Latin Conjunctions and How to Use Them

Latin Conjunctions and How to Use Them In Latin and in English, conjunctions are words that join other words together. The very word conjunction means join together: con  with   junct...  (from  iungo) join. The most common conjunctions in English are and, but, and or. And is used to join any two parts of a sentence together. But is an adversative, and contrasts parts of a sentence. Or may be referred to as a disjunction and means different things depending on whether it is being used informally or mathematically/logically. Latin Conjunctions Latin has comparable conjunctions, but it has more of them. The basic conjunctions in Latin are: et,-que,sed,at/ac,atquenec,neque,velaut. The Latin Conjunction And To translate the English and you would use the Latin  et  if you wanted the conjunction to be a separate and independent word, and  -que  if you wanted a conjunction that is added to the end of the second conjoined object. In the following, the  bolded  forms are the conjunctions. arma virumque  canoarms and the man I singvsarma  et  virum canowhich doesnt fit the hexameter meter Vergil needed in the Aeneid, but means the same thing. There are other words for and like  ac  or  atque. These can be used, like  et ... et, in pairs as correlative conjunctions to mean both ... and. The Latin Conjunction But The Latin for but is  sed  or  at vera dico,  sed  nequicquam....I speak the truth, but in vain.... The Latin Conjunction Or The Latin for the correlative conjunction either ... or is  vel ... vel  or  aut ... aut. Aut  or  vel  can also be used singly for or. the negative is  nec ... nec  or  neque ... nequemeaning neither ... nor.  Nec  or  Neque  used singly means (and) not.  Vel  and  autmay be described as disjunctions. An aside, the use of v to stand for or in symbolic logic comes from the Latin word  vel. Coordinating Conjunctions A coordinating conjunction is one that pairs a set of equally ranked words, phrases, clauses, or sentences. ac - andat - butatque - and, and also, moreoveraut - oret - andnec non - and besidessed - butvel - or Pairs of Conjunctions (Correlative) Correlative conjunctions are terms that are pairs of equal objects: atque ... atque - both ... andaut ... aut - either ... oret ... et - both ... andnec ... et - not only ... but alsonec ... nec - neither ... nor Subordinating Conjunctions Subordinating conjunctions are words that compare an independent clause to a dependent clause: the dependent clause cannot stand on its own, but rather delimits the main part of a sentence. antequam - beforecum - when, whenever, since, becausedum - while, if only, so long as, untilsi - ifusque - untilut - while, as Sources Moreland, Floyd L., and Fleischer, Rita M. Latin: An Intensive Course. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.Traupman, John C. The Bantam New College Latin English Dictionary. Third Edition. New York: Bantam Dell, 2007.