From: Anton Sherwood (bronto@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Mar 18 2003 - 13:40:08 EST
Padraic Brown wrote:
> The form is Nom. -ensis; Gen. -ensis. I have a
> little medal inscribed "Guglielmus Archiepiscopus
> Bostoniensis" and my ophthalmologist's Latin
> diploma says "Universitas xxx-ensis". Other Latin
> diplomas I've seen have -ensis, where the English
> versions have "of x".
Sure, I've seen such forms too. I just don't agree with the assumption
that the "*ensis" form is a literal translation of the English "of *".
In English we have a bias toward analytic forms, in Latin a bias toward
synthetic forms.
In particular I believe I've seen "U. Oxoniensis" but "Oxonia" for the
city of Oxford; and St Antony of Padova (not "the Paduan") is called in
Latin "Antonius Patavinus" (with nominative adjective) much more often,
according to Google, than "Patavii" (genitive noun).
> Mind you, I have no doubt this is Late Latin of
> some sort.
One of my dictionaries calls it New Latin.
-- Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/
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