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sipes23 is, like usual, rocking the suburbs.
I’ve been sending e-mail reminders to myself in Latin for some time. But the one from the other day? Yeah, that’s right. I used the future imperative.
“Ferto exempla libri gryllorum cras.”
Nice, right?
Oh, for my anglophone friends, “bring some samples of comics tomorrow.” We’re publishing a book of comics (shhh! don’t tell), so the boss wants to see what other publishers are doing.
sipes23 is, like usual, rocking the suburbs.
Roberto Benigni! At least for accent. Ok, so he speaks Italian, and Latin is my thing. At least if I’m shooting for his speaking method, I’ll not be mistaken for dead or a native English speaker.
sipes23 is, like usual, rocking the suburbs.
We had another Latin day: this time at the zoo.
Although I am now more conversant in common vs. scientific animal names, multum de biologia scio. So I had a chance to explain convergent evolution and sexual dimorphism in Latin. I think I managed to get the point across.
I really do feel more comfortable discussing stuff in Latin. It’s not natural yet, but more and more I forget that I’m working the syntax when I speak.
sipes23 is, like usual, rocking the suburbs.
I organized an outing to the Art Institute in Chicago and we spoke Latin over lunch and in the museum. I learned some new words and got more comfortable with understanding and talking in real time.
Sometimes it really is easiest to just let go and let the words flow out. People will ask if they don’t understand.
sipes23 is, like usual, rocking the suburbs.
Not many cats get this but Oshima taught me lots about being a person, so a Latin eulogy for the cat.
I think I’m getting better at free prose composition. What do you think?
sipes23 is, like usual, rocking the suburbs.
Like I know the word for “blonde.” Procul dubio, flavus.
But “brunette”?
At least my older students are wowed at how I can rephrase their homework into simpler Latin.
sipes23 is, like usual, rocking the suburbs.
Along comes the supine.
Ok. Here’s the deal. I keep working and working. I think I’m getting better. I can read Catullus (for the most part) without too much trouble. Plautus is a vocabulary problem, but then, when does vocabulary acquisition ever stop? I can read lots of litrugical Latin nearly at sight. I feel much more natural with composition (http://pluteopleno.blogspot.com/) and am relatively conversant.
Then bang! All along, I’ve been saying “bene audire” for “good to hear.” Bzzt. Wrong. “Bonum auditu.”
It seems like no matter how much I learn, there’s always more. So the question is this: how do you know when you’ve mastered Latin? When have you got it mastered enough that you’re polishing it up? What is your standard for crossing this off the list as “done?”
A little more than a year ago I switched schools from a program that worked with Latin for Americans (heavily grammar based) to a school that used the Cambridge series, and was horrified to find, as I looked in the back of my new Latin textbook, that several tenses I knew and loved were not there, including about 75% of the subjunctive. I attempted to “keep up” outside of school, trudging through the rest of Fabulae Gracae and telling myself I’d start on some of the stuff I would be reading if I were at my old school (Cicero, etc) but failed miserably, as I have little willpower, and the English and mathematics programs proved to be, unlike Latin, much more challenging than those at my old school. So I sat there and “learned” passive voice and indirect statements for perhaps the third time. After attending the Junior Classical League convention and, for the first time in my life, not placing in the top 10 in any of the academic contests, I felt like I had forgotten everything.
This year, I was thrown head-first into the Aeneid. Basically, Latin IV consists of listening to a tape of my teacher translate lines from the Aeneid while I copy it down underneath the corresponding lines. Ninety percent of the time I don’t really understand the syntax at all, nor do I understand some of the more advanced poetic devices.
I went to the bookstore the other day and bought myself some flash cards. I then asked the woman if they had any books geared specifically toward the AP test or Vergil/the Aeneid. (I tend to shy away from these things because I like to think that I’m learning for the sake of knowledge and not so that I can take a test, but it was getting ridiculous). She chirpily told me that yes, they did, and it would be available as early as February if I wanted to order it. Since the AP test is in May, I was kind of hoping I could find some help before that.
I was also kind of hoping I’d eventually learn Latin.
My school counselor keeps telling me, “Well, you don’t have to take the AP test, don’t worry about it,” but the truth is, I really do want to take the exam. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since I started this whole mess, back in 8th grade. It’s not just so it will look nice on my transcript – it’s because I actually want to learn this language, because it’s beautiful, it really is, and it frustrates me more than anything when I don’t understand it.
Is there anything I can do? I know that at this rate I won’t even score a 3, much less score a 4 or a 5. My teacher is too busy to assist me during class, much less outside of it (she has multiple classes during periods, which is the main reason I’m being taught by this strange audio-tape-method).
sipes23 is, like usual, rocking the suburbs.
And the first thing that popped into my head was, “Sum frigidus!” Not “I’m cold!” but “Sum frigidus!”
Scary, no?
sipes23 is, like usual, rocking the suburbs.
I accidentally stumbled across Eutropius’s Breviarum of Roman History. In addition to being about an interesting subject, it’s pretty easy reading for Latin prose.
I’m already through Liber 1, and it took me two sittings. I’m finding I really don’t need the notes for grammatical explanation, nor do I need to go to the dictionary too often.
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