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I've been thinking about this, and while I don't have time to write as much right now as I'd like to, I'm posting this to REMIND myself to write about this.
I think that serious students of Latin should have a list of things they MUST work on on their own in order to be superior students and teachers of Latin.
One of these is pronunciation, another is learning how to think, at least simple stuff, in Latin. Yes, think in Latin. WHen I play slugbug with my kids, I do it in Latin and I've gotten to the point that when I see a silver VW beetle, I can rattle off coccinella argentea nUlla coccinella retrO without thinking. It has become mental muscle memory.
I think playing cards, certainly solitaire, outloud in Latin is a good exercise as well.
More on this later.
***
And now it's later, but I still don't have much time, even with the rain (and thus most likely no soccer game for me at noon).
I started this note thinking about what was going to be happening at my school in a couple of years--there's some talk of a Global Studies campus which, depending upon how it's set up, should have an emphasis on foreign languages--even Latin. And I've also been thinking about the state of Latin and Latin teacher prepartion and the number of teachers who claim they were never taught pronunciation or this or that.
And it occurred to me that students of Latin have all sorts of EXCUSES for not being more proficient. Oh, me too, I'm not free from this (although my excuses usually involve parenting and other job duties!). But it seems to me that if you are studying Latin and if you discover that you, well, LIKE IT (fancy that), then you need to take it upon yourself to go above and beyond what is required for all the other yahoos so they can get their credit, their piece of paper which says they jumped through this hoop, etc. You can't be like those who go south of the border to Mexico to practice Spanish nor north into Quebec to practice French. Living in Rome won't even do it for you.
Face it, you're on your own.
Ok, there are plenty of internet options these days, but otherwise you are on your own to read more and do more with your Latin. And most people think that there is very little they can do, very little available. There are not a bunch of good low level readers. Sure you can find intermediate material here and there, and some of it's ok stuff. But there's nothing outside of another textbook that has really low level stuff. Ok, well, I hope to be writing some one day.
So, are you out of luck?
No.
Get a copy of John Traupman's _Conversational Latin for Oral Proficiency_ from Bolchazy-Carducci at www.bolchazy.com. There's a ton of every day vocabulary in there. So start with something like learning to count every darn thing in your house.
How high can you count? I'm still not good at this. I need to practice counting by 10s. I need to practice counting backwards.
I want to start practicing the alphabet too. You can find it pronounced in various sources (wheelock's new audio files had it in some print material, I think; plus it's also in Oerberg).
Useless?
If it gets you thinking in Latin, that's not useless.
Start saying things to yourself like ego novem canEs videO. ego octO chartulAs habeO. Whatever. Now you are practicing pronouns, accusatives and subj/verb agreement.
What I really want to write, among other things, is a book about how to play certain card games in Latin. I've got Go Fish done which you can find at http://www.txclassics.org/PiscareBKonly.pdf. And, somewhere I started writing up notes for describing how to play Idiot's Delight. I want to write up playing solitaire in Latin and a few other games.
The point is that if you work on saying all this outloud you are working on your oral skills/pronunciation (and take care to do it right the first time!) and internalizing morphology and syntax. Play cards with friends and you can help each other and build up simple conversational skills built around an activity.
Nothing worse than being at a cEna LatIna and feeling like a fool for not having the active vocabulary necessary for carrying on a decent conversation. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to start simple but focused....
And I'm rambling. My point is that if you really love Latin, you cannot hide behind the excuses for why you don't continually try to improve your skills. If you can't read prose or poetry outloud, start practicing. If you don't know the rules for pronunciation, open the front of your dictionary and read the instructions. Go to the Wheelocks website at www.wheelockslatin.com and listen to the audio files there. AND THEN PRACTICE.
We are Latinists. We have ALWAYS been on our own. But that's not an excuse anymore.
I think that serious students of Latin should have a list of things they MUST work on on their own in order to be superior students and teachers of Latin.
One of these is pronunciation, another is learning how to think, at least simple stuff, in Latin. Yes, think in Latin. WHen I play slugbug with my kids, I do it in Latin and I've gotten to the point that when I see a silver VW beetle, I can rattle off coccinella argentea nUlla coccinella retrO without thinking. It has become mental muscle memory.
I think playing cards, certainly solitaire, outloud in Latin is a good exercise as well.
***
And now it's later, but I still don't have much time, even with the rain (and thus most likely no soccer game for me at noon).
I started this note thinking about what was going to be happening at my school in a couple of years--there's some talk of a Global Studies campus which, depending upon how it's set up, should have an emphasis on foreign languages--even Latin. And I've also been thinking about the state of Latin and Latin teacher prepartion and the number of teachers who claim they were never taught pronunciation or this or that.
And it occurred to me that students of Latin have all sorts of EXCUSES for not being more proficient. Oh, me too, I'm not free from this (although my excuses usually involve parenting and other job duties!). But it seems to me that if you are studying Latin and if you discover that you, well, LIKE IT (fancy that), then you need to take it upon yourself to go above and beyond what is required for all the other yahoos so they can get their credit, their piece of paper which says they jumped through this hoop, etc. You can't be like those who go south of the border to Mexico to practice Spanish nor north into Quebec to practice French. Living in Rome won't even do it for you.
Face it, you're on your own.
Ok, there are plenty of internet options these days, but otherwise you are on your own to read more and do more with your Latin. And most people think that there is very little they can do, very little available. There are not a bunch of good low level readers. Sure you can find intermediate material here and there, and some of it's ok stuff. But there's nothing outside of another textbook that has really low level stuff. Ok, well, I hope to be writing some one day.
So, are you out of luck?
No.
Get a copy of John Traupman's _Conversational Latin for Oral Proficiency_ from Bolchazy-Carducci at www.bolchazy.com. There's a ton of every day vocabulary in there. So start with something like learning to count every darn thing in your house.
How high can you count? I'm still not good at this. I need to practice counting by 10s. I need to practice counting backwards.
I want to start practicing the alphabet too. You can find it pronounced in various sources (wheelock's new audio files had it in some print material, I think; plus it's also in Oerberg).
Useless?
If it gets you thinking in Latin, that's not useless.
Start saying things to yourself like ego novem canEs videO. ego octO chartulAs habeO. Whatever. Now you are practicing pronouns, accusatives and subj/verb agreement.
What I really want to write, among other things, is a book about how to play certain card games in Latin. I've got Go Fish done which you can find at http://www.txclassics.org/PiscareBKonly.pdf. And, somewhere I started writing up notes for describing how to play Idiot's Delight. I want to write up playing solitaire in Latin and a few other games.
The point is that if you work on saying all this outloud you are working on your oral skills/pronunciation (and take care to do it right the first time!) and internalizing morphology and syntax. Play cards with friends and you can help each other and build up simple conversational skills built around an activity.
Nothing worse than being at a cEna LatIna and feeling like a fool for not having the active vocabulary necessary for carrying on a decent conversation. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to start simple but focused....
And I'm rambling. My point is that if you really love Latin, you cannot hide behind the excuses for why you don't continually try to improve your skills. If you can't read prose or poetry outloud, start practicing. If you don't know the rules for pronunciation, open the front of your dictionary and read the instructions. Go to the Wheelocks website at www.wheelockslatin.com and listen to the audio files there. AND THEN PRACTICE.
We are Latinists. We have ALWAYS been on our own. But that's not an excuse anymore.
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