"Celare" would mean "to hide." I think it would be "cela" to be "hide," though I can double check this evening.

Ha! I knew someone would pick up on it, around here.

SA, you smart woman, you, goodonya for the catch. But the form is deliberate because she isn't calling out a command, she's calling out a result. The spell isn't quite what Giles thinks it is - remember, she's committing an action with a bit of gold, in conjunction with her spell.

In the final section. You'll see.

Whoo! Am, so both pieces are corkers.

But the form is deliberate

Ah. Okay. You'll excuse me if I still feel smart for saying something, as it means my two semesters of Latin and my upcoming TA position hasn't gone to waste.

Hee! SA, if I'd had you for those semesters of Latin, I might not have run screaming from conjugations.

Question, though, since now I am shaken with doubt. If the spell is in three parts (yes, I did this in Pensioner and Needfire, following the magic of the number 3 for spells) - the initial action of sacrificing a jewel, calling out the desired result, and then the physical channelling itself - would that form still be the correct one?

I think if the intent was clear behind the words, than breaking the jewel and saying "to hide" would be appropriate. Of course, you could also do the form for "I hide" which is...celati, I think.

Yup, "celati" sounds right, although the rust on my Latin skills could frighten off the contestants on "Junkyard Wars." But she - in this instance, Fred or Olivia - isn't doing the hiding.

Tell you what, let me leave the form as is, and if you feel it needs changing after the final section, tell me and I'll go with your change in a heartbeat.

'Kay.

"Celavi" is actually the first-person perfect conjugation of "celo". Very regular first declension.

Though, actually, what I'd go with here is the jussive subjunctive (which works for the first and third persons, as opposed to the imperative, which is just second-- you'd use imperative to order someone to take out the garbage, "[hey you], take out the garbage", but you'd use the jussive to say "let the garbage be taken out" or "long live the queen"), and it looks just like any subjunctive present first-conjugation verb. "Let it be hidden": "celet".

(SA, which Latin text are you using, at your school? It's not Wheelock's, is it? I remember seeing Romans in mullets on the cover in one of your photographs.... I liked Wheelock's.

What does two semesters of your work in Latin translate to? I'm not familiar with the formalized-college-work system, I did all this shit independently with various graduate Classics students as tutors. Are you in Latin III now?)

Hey! You kids! Come back on my lawn and remind me why I loved Latin so much, back when the earth was still cooling and Lyndon Johnson was lying about the Tet Offensive!

"celet" it is. The jussive subjunct does precisely what I need. Thank you, my loves, both of you.

Oh, I love Latin. I know I'm not as facile with it as I'd like to be, but it is so much fun. It's really a very easy language, I think, to get started in-- plus the study of Latin made me really get English grammar, my understanding of which prior to that had been almost entirely intuitive.

You know what's good stuff? Reading out loud. It sounds ridiculous, but reading aloud the Latin text, with the right stresses and pronunciation, and sort of trying to parse and almost diagram the sentences by the cadence of my narration so that someone could hypothetically just be listening to me and translating in real time. My current tutor's been having me do that. It's really been incredibly helpful to me with the problem of naturalness as I've moved from the kind of study in which you're learning and drilling the grammatical rules to the kind of study which is about reading and translation texts, naturalizing the language.

I love it.