truepenny: artist's rendering of Sidneyia inexpectans (mfu: ik-geek)
[personal profile] truepenny
For, lo, my Latin is woefully rusty, and I never really got the hang of either imperatives (especially in the negative) or the nuances of translating that handy little English verb "do":

How would you say "Don't do that!" in Latin? Ciceronian or medieval, I don't care which. "That" is the action of turning on the lights. Singular addressee, and I honestly don't know if it should be formal or familiar, since the speaker is a necromantic construct who has been stalking my protagonist and has designs on his body. ("Designs" as in "Oh what lovely and available real estate!" not as in carnality worthy of the Marquis de Sade.)

[Nota bene: Please, don't respond with links to English-to-Latin translators. I can do a Google search just as well as anybody else; the problem is that I don't trust the online translation engines to be correct. Likewise, please, don't respond with the results of putting "Don't do that!" into an online translator, unless you can then go on to testify from your own knowledge of Latin that the results are correct.]

Date: 2007-10-17 11:23 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
I would also suggest "hoc ne feceris!" (prohibitive subjunctive, to be technical, analogous to "tu ne quaesieris" in Horace) as an alternative to (equally good) "noli id facere".

aleksandra.kleczar@uj.edu.pl

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