Gotcha about the pronouns, I do recall reading that before. It’s the same in Japanese iirc.
I see that I clumsily conjugated nāvigō wrong. Nāvigant is the present-tense active indicative third person plural. I needed the first person plural nāvigāmus. This was force of habit since all my verb sentences in Anki so far are in the third person. My actual choice of verb isn’t wrong as well, I hope.
So, I guess my sentence should have read simply Oppidum nāvigāmus. I assume that Nōs in urbem nāvigant means “They are sailing us to Rome”, lol.
(You’ve gotta give me a bit of time for that exercise :P)
In urbem/oppidum navigamus would be quite correct, yes. You’re also right about “They are sailing us to Rome/the city”. I wouldn’t worry too much about the opposition of oppidum vs. urbs. Urbscan mean Rome, like when Cicero says “I was out ouf town for the past six months”, but it can also be any other important city, such as Alexandria, or Carthago. While oppidum gives a statement about a town’s structures (i.e., it’s got walls. “There are 28 oppida within the area of the Helvetii and 64 vici (villages)”), urbs gives a statement about its importance (i.e. it’s a capital or metropolis; which implies that the speaker knows the settlement in question). Other settlements are municipium, colonia, civitas, depending on the legal status of their inhabitants within the Roman state and what kind of buildings one might expect there. A civitas is likely to have a bishop in christian times, for example. The whole thing is a bit like the english city/town-distinction wich is very unintuitive to non-anglos.
The pure accusative without preposition do indicate direction is either poetic or restricted to the proper names of cities and the words domus, rus (countryside), and maybe urbs You will find that in your grammar. Oppidum navigamus sound like you are sailors and your cargo is literally the city fortifications and buildings.
Here’s an online grammar that should work quite well for you. Look up the Accusative in the section Syntax.
Marcus in standing in the market. He is looking for Cornelia. But she has been delayed. Look, he sees Titus. He calls out “Oh, Titus! Where is Cornelia?”
Titus responds “Cornelia is at home sick. I pass you this message, so that I can respond to her whilst she is unwell.”
“Thank you, Titus,” says Marcus. “Let’s go to the Colosseum. Cornelia should have been taking hot baths, but I will gladly go to the games with you.”
Well, I got a story that made sense to me at least.
Very good! But not quite. Look again at Me tibi misit and so on. The subject to misit is Cornelia herself. The last sentence is a statement about what Marcus would do if he were with Cornelia, but now that Titus is here, he’ll change plans.
私たちは港市に向かっています。 watashitachi wa kooshi ni mukattaimasu.
We are sailing to the city.
Japanese
Kana
Romaji
Explanation
私たち
わたしたち
watashitachi
we
は
・
wa
(p.) topic/subject (actually ha but pronounced wa)
港市
こう・し
kooshi
city (specifically with a port / arbour)
に
・
ni
(p.) follows a word indicating a place where s.o./s.t. moves
向かっています
むかっています
mukatteimasu
sailing
(p.) stands for particle.
For the world city, I chose port city that is not exactly what Simple Sentence of the day states.
The verb 向かう (mukau) is an U verb. So, first, I have transformed it into TE-form 向かって (mukatte) as intermediate step before to obtain the progressive form (sail-ing) adding ~いる (a RU-verb). Afterward, I obtained from the RU-verb obtained in that way the polite form changing ~いる into ~います as for any RU-verb.
To better visualize it:
向か・う
mukau
(verb inf.)
向か・って
mukatte
(TE-form of the verb)
向か・って・いる
mukatteiru
(progressive form; also act like a normal RU-verb)
向か・って・います
mukatteimasu
(polite form of the RU-verb)
with the practice, this shall be done in a while for any U-verb .
EDIT:
向かう meaning is ‘to go towards’, ‘to head towards’.
To say “sailing” one of the choice can be to use:
航海 (‘sail’, ‘voyage’) and use the SURU-verb form 航海する (こう・かい・する)(kookai suru).
The TE-form of a SURU-verb (an irregular verb) is 航海して (こう・かい・して)(kookai shite).
The progressive form is obtained adding 〜いる 航海している (こう・かい・している)(kookai shite iru) where often the い is omitted as in 航海してる (こう・かい・してる)(kookai shite ru).
The polite form would be 航海しています (こう・かい・しています)(kookai shite imasu).
You inspired me to make a proper breakdown of my sentence as well.
We are sailing to the city. In oppidum nāvigāmus.
Latin
Explanation
in
Latin in covers both the English prepositions in and on. It also has some grammatical uses that I’m still getting to grips with, and this sentence employs one of them. Here it’s being used to indicate direction towards, to, or into a place.
oppidum
An oppidum was a fortified town. As Sanonius said, urbs, mūnicipium, colōnia, and cīvitās could also have been used in various contexts. The word is in the accusative case, apparently because that’s just how it’s done when you use it in this grammatical structure. Oppidum is explicitly singular (its plural is oppida). In Latin there was no linguistic distinction between definite nouns (“the city”) and indefinite nouns (“a city”).
nāvigāmus
The root of this word is nāvigō (to sail.) It derives from nāvis (ship). In Latin a verb can be conjugated to show person (first, second, third), pluralism, and over twenty tenses. Thus each verb can presumably accept over a hundred conjugations, making it extremely expressive. Therefore Latin rarely requires pronouns to be used. There are four conjugation patterns. Nāvigō is in the first conjugation, which is described at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Latin_first_conjugation. We want the first-person plural form of the active indicative tense, which is nāvigāmus.
PS. In Volapük, the first popular constructed language, verbs could be inflected in 1,584 ways.
Those are just the kind of corrections I’m looking for.
It was not clear to me if Te-form transformation is required before using ている for progressive.
If I understood well there is another step. If not please correct me.
向か・う
mukau
(verb inf.)
向か・って
mukatte
(TE-form of the verb)
向か・って・いる
mukatteiru
(progressive form, becomes a RU-verb)
向か・って・います
mukatteimasu
(polite form of the RU-verb)
Or instead the Te-form is not required and does it is possible to transform any verb directly into progressive with ている?
EDIT: the answer is yes. I finally found a section of the Tae Kim grammar where this is explained clearly. The TE-form transformation is only the first step required to add ~いる and transform the verb into a RU-verb. So ~ている (one of the forms of progressive) requires - for the U-verb 向かう (“to sail”) - the transformations steps reported in the table above.
PS: I’m just using this post as an excuse to study Japanese (including errors and corrections).
EDIT 2 in another grammar (A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar, mentioned) is written:
When TE-verb is a motion verb such as iku ‘go’, kuru ‘come’ and kaeru ‘return’, the meaning of TE-verb ~iru is not ‘be ~ing’. For example, itte iru means ‘to have gone to some place and to still be there’. The following sentences provide examples:
次郎はアメリカに行っている。 Jiroo wa Amerika ni itte iru.
Jiro has gone to America and is there.
ベックさんはもう家に帰っています。 Bekku-san wa moo ie ni kaette imasu.
Mr. Beck has already returned home and is there.
So, following this rule, since ‘to sail’ is a motion verb the rule should apply as well. Consequently, the original sentence should be translated:
私たちは港市に向かっています。 watashitachi wa kooshi ni mukatta imasu.
We have sailed to the city (and we are still there).
I’m a little bit confused now.
Probably sailing is not properly a motion verb but a way in which we reached the city.
Can someone more expert than me clarify?
ANSWER (thanks to @Vsotvep):
向かう is not a motion verb, but it expresses a state-of-being, namely the state of being on your way somewhere.