Learning Latin in a Hurry Part II

Yesterday I suggested that it might be possible to learn a minimum of Latin suitable for the purposes of the forum poster who only has a couple of months to acquire enough competence in Latin to write some phrases. Memorizing rules of grammar is not a high priority, although both an English grammar and a Latin grammar are essential reference tools. I suggested using an English translation and a Latin text side-by-side; then I elaborated how one could get from the Latin to English by guessing and by making judgments of meaning based on other Romance languages. I went through a step-by-step process for Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. Today I quickly review the same procedure for the second sentence in Caesar's Gallic Wars.

The second sentence is

Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt.

How well can you do following the steps from yesterday?

You already know omnis. Omnes is just the plural. We've covered lingua. Institutis looks like institutions, so might as well assume that's what it means. Legibus is related to legislature or legal and refers to laws. "Inter" you should know from English borrowings. Intermissions come between acts. Interaction comes between people. Differunt sounds just like "different."

You now have

[Hi] all language institutions, legal things between [se]

Remember we are assuming a familiarity with some language related to Latin, so we should recognize "se" as some kind of pronoun -- a reflexive, as in Il s'appelle Jean. In our example, we are not dealing with a person, but a place, Gaul, so we would translate se as it or them or itself/themselves.

All that's left is hi which does not sound like the English "hi" but "he". It means "these" and is a plural masculine subject.

These all language institutions legal things different themselves

All these differ among themselves in language, institutions, and legal matters.

If you want to understand why you need to insert an "in" in the English translation, you will need to know that the words for language, institutions, and legal matters are all in the Ablative Case.