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Comment by triyambakam | Hacker News Reader

> even though he seems tacitly to accept its inferiority to Greek literature

I would have said "seems to tacitly accept" instead of "seems tacitly to accept"

I wonder if the author purposely avoids the split infinitive. I've heard Latin enthusiasts like to prescribe that onto English, because it's not grammatical in Latin.

But maybe that's just the author's English. I don't think it's wrong.

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It is not only ungrammatical but impossible to split a Latin infinitive. Latin infinitives are a single word.

Point of pedantry: some Latin infinitives are single words -- present active, present passive, and perfect active. Perfect passive, future active and future passive require two.

For what it's worth, he also uses 'whom' at the start of a sentence, correctly according to formal grammar but where most English speakers would intuitively use 'who'. That level of fussing over nominative/accusative can be the give-away sign of a classical grammar stickler, though equally it can just indicate a native speaker of a cased language such as German.

You know its interesting that Greek uses adverbs with infinitives so often its almost impossible to avoid using the split-infinite when translating.

Yes, I find it very plausible that a spud writing about Latin literature observes that rule.

A "spud"?

That manages to seem both incomprehensible and very offensive at once, which an impressive trick. And not impressive in a good way.

I am not really sure what your issue is. You don’t know what it means but think it sounds bad? So I’m a bad person for using it?

What does "a spud" mean to you in this context?

A stodgy and self-serious person.

Huh. It just means a potato to me (Brit).

I suppose, but OTOH, this is not at all a serious translation. It's at heart an extended joke.

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