enormous literature on ancient emotions. "The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature" by David Konstan 2006 has a bibliography which could be a starting point. Indeed the Bryn Mawr review http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2006/2006-07-69.html recommends it as "now the single best historical and theoretical introduction to the topic coming out of classical studies.." There is no doubt more recent work but this would be a good start.
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: How do you ask how someone is feeling in Latin

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

seneca2008 wrote: Mon Nov 25, 2019 6:50 pm
The first word of the Iliad is "μῆνιν" and it starts an obsession with emotions which continues to our own time! (how about Burton's anatomy of melancholy as a way point en route?)

Whilst this question may never be explicitly asked it is implicit in Tragedy both by the Greeks and Seneca. It's clearly in Medea's mind as she taunts Jason at the end of her eponymous tragedy or Atreus Thyestes (we certainly know how Seneca's Atreus feels: "Aequalis Astris gradior et cunctos super/ altum superbo vertice attingens polum. 885-6 ( Peer of the stars I stride, out-topping all, my proud head reaching to the lofty sky. Fitch)

Seneca was of course enormously interested in emotions. In his brand of stoicism emotions are "wrong (perhaps deceptive) judgements". They were of course mental acts. The fear of death was one of his favourite topics and that surely is "an internal state" as opposed to say fear when confronted with an armed assailant (although even when confronted with real imminent slaughter S. counsels us to regard the fear as illusory. He provided an exemplar of this in the way he approached his own forced suicide.)

There is an enormous literature on ancient emotions. "The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature" by David Konstan 2006 has a bibliography which could be a starting point. Indeed the Bryn Mawr review http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2006/2006-07-69.html recommends it as "now the single best historical and theoretical introduction to the topic coming out of classical studies.." There is no doubt more recent work but this would be a good start.
Seneca noster, this is a wonderful response, and all true, but neither does it contradict the idea that the ancients conceptualized emotions differently than we do. I mean, how could they not? But perhaps Konstan and others disagree, and regardless I'm sure provide a wealth of interesting information on the subject, and I'm certainly willing to have my impressions challenged and corrected. The original question was about "feelings" in general and how to inquire about them. How you feel about that?
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Re: How do you ask how someone is feeling in Latin

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Barry Hofstetter wrote:Seneca noster, this is a wonderful response, and all true, but neither does it contradict the idea that the ancients conceptualized emotions differently than we do. I mean, how could they not?
Of course I think there is a measure of agreement amongst those that study this topic that emotions, like much else, is in part, at least, a social construct. The way you put it here though suggests to me that you think there are "emotions" which can be talked about in a trans historical way but that the ancients thought ("conceptualised") about them differently. (In a sense that is of course a natural departure point for study). I think that what the Greeks (for example) meant by "emotion" is rather different from what we might mean. As Konstan says in explaining why the Greeks didn't think that animals and small children had emotions “The Greeks did not conceive of emotions as internal states of excitation. Rather, the emotions are elicited by our interpretation of the words, acts, and intentions of others, each in its characteristic way.” p.15 So it's not really comparing like with like.

I can see we could get bogged down in hermeneutics here (Not to mention the problem of Horizontverschmelzung) but I wanted to post something to say that the only assertion I was speaking against was that the ancient were less interested in "emotion" than we are and that they didn't think about how actions/words made other people feel (think rhetoric which is mainly concerned with this).
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: How do you ask how someone is feeling in Latin

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

seneca2008 wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2019 12:13 am
Of course I think there is a measure of agreement amongst those that study this topic that emotions, like much else, is in part, at least, a social construct. The way you put it here though suggests to me that you think there are "emotions" which can be talked about in a trans historical way but that the ancients thought ("conceptualised") about them differently. (In a sense that is of course a natural departure point for study). I think that what the Greeks (for example) meant by "emotion" is rather different from what we might mean. As Konstan says in explaining why the Greeks didn't think that animals and small children had emotions “The Greeks did not conceive of emotions as internal states of excitation. Rather, the emotions are elicited by our interpretation of the words, acts, and intentions of others, each in its characteristic way.” p.15 So it's not really comparing like with like.
What I actually said:
egoipsedixi wrote:
It's my impression that the ancients viewed emotions more as actions, or as reactions in response to circumstances, and not so much an internal state.
Which to me seems to be saying the same thing as Konstan.
I can see we could get bogged down in hermeneutics here (Not to mention the problem of Horizontverschmelzung) but I wanted to post something to say that the only assertion I was speaking against was that the ancient were less interested in "emotion" than we are and that they didn't think about how actions/words made other people feel (think rhetoric which is mainly concerned with this).
I certainly didn't say they were less interested, but sure.
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Re: How do you ask how someone is feeling in Latin

Post by seneca2008 »

Barry thanks for your post. You are not the only person I was replying to, you are forgetting the OP's contention "I think we are much more interested in emotions (feelings) than previous ages" which is what prompted me to post something.

There is a difference between what you wrote:

" that the ancients viewed emotions more as actions, or as reactions in response to circumstances, and not so much an internal state."

and Konstan "The Greeks did not conceive of emotions as internal states of excitation. "

Clearly emotions are internal states. You may have meant what Konstan says but it isn't what I understood from your words.

Seneca regarded emotions as "incorrect judgements" ie as a species of thought which is "an internal state".

I think that others reading this thread who don't know much about Greek and Roman "emotions" should bear in mind that there was no unified view of emotions in what we have loosely called "the ancient world". For example Seneca (again) thought of the mind (soul) as a unified whole and rejected the Platonic tripartite model. Thus his account of emotions is somewhat different.
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: How do you ask how someone is feeling in Latin

Post by Paul Derouda »

I have zero competence in Latin, so I'm mostly trolling here. I hope the OP will forgive me! This thread has some similarities with this thread: viewtopic.php?f=22&t=69514, which deals with the question of how the ancients viewed their emotions.

But what does English "how are you?" actually mean? I ask this because there are cultural differences that even today are not too evident. I'm a Finnish physician, I work at present in a lab setting but I used to be a general practitioner. One day this American man steps into my office, 40 or 50 years old. We knew each other passingly since he'd consulted me once before. After I call him in, he says (in English) "Hi Paul, how are you?".

This made me very surprised for a fraction of a second. My first mental reaction was something like "I'm the doctor, I ask the questions!" (I didn't say that of course!) In Finland nobody ever asks their doctor how they are, and certainly not a doctor whom they are only seeing for the second time. Not that people don't care about their doctor's wellbeing, but there's a difference in that (to exaggerate a bit) in the US "how are you?" is more like a greeting, while in Finland it's an actual question that expects a actual answer. What I mean is that if someone asks you that in Finland, it's more socially acceptable than in the US to start a long rant about how overworked you are, how your knees hurt, how constipated you are and how your marriage isn't going too well. Nobody wants to hear that sort of thing from their doctor and no doctor in their right mind would tell it to their patient, and for that reason, nobody asks such a question. Anyway, after 0.2 seconds reflection I understood that this was a cultural thing and that this American guy was just being polite, not nosy about his doctor's private life. So I gave him the expected answer: "I'm fine thanks, how are you?"

I know this is not very closely related to the original post, but just to illustrate that the question isn't as simple as it seems.

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Re: How do you ask how someone is feeling in Latin

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Relevant (to Paul's story about greeting doctors, if not this board):

Σχολαστικὸς ἰδὼν τὸν κατὰ συνήθειαν αὐτοῦ ἰατρὸν ἐρχόμενον περιεστέλλετο αὐτῷ ὀφθῆναι. ἐπερωτηθεὶς δὲ παρά τινος αὐτοῦ ἑταίρου, διὰ τί αὐτὸ ποιεῖ, ἀπεκρίθη· Πολὺς χρόνος ἐστὶν ἀφ’ οὗ οὐκ ἐνόσησα, καὶ ἐντρέπομαι αὐτόν.

This version of the joke works a little better though (for me), and explains the ἐντρέπομαι of the first (to me):

Σχολαστικὸς ἰατρὸν συναντήσας ὑπὸ τοῖχον ἐκρύβη. τινὸς δὲ πυθομένου τὴν αἰτίαν ἔφη· Καιρὸν ἔχω μὴ ἀσθενήσας καὶ αἰσχύνομαι εἰς ὄψιν ἐλθεῖν τοῦ ἰατροῦ.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

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