xkcd

by **blthree** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 7:03 pm UTC

arma virumque cano...
man that brings back some memories

and my favorite quote from the Aeneid:
onera accipiunt venienitium
its sad that in high school we could turn a simile about bees into sexual innuendo

by **Prions** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:19 am UTC

Salve!

If anyone's doing the Cambridge Latin Edition, our class is on the green book reading the Masada series.

by **ZLVT** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 9:28 am UTC

There are multiple cambridge courses but I just found in the great clean-up, my Cambridge books with Quintus. We only used the first 3 so red blue and green but I'm now going through and systematically translating all the passages. It's soothing

by **Baza210** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 1:45 pm UTC

Quintus? Quintus was the Oxford course [What I did]. Red Yellow Blue were the books.

by **ZLVT** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 4:03 pm UTC

Nope, this one is very clearly market Cambridge. First in Pompeii then Egypt, then Britain, then I have no idea where cos we didn't do the yellow and purple books.

by **IuliC** » Wed Dec 31, 2008 8:32 am UTC

Oh, Latin, second only to Greek. I, huge nerd that I am, have been doing prose comp practice in my currently copious free time. For fun. Le sigh.

Forsitan aliquando de amore scribam, quo magis laeta sim. Nunc tamquam ensem vastare ignemque populare scribo, quibus liber docet. Amoribus crescimus, pernicibus nos exscindimus. hmm. I think my Latin side is a little overdramatic...

by **ZLVT** » Fri Feb 13, 2009 3:11 pm UTC

IuliC wrote:Oh, Latin, second only to Greek.

i think Sanskrit, the classical language nerd's classical language, might have something to say about that.

I need to get back into practice with my latin. Sigh.

by **mpolo** » Sat Feb 28, 2009 8:44 am UTC

Hoc anno discipulos quoque ex sexta classe (id est pueri ab XI ad XII annos nati) docere debeo. Certe est provocatio nova. Habetisne notiones quomodo pueri parvuli doceri possunt?

[This year I also have to teach sixth graders (that is, boys between 11 and 12 years of age). This is certainly a new challange. Do you have any ideas how small boys can be taught?]

by **ZLVT** » Sat Feb 28, 2009 8:51 am UTC

Immersion, simple games, make them perform the words you teach them. Stand, sit, go, run, jump, etc

by **Roĝer** » Sat Feb 28, 2009 8:44 pm UTC

Simple: only speak in Latin to them.

by **Asleep or Wrong** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 2:59 am UTC

with this discussion and some recent thoughts i'm now pretty interested in latin pedagogy.
i was taught with the cambridge latin course but i don't recall to what degree we did the exercises and readings and such. and then later i was taught to compose translations into english for recitation. now after five years or so i'm reasonably capable of reading latin text but for want of a larger vocabulary, however it always goes through an english intermediary. like i read "arma virumque cano troiae qui primus ab oris" and it immediately becomes in mind "arms (obj. or sub.?) and man i sing (of, from?) troy who first from shores." from there i can find that the idea behind it is pretty and then i can read it in meter with the translation in mind and decide that the original text is moving.
now i'm learning greek, second semester of classes, we're using athenaze. i've recently been thoroughly pouring through the exercises for review, and i've begun to be able to read the cooked text of the book without an english medium. i read "Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ" and the way it sounds is beautiful and i can mostly understand and after consulting LSJ for ἔννεπε and reading it again i understand it wholly without falling onto english at all.
and now i'm kinda blue that i can't read virgil or ovid that way, as they deserve. why is this, how can it be fixed, and how can it be made to not happen to learners in the first place?

by **ZLVT** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 5:00 am UTC

Well when you learn a language, it is innevitable that you will look at it through the eyes of the language you speak. When I read my 1st year latin books I can read them without an intermediary but I soon lose that as I go up to slightly harder materials. I think It's only a matter of practice. After a while you'll just recognise the acusative as an accusative and knwo what that means wihtotu having to think "in/on/into/onto" "house (pl, acc)" therefore motion towards=into/onto etc. But if you don't teach people "this feature of Latin is equivalent to this feature of english, so whenever you see /this/, think /that/" I think they're less likely to use their own language as a crutch. And up at very high level poetry and prose, it's very hard ot use English or any other language as a crutch since the roman writers had their own style which only makes sense if you know how latin works.

by **mpolo** » Mon Mar 02, 2009 8:48 pm UTC

I can directly read up to a reasonably good level of Latin (at least all of "Familia Romana" by Ørberg, which corresponds to 2-3 years of Latin classes). I also read the Roman Breviary every day in Latin. I am working on improving my flexibility by speaking with students, but the problem is that they generally can't respond, so it tends to be a little one-sided, though the tenth graders are doing pretty well on responding to questions posed in Latin about the text we just read.

by **Ave** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 10:40 pm UTC

This thread is great! So many memories!

I took latin throughout highschool and for 1.5 years into college--I was actually a classics major until I realized that if Latin became my career, not only would I not be paid much for it, I'd most likely come to hate it, so off to computer science I went.

I too used Ecce Romani! for my High School courses up through AP, where we translated most, if not all of the Aeneid (I'm serious, the raw Latin with minimal commentary) for AP Latin 1 and did a runaround of Catullus, Ovid, Martial, Plautus, Lucan, Juvenal...I don't know how my teacher crammed so much into our heads. "All of Gaul is divided into three parts...the roughest and the toughest were the Belgae!" "O Veneres, Cupidinisque~" I loved his anecdotes, like "Hellespont: That place where Helle fell off the back of the flying golden ram and went *SPONT*" I was so prepared by these courses that I was accepted into senior undergraduate and graduate level courses at my first college, where I did a quick review in Wheelock and then took courses on Cicero (though I'd already translated the critical portions of In Catilina) and Petronius (If you haven't done the Satyricon yet, DO IT!)

Though the most epic moments were definitely at State Latin Day, where all the latin students/nerds got bussed to a recreation center, walked around in togas all day, and competed in all the traditional track & field events, raced home-made chariots, (whatever the latin is for a chariot pulled by two scrawny high school kids) costume competitions on major deities and historical figures and some written tests I believe were for the NJCL.

Good times!!

by **Lóng the Dragon** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 9:09 pm UTC

I have been looking to find a translation for a sentence into Latin for about a day now. My Latin is, unfortunately, not quite as good as it used to be and I thought I didn't have anywhere to ask; then I remembered this thread.

So the sentence I was trying to translate is "For saying what you think, thinking is essential" (which I like as a proverb, but everything sounds better in Latin).

So what I've come up with is "Dicando cognitatum, cognitare necesse est". But I'm pretty sure that's incorrect. So I was hoping you could help me.

by **Alcas** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 9:39 pm UTC

Hmm, that sounds idiomatic so there would be a bunch of ways...

Tibi cogitandum est ut dicas quid cogites?
literally "You must think in order to say what you think"

Ad dicendum cogitati, cogitandum est?
literally "For the saying of a thing having been thought, one must think"

Ad dicendum cogitati, cogitare necesse est?
(variation on the previous)

Perhaps you could use the supine?
Necesse est cogitare cogitati dictu?

by **Simbera** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 2:07 pm UTC

Hey, can someone help me out with a translation? Online translator sites are even worse at translating Latin than they are for other languages...

A friend of mine wants to get a tattoo, "In order to recreate yourself, you must first fall apart." in Latin. I know a small amount of common Latin words, and have a working knowledge of how things conjugate and so on, and better Google-fu than your average non-geek....and I was keen to expand my Latin vocabulary, so I offered to help, but it turned out to be a much longer and more complicated phrase than I was expecting. So I'm kinda stuck.

As a starting point (and to show you that I have actually attempted this rather than just handballing it off to you guys :p ) she got "gratia recreate vestri , vos must primoris dilabor" from a translator site, which is obviously wildly incorrect (it just left 'recreate' and 'must' as-is, for starters). From what I can gather 'gratia' is being used correctly here, but 'vestri' is more 'your' or 'yours' rather than 'yourself', and I've had no luck finding out how Latin does reflexive pronouns. I haven't been able to find anywhere that can translate 'recreate' - from what I can gather, 'to create' is 'generare' but I have no idea how to turn that into 'to recreate'. As for the second half, I have no idea how to do imperatives in Latin (for some reason I have the impression that you can do it with the inflection on the verb, kinda like Japanese, but I don't know where I got this idea from), but I think 'vos' is inappropriate; apart from being plural, isn't 'I' and so on usually eliminated as the inflection dictates who is acting?

Any help would be hugely appreciated, particularly if you're willing to explain to me why the particular cases of particular words are the way they are (just the translation would still be fantastic though if you don't feel like it).

<^>

by **InkL0sed** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 7:01 pm UTC

viewtopic.php?f=25&t=40414

by **Asleep or Wrong** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 7:58 am UTC

the request two posts up is remarkably similar to the one four posts up. honestly you could just replace the words in the translations provided by alcas where appropriate.
the only oddity is that as you noted the reflexive pronouns. as for alcas' first translation, it should obviously the second person accusative reflexive te.
as for the other impersonal constructions i'm not really sure whether idiomatic latin would use the second or third person for the reflexive pronoun and i'm a bit hesitant to suggest a phrase to be scarred onto someone's body without finding out. i'm inclined to think the general second person is an english phenomenon, but anyone know for certain?

e: also that machine translation is quite novel

by **mickyj300x** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 10:14 am UTC

Baza210 wrote:Quintus? Quintus was the Oxford course [What I did]. Red Yellow Blue were the books.

Salve!
Red Yellow Blue is the course we're using in our class at the moment. Are there any books after?

by **ZLVT** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 4:42 pm UTC

when we did it it was red blue green yellow purple. Quintus and freinds is a 5 book series.

by **mickyj300x** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 10:31 pm UTC

That wouldn't work for us. The yellow teaches the imperfect, perfect etc. and the blue goes into subjunctive and the like.

by **InkL0sed** » Sat Jun 20, 2009 11:25 pm UTC

When do you learn the passive periphrastic?

by **mickyj300x** » Sun Jun 21, 2009 1:24 am UTC

Probably late yellow book onwards. I haven't got too far into the yellow book.

by **Simbera** » Sun Jun 21, 2009 3:13 am UTC

Asleep or Wrong wrote:the request two posts up is remarkably similar to the one four posts up. honestly you could just replace the words in the translations provided by alcas where appropriate.
the only oddity is that as you noted the reflexive pronouns. as for alcas' first translation, it should obviously the second person accusative reflexive te.
as for the other impersonal constructions i'm not really sure whether idiomatic latin would use the second or third person for the reflexive pronoun and i'm a bit hesitant to suggest a phrase to be scarred onto someone's body without finding out. i'm inclined to think the general second person is an english phenomenon, but anyone know for certain?

e: also that machine translation is quite novel

Well, I kinda got sick of waiting and had another try, using a lot more reference material this time, and (long story short) I came up with "Gratia renovare sese, primum dilapsus sum" although I did of course give her the disclaimer that I wasn't 100% sure and that she should get someone else to check it before she gets it permanently marked onto her skin. I really struggled the most with conveying the idea of 'must'; 'dilapsus sum' is how I have tried to say 'must fall apart', but yeah, I was moderately confident in the rest of it (until I saw those ones from two posts above mine, which are pretty different and now have me worried). How close was I?

As an aside, I must say that although it is immensely frustrating from the outside, Latin seems a very beautiful language and I think I might have to learn it properly.

<^>

by **Asleep or Wrong** » Sun Jun 21, 2009 4:30 am UTC

it's a bit problematic.
firstly the translation of a clause expressing purpose with gratia has me pretty puzzled. i think i've heard before of gratia in abl. + gerund in the genitive case for purpose clause but what's provided isn't that. however, it could theoretically be read as gratia abl. with renovare sese in apposition. would probably cause cicero to raise his eyebrows but it'd get the idea across. so could be accidentally right. usually though, purpose is expressed in a clause starting with ut and using the subjunctive mood of the governing verb.
for the second clause it looks like you were going for the passive periphrastic, which would have been correct, but tripped up and landed on the first singular perfect passive. happens to the best of us. should've read dilabendum est. or maybe dilabendus est. or maybe dilabenda est? since we're talking about people in general i guess it'd be the second.

on the bright side, if you're too late to correct her there aren't any ancient romans around to point it out to her.

by **Simbera** » Mon Jun 22, 2009 5:40 am UTC

So, "Ut renovare, primum dilabendus est"? Not really sure how to make 'renovare' into the subjunctive...

Thanks heaps, anyway, you're a lifesaver.

And yeah, I figured nobody except fluent Latin speakers would know the difference, but then again I laugh at the people on Hanzi Smatter so if it were me I would want to be sure (and I think she's the same).

<^>

by **Geminex** » Wed Jun 24, 2009 12:37 am UTC

mpolo wrote:[This year I also have to teach sixth graders (that is, boys between 11 and 12 years of age). This is certainly a new challange. Do you have any ideas how small boys can be taught?]

I'm not sure what the best way to teach is, but I can tell you how we were taught...
The language itself could be quite dry in places. So the teacher made sure to link the language itself very strongly to roman culture and history. This isn't a dry, dead language! It was the language of conquerors, of poets, of genii!
In other words, keep them interested in the subject by showing them the background.
The second thing I remember was that, whenever we were learning how to conjugate something we'd form up in two lines and march around the school chanting whatever it was we were learning.
"Venio; Venis; Venit; Venimus; Venitis; Venerunt!"
And so on. Very good for helping the class memorize stuff, for letting them use up exess energy and, best of all, it again draws a link to the culture, the marching legionaries, the successfull general's triumph and patron's parades.

Other than that.
Yeah. Make it fun. Play games for vocabulary. Try not to overpower your students. ^^

by **Baza210** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 7:12 pm UTC

mickyj300x wrote:
Baza210 wrote:Quintus? Quintus was the Oxford course [What I did]. Red Yellow Blue were the books.

Salve!
Red Yellow Blue is the course we're using in our class at the moment. Are there any books after?

We stopped after Oxford III, and used this afterwards - https://www.waterstones.com/waterstones ... ku=5036806

by **thicknavyrain** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 7:44 pm UTC

I just finished my Latin GSCE, I'm glad for it, Latin was bloody hard. Still, good memories from the good old CLC. I still remember being mortified (by which I mean extremely amused) when

Spoiler:

Yeah, I'll never be taking Latin again but a good friend of mine is taking it nearly all the way so I'm sure it'll crop up in my life from time to time. So many bloody grammar tables.

Fun fact: We bought our Latin teacher a fancy pen with the words "NVNC SCRIBENDVM EST" engraved onto it at the end of the year.

by **Kets** » Mon Aug 03, 2009 10:35 pm UTC

I enjoy the fact that third declension is so easy, despite those odious i-stems.

veritas- verity
natio- nation
et similes...

by **TheNextCaesar** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 8:11 pm UTC

I can't remember where I read it but could someone translate the phrase "filiam exspectabat" for me?

by **GreenStormElf** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 1:32 am UTC

He/she/it had expected the daughter?

I taught myself basic latin a while ago, but I'm not sure.

by **Walter.Horvath** » Thu Aug 27, 2009 10:59 pm UTC

Alt+ Keypad combos can't produce hard/soft letters, can they? Is there a quick way to do this other than copypasta, to be, you know, perfectly correct?

by **Chiffre** » Tue Sep 01, 2009 3:03 pm UTC

Hi, Walter,

Walter.Horvath wrote:hard/soft letters

You mean á:160 í:161 ó:162 ú:163 É:144 é:130? These are with acute accents, they are used in oldish texts to denote meter e.g. in Plautus, Terentius. Sorry, I didn't find anything with macron.

Chiffre

by **Walter.Horvath** » Tue Sep 01, 2009 8:23 pm UTC

Chiffre wrote:Hi, Walter,

Walter.Horvath wrote:hard/soft letters

You mean á:160 í:161 ó:162 ú:163 É:144 é:130? These are with acute accents, they are used in oldish texts to denote meter e.g. in Plautus, Terentius. Sorry, I didn't find anything with macron.

Chiffre

Yēāh, ī mēānt mācrōns... ōhh, wēll.

by **Chiffre** » Fri Sep 18, 2009 11:20 am UTC

Walter.Horvath wrote:Yēāh, ī mēānt mācrōns... ōhh, wēll.

DDDD
Gaudēre volātū

by **thicknavyrain** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 9:24 pm UTC

If any Latin nerds are interested:

This was my entry to a Latin Competition where we had to translate several lines of Aeneid VI poetically.

To me that meant only one thing:

Lines 295-310

Hinc uia Tartarei quae fert Acherontis ad undas.
turbidus hic caeno uastaque uoragine gurges
aestuat atque omnem Cocyto eructat harenam.
portitor has horrendus aquas et flumina seruat
terribili squalore Charon, cui plurima mento
canities inculta iacet, stant lumina flamma,
sordidus ex umeris nodo dependet amictus.
ipse ratem conto subigit uelisque ministrat
et ferruginea subuectat corpora cumba,
iam senior, sed cruda deo uiridisque senectus.
huc omnis turba ad ripas effusa ruebat,
matres atque uiri defunctaque corpora uita
magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptaeque puellae,
impositique rogis iuuenes ante ora parentum:
quam multa in siluis autumni frigore primo
lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto

From here the path leads to waves of Acheron,
In the Cocytus, a whirlpool spews sand thereupon
Charon, a ferryman, guards these waters, feared,
With flaming eyes, a cloak and an unkempt beard.
The dead in his boat, rust coloured, he transports,
Though with spirit, which in his age, you would not have thought.
A crowd of heroes, mothers and men who have perished,
And children whose parents mourn the loss of what they cherished,
Spread out on the banks and rush to be free,
Like the first Autumnal leaves fall en masse from the tree.

by **TheCheesypig** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 4:35 am UTC

Question to latin speakers:

I would like to learn latin, mostly because of interesting historical context, and the huge influence it has had. My school doesn't offer any latin, and I am a high schooler in a small town, so not really any latin speakers around here. But I am wondering, is this a difficult language to learn? Does it help if I have experience in Spanish, because from what I understand they are both layed out similarily. I guess I am just courious, plus I would consider taking it in College.

by **ceaser13** » Tue Dec 29, 2009 7:06 pm UTC

TheCheesypig wrote:Question to latin speakers:

I would like to learn latin, mostly because of interesting historical context, and the huge influence it has had. My school doesn't offer any latin, and I am a high schooler in a small town, so not really any latin speakers around here. But I am wondering, is this a difficult language to learn? Does it help if I have experience in Spanish, because from what I understand they are both layed out similarily. I guess I am just courious, plus I would consider taking it in College.

I find it challenging, but not overly so. It's certainly much harder than Spanish. I'm teaching it to myself right now, out of the Wheelock's Series (great resource, I'd definitely recommend it), but a background in Spanish probably would help. Can't say for certain though, because me no hablo español.
If your really up for it, you can use Wheelock's Latin to start studying now, give you a leg up once you get to college (my evil plan). Anyway, regardless of when, if you do decide to take it, bonam fortunam!

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