LatinLanguage.us

I’ve had more than one Latin student complain that nouns of the third (consonant) declension are hard to locate in their dictionary–if, say, you come across the words nuces of leporem in a text, would you be able to quickly locate the nominatives nux - “nut” and lepus - “rabbit"?

If you’re a beginner who has run into the same problem, I offer two quick tips:

• Think of the third declension nominative singular as having the “weak” case ending -s. The ending is weak because it often combines with stops like -c and -g to form the double consonant -x, or assimilates dentals like d and -t in words like dens and pars.
• The -r- in the stem of many third declension nouns is explained by rhotacism–the tendency for an s between two vowels to become r. Thus, the r in leporem may have originally been an s–look up lepos or lepus to find the nominative.

That second point further highlights the Latin confusion between the vowels o and u, e.g. the -os for -us ending seen in older Latin inscriptions.

The Classics Association of the Middle West and South has been publishing the annual Classical Journal for at least the past 90 years. A scrabble around Google Books netted this article from Volume XVI (1920-21) by E. B. De Sauze, a director of modern languages who soon found his task of organizing the French program expanded to include Latin. His observations are exactly the kind of “outsider” perspective we’ve learned to value in our modern diversity culture.

Read more! »

“The Roman took in the meaning of spech in the forum or a story told by a friend at his dinner-table, not as we tell our poor boys to understand the very same Latin, directing them, first, to hunt up the main sentence (no matter if it be a half page from the beginning), then in this main sentence to make a start by tracking out the subject and translating it, then to proceed to track out the verb and translate it, then to go back and discover the modifiers of the subject and translate them along with it…What then shall we say of the modern method? Why, simply that it is the method of despair.” (Hale, “The teaching of Latin”, in the education journal The Academy

William Gardner Hale–then a professor at Cornell but later head of the Latin department at the University of Chicago–wrote the above in 1887, long before the direct method became a serious component of modern Latin instruction. His The Art of Reading Latin deserves a wider appreciation among Latin educators; really, if you’re interested in Latin take a moment to read it right now…

Read more! »

Charles Bennett is probably a familiar name to most American Latinists; his New Latin Grammar remains a well-thumbed student reference, and several of his classic texts are still in (reprint) publication. Bennett authored or co-authored some 20-odd Latin books in the early 1900’s, including The Teaching of Latin and Greek in Secondary School (1911), an unapologetic manifesto in defense of the grammar-translation method of Latin instruction. I spent my Sunday evening reading thru the Latin half, and like a good blogger I thought I’d share a few choice excerpts…

Read more! »

I wrote a few weeks ago about Google Books, and have since been looking thru old Latin textbooks on the site. There are quite a few sources that discuss general methods and theories of teaching Latin, and I’m surprised to see how much they echo the modern debate.

More than one 19th century teacher can be found that criticized the grammar-translation method then in vogue, and the number of defenses for the traditional method–not just in defense of Latin itself, but the particular method of teaching it–indicate this was a hot topic even then.

I’ll post a few of the choicer quotes I’ve come across later this week. I’ve also developed some ideas on just how the traditional method–which even it’s defenders admit is ill-suited to fluent comprehension–evolved after the collapse of Latin as an international language around 1700 ACE. Look for these over the next few days…

A misunderstanding over the meaning of that Latin legal phrase may have led to a sedition trial in Malaysia.

To be fair, the question is more complicated than that, but the example shows how Latin legalese can sometimes be misinterpreted even by native speakers of English–much more for non-native speakers. Although it was an over-reaction, recent attempts by English local councils to ban the use of Latin phrases no doubt had such misunderstandings in mind…

Whichever side of the current US health care debate you’re on, a little dip into what Pliny’s Natural History says about the healing arts (as practiced in ancient Rome) can make for an interesting diversion. C’mon, this won’t hurt a but…

Read more! »

Another culture piece on how Harry Potter is reviving interest in Latin, (this time in Australia). It’s a media observation that seems to pop up with each Harry Potter book/film release.

Article on Yahoo!…my Google-fu hasn’t found much else other than the picture at the top from an Italian news source.

Sounds like the usual overblown claim–there seems to be no evidence Vespasian ever lived in the villa–but then again any intact, large-scale dwelling from the 1st century is an impressive find.

Tu modo Pompeia lentus spatiare sub umbra,
   Cum sol Herculei terga leonis adit - A.A. I.67-8

(spatiare = spatiaris)

Ovid may have had other ideas for spending time outside in the summer, but suffice it to say the summer weather now is far too tempting for a blogger to spend indoors. Expect light posting this month while arbusta lentus spatior sub umbra…

I must be the last person on the Internet to realize the value of Google Books. I found a copy of Anthon’s System of Latin Versification there last week, a book I had lost long ago (it was one of those photocopy re-issues–no big financial loss–but every so often I’d half-remember a piece of advice from it and wish I still had my old annotated copy)…

Read more! »