Comment by Tomte
1 day ago
Fifteen minutes late used to be the academic standard in Germany (and other countries): it was noted by “c.t.” in the timetable, meaning “cum tempore”.
When I studied it had already been mostly abolished. Sometimes starting times were explicitly marked “sine tempore”.
> it had already been mostly abolished
c.t. is still standard at many German universities (and at all Bavarian universities I know). However, I know at least one university of applied sciences where lectures start at full hours.
Those are strange annotations; it looks like at least one word is missing. They mean "with time" and "without time".
Tempore is in ablative case, and in english there isn't a good substitute. This means it isn't a static set time event, it has some leeway so to speak. German has the ablative case, so I think it works out for them.
I don’t see why the grammatical cases of Latin and German matter in the interpretation of these abbreviations.
The Latin prepositions cum (with) and sine (without) are always followed by the ablative case. German has grammatical cases too, but no ablative. The German propositions mit (with) and ohne (without) are followed by the accusative case.
So c.t. = cum tempore = mit Zeit = with time (or with some delay), and s.t. = sine tempore = ohne Zeit = without time (or without delay).
2 replies →
Wikipedia specifically states:
> German does not have ablative case
It seems to make sense if you interpret it as:
10am c.t. = 10am with extra time
10am s.t. = 10am without extra time
Cum can be translated as 'with', but due to cultural use, it can also be translated as 'in addition'.
Some younger Latin recipes use 'cum sal' as a one-liner at the end, to tell the chef to season to their taste, for example.
> Some younger Latin recipes use 'cum sal' as a one-liner at the end
I have some questions:
1. What cultural use? Are you saying that German culture involves writing recipes in recreational Latin?
2. Why is sal in the nominative case? That can't possibly work.
3. Shouldn't there be a verb? For example, Apicius always ends recipes with a direction like "serve" / "bring in" / "enjoy".
(Technically, those verbs are all in the future indicative, so I guess I shouldn't call them 'directions'. But it's hard to think of them as something other than directions.)
1 reply →
They sound like appropriate abbreviations to me. Something like: "With time to get to the location" and "Without time to get to the location"