http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/bo...ks&oref=slogin
Printable View
I would like to think so, but it was recently removed from my school.
Thanks for the link, Quasi. I'll have to find a way to sprinkle the phrase "rock hard ablatives" into my conversations with my classics colleagues. :lol: Judging by the size of my second year Latin class in college (four people by the end of the year) one doubts that it's going to return from the dead any time soon. In case it does, however, maybe I should refresh those declensions. amo, amas, amat...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love
The verb to be (sum, esse, fui, futurus)
sum, es, est, summus, estes, sunt, eram, eras, erat, eramus, erates, erant, ero, ris, erit, erimus, erites, erunt, fui, fuis fuit, fuimus, fuites, fuint, fueram, fueras, fuerat, fueramus, fuerates, fuerant, et cetera.
holy cow... it follows me.
i'm in a latin class and now every where i go latin seems to be!
even in my favorite book they mention latin!
Peter, do you now what those mean?
and if they are past, present, or future?
the declention of sum is present but i don't know about the other ones.
latin is kinda fun in the sence that it's a whole other launge... but it is so hard.
first you have 5 different declesion in the nouns. 2nd and 3rd declension, you have two different ways of declining.
2nd declesion masculine is...
servus servi
servi servorum
servo servis
servum servos
servo servis
2nd declension neuter is...
bellum bella
belli bellorum
bello bellis
bellum bella
bello bellis
3rd declension masculine/feminine....
lex leges
legis legum
legi legibus
legem leges
lege legibus
3rd. declension neuter...
flumen flumina
fluminis fluminum
flumini fluminibus
flumen flumina
flumine fluminibus
then you also have your adjectives which is what i'm learning at the moment.
Thanks for the article, Quasimod, it is very interesting :)
I know exactly what you mean, but I actually like it a bit :p I start hoping it is going to be really useful :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurtugal
Am I the only one who doesn't find Latin hard? At least, it has some strict rules!!! :p You just have to learn the separate types of verbs/nouns and that's all, I actually find it easy, at least the grammar, of course, I have some problems with the translations :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Shurtugal
I will add 1st declension:
lingua, ae f - language
sg.Nom. lingua
Gen. linguae
Dat. linguae
Acc. linguam
Abl. lingua
Voc. lingua
sg.Nom. linguae
Gen. linguarum
Dat. linguis
Acc. linguas
Abl. linguis
Voc. linguae
This is 4th declension:
magistratus, us m - magistrate
sg.Nom. magistratus
Gen. magistratus
Dat. magistratui
Acc. magistratum
Abl. magistratu
Voc. magistratus
sg.Nom. magistratus
Gen. magistratuum
Dat. magistratibus
Acc. magistratus
Abl. magistratibus
Voc. magistratus
and this is 5 declension:
spes,ei f - hope, expectation
*actually this word doesn't have full declention, but I am using it as an example
sg.Nom. spes
Gen. spei
Dat. spei
Acc. spem
Abl. spe
Voc. spes
sg.Nom. spes
Gen. sperum
Dat. spebus
Acc. spes
Abl. spebus
Voc. spes
But be warned by the Old Lady who lived in a Shoe - she conjugated when she should have declined.
http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/7980/hystericalwj7.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by Whifflingpin
Having been cursed by the "good old-fashioned classical education", Latin has been a part of my repertoire for years (and continues to be for this last year).
Despite throughout our education we were occassionally, but on nearly regular basis, talked to about the purposes of studying classical languages, their importance, and even tales of "intellectual elite" (which were probably there only to boost our ego, to made us feel we belonged to this great heritage by presenting a certain myth of superiority), how many 10- (12-, 14-) year-olds would honestly care? After the initial excitement of the new area of study in our curriculum, which did not differ in any way from the excitement upon starting any other new subject, say chemistry we got in 7th grade, it simply fell into the routine. Latin and, two years later added Greek, have thus become just another part of curriculum, and even though most of us have been hearing enough of those classicist myths of tradition and heritage, we did not quite feel any special aura about it - they were just a normal part of curriculum, nothing especially exciting, even dull at times, but at times pleasantly interesting - we could claim for Latin and Greek the same things we could claim for any other subject. But, what we were damn well aware of, was the fact that due to those two beautiful subjects we had a nice pile of lessons more on our back than our fellows in some other schools. Well, that we did not quite like at times. The difference was big enough to say that we had the whole another school day more than other children, just that it was broken into pieces and incorporated in the regular five days of school instead of having one day added; so we had more lessons per day, and not once it crossed our mind how nice would it be to enjoy a spring day outside, had it not been for these damned two lessons more we must go through and which most of the children does not...
And then we went into high school. Classical one, of course. You could think that, being 14-15 years old and having had four years of Latin and two of Greek behind us, and with innumerable non-classical schools existing around, if we now chose classical school, it must have been because we realised we actually adored classical languages, and that was why we made that choice...
... well you would be wrong. For some of us it was the habit, for others proximity of the classical high school to the street they lived in, for some deliberate decision, some were basically forced by ambitious parents, many went simply because others went and because they realised they would have good company there ("So what if I have this 6 hours more weekly, it's high school, guys; we'll be cutting a third of the lectures anyway as any decent high schooler does, so we won't feel it; but we'll be together!" :D), some went because of elitism, and some because they were not especially attracted to anything else but had marks high enough for that school.
So we found ourselves in the school which, see, had two sets of students.
One of them were students who did not study classical languages before, and thus started them in high school.
Another one were we, the already "established" ones.
Not that after high school there was much difference anyway. They worked more, we slacked more, so we ended up being more-less hereabouts in terms of knowledge; maybe we just had better 'ear' for those languages due to greater exposure and whatnot.
In high school, though, we slowly began to realise the importance of classical languages. Though most of the time they were still "just another subjects", alongside chemistry, philosophy, literature, formal logic, modern foreign languages, biology, history of art and the rest of whatnots they served to us in high school as compulsory subjects, there were still moments when they were more than that and when the "why" of studying classical languages actually made sense. It was the time of first serious, academic discussions with professors on the value of classics throughout the centuries, on their connections with development of art, culture and philosophy; now, were far more knowledgeable about those fields to be able to discuss them, so we started to realise things. And even though our primary occupation in life was still beguiling the time in pubs and thinking about where shall we go out next Saturday, we were getting serious at instances - which were getting more and more frequent - and realising how shaped by that classical education we actually were, without having noticed it all those years.
So one day you just woke up, glanced at your Latin texts, and figured you could actually read some random Ovid you found, nothing you studied before. No dictionaries, no translations, no notes nor anything; you simply figured you understood it.
More than understood, more than just getting it from grammatical and lexical point of view, because you have had reached the phase in which that quit to matter. You no longer communicated with the text through the means of what you were taught, you no longer thought that way - you got to the point of intuitively understanding some of the most beautiful lines ever written. You read it intuitively in the correct meter, no damned schemes or counting syllabes, you got the rhytm for it intuitively, even though you could not name it because you did not study that yet. You got to the point of feeling the language, feeling its nuances, feeling how different it would be with words or syntax altered even the slightest bit; and in that one moment, Latin was so alive. Not only the language was alive, but you figured there was something eternally beautiful in those lines.
Then you remembered you were 15 (14, 16, whatever) years old.
Then you figured how little, how so incredibly small amount of people your age grown up in that same western civilisation could do that.
And that was, maybe, the moment in which you felt special. :) (And then you remembered you had a headache from being up all night before on some concert, so no Latin mattered anymore. ;))
Regarding the comeback of Latin...
Why not, after all, it might be wholesome for children/teens, for some mind gymnastics, to say so; judging from the generations younger than me and even my own (I am only 17 years old) and even older ones, the society is so turning into a mindless mass that favourises TV stars and reads those stupid teen-like tabloids, a little culture cannot harm, it can only do good; so why not, teach them some words, some verbs, take them to some opera or ballet, force some book from the generally recognised canon into them, alongside a bunch of teen/chic schund they tend to read, turn off their TV for an hour and talk to them about the classical antiquity; and yeah, live in illusion that this is what it is all about, and that this will turn them into "well-minded" individuals and whatnot, live in illusion that knowing declensions and conjugations is what classical education is about.
If there is one thing I learnt from my own one, it was never about that.
It was never about knowing declensions, conjugations, who when wrote what, all the metric schemes existing in poetry of Latin and Greek or reciting endless lines or knowing proverbs or memorising parts of speeches... Certainly, we were taught all of that, and certainly, we were examined all of that, because that was what curriculum said.
But everyone, even our professors which at times we so did not like, was honest about one thing: that that is not a point, and that the point was never about the plain straightforward knowledge; rather, it was about certain spirit, certain upbringing almost, to say so; and that is not something you can acquire in your advanced whatever high-speed Latin class; that is process that takes years, and that takes all of curriculum, not just Greek and Latin, and makes of it one unit, one cultura generale, one broad knowledge and open view of the world.
You can get knowledge of Latin if you incorporate Latin in your average high school schedule; you can get brilliant knowledge of Latin, perfectly memorised all that had to be memorised, perfect knowledge of facts, linguistic understanding of texts. What you cannot get, though, is classical education - for that is something that requires a system, a whole man, a completely different approach to education and upbringing and formation of person than what is current trend in the world, not just an odd subject or a visit to "cultural events" once in a while.
So no, Latin is not making a comeback in the sense I would like it to. Not at all, in fact, classical education is, as usual, on decline.
What is making a comeback are elitist pretensions that knowing Latin out of that whole system actually matters, that it is a mark of "well-educated" individual, a sign of prestige or whatnot; so what is making a comeback are advanced fast classes, done without the context of plethora of other subjects and knowledges needed in order for classical antiquity to be understood, for diachronic communication with that time and place to be made. And that is precisely what is on loss - the greater the tendencies towards early specialisations are, the lesser is emphasis on general knowledge, and wide spectrum of knowledge on what are today commonly referred to as "liberal arts".
Classical education in its true sense is on decline. Perhaps I should not say "unfortunately" in that sentence; after all, maybe it was the logical consequence of things, maybe the time must come for civilisation to forget its sources, maybe we are not to mourn the fact that times and society has changed, that we live in technological and scientific era, that the world progresses at fast rate, etc.
However, despite that, and despite what shall be when I graduate eight years of classical education, eight years of "waisting my time", as somebody once said, "on the bygone", I must say that I am so damn glad that I belonged to one of the (maybe last, given the current trends in educational systems) generations that had classical education and that belonged to that heritage I did not understand when I was a young child and commencing my studies.
And that I am so, so incredibly glad that my "classical education" did not consist out of "courses" of Latin and Greek which had some "credits", which was approached through "standardised texts" of "multiple choice" or "essay of X number of words", alongside other 4-5 subjects studied in that equally idiotic manner in which quantity mattered more than quality, form more than what was covered in it, which might have been equally random, and out of basically talking a lot about what we might have not understood - without that broader context which today is getting lost.
So no, Latin is definitely not making a comeback, no matter what some like to think. It is just another track of open elitism, and supporting blatantly wrong way of doing things.
(And sorry if the tone seems harsh, I am actually pretty sad at the moment, not bitter at all - just got somewhat taken by writing all of this down.)
:yawnb:
Yay! Latin's making a comeback! I would be happy- I'm a Latin teacher! Quidquid Latine dictum altum viditur!
Well maybe not everything said in Latin is profound, i.e. tempus fugit, almost prosaic by now, but having been forcefed Latin at Catholic University turned out to be quite usefull. Some of the professors could even speak the language...very impressive at the time. My view is that knowing Latin relatively well is a powerfull tool in deciphering language, especially connotation. quasimodo1
Anastasija, I am impressed, your descriptions of the process of learning is remarkable. I am in quite the same terms with my studies, although I've studied Latin only for four years and Greek for three. I'm impressed with your knowledge too, to be able to read Ovid is just amazing, I am definitely not there yet, although I am 17 years old as well. I would like to ask where do you study, from your post I got the impression that in your country there is a good base for classical education and you have quite a lot classical high schools (well, for me almost everything is a lot, in Bulgaria there is only one classical high school and I study there :) ).
To Alexei: Don't be too impressed. The education system (benign tyranny), belonged to Catholic University of Washington, DC and the more liberal if no less severe Temple University of Philadelphia, PA. Mostly by now, study methods are self-inflicted. Glad you liked the trend of this thread, the popularity of which is really suprising. quasimodo1
it hard, but not hard.... once when you memorize everything, it's pie....
the memorizing is what kills me! i hate memorizing! i'm terrible at it!