[a couple of Latin-learning questions]

My reply vanished . . . here's the short version . . .

 

No, my reply didn't vanish, it was a display quirk, so I've edited this now to get rid of it :)

[a couple of Latin-learning questions]

plus, on separate cards, not "mensa" and "mensae" but rather "-a" and "-ae," etc., each on separate cards, and on the flip side of each card you have "1st declension nominative singular" or "1st declension genitive singular," etc. Then drill the cards both ways so your child can hear the grammatical label and give the ending or hear the ending and give the label. This hugely helps children narrow down the possibilities when facing a word with that ending in a sentence. (For "-ae," however, you'll have on the back "1st decl. genitive singular OR first declension nominative plural"--because it could be either, and the student needs to know that fact very well. Some endings aren't unambiguous, and sentence clues have to be resorted to in translating. You don't want to end up with two "-ae" cards, but just one, showing all the possibilities the student knows to date on the other side.)

This is something to consider. It makes logical sense to me. I'm wondering if my kids might get confused, though, because they've already thoroughly memorized the whole form(s)...My son can whip through a form in a second or two to discover what the word means, but he has been studying Latin for almost six years. But your explanation makes sense, and I'm going to consider it, at least for my daughter, who has only been at it for 2.5 years.

Let us know how it goes! Your daughter will catch on fast. It would be a change for your son, but he's most of the way there if he's as fast as he is at doing it the "recall-the-whole-paradigm" way. And the savings add up once you have more and more declensions to keep track of. It's one thing to "look up" an ending in your mind from a declension table by reciting the whole declension when you are only working with nouns from one declension. But suppose you've covered multiple declensions and you are staring at a word that ends in "-um." That could be a lot of things! From multiple declensions! You don't want to have to recite five declensions plus variants in order to find the possibilities for a single ending . . . it helps so much if that ending has its own little set of declension/case/number possibilities filed with it in the mental file folder. Then from that set of case/number possibilities flow the possible noun jobs that the noun might be doing in the sentence.

 

Since a given case has more than one possible use, you're really not all the way there even once you know it's ablative or accusative . . . there's more to notice and to take into account. Which is where it gets fun! Some of those case uses will be more plausible than others given the topic of the sentence, the nature of the verb, and so on--so you test your theories--then notice and decode more--then refine your theories again--till finally everything is fully accounted for. Sweet success! And the better a child knows the case and number possibilities for every ending he meets, the more he can focus on all these other aspects of translation.

 

Enjoy!

[a couple of Latin-learning questions]

What are forums for? (I can't say "fora" in English. I just can't.)

 

Not to worry, you'll just be helped by adding to what you are already doing. The whole declension on one side of one card, as you do, with "1st declension" or "our first declension sample noun--mensa, mensae (f.)" or some such on the other side of the card, plus, on separate cards, not "mensa" and "mensae" but rather "-a" and "-ae," etc., each on separate cards, and on the flip side of each card you have "1st declension nominative singular" or "1st declension genitive singular," etc. Then drill the cards both ways so your child can hear the grammatical label and give the ending or hear the ending and give the label. This hugely helps children narrow down the possibilities when facing a word with that ending in a sentence. (For "-ae," however, you'll have on the back "1st decl. genitive singular OR first declension nominative plural"--because it could be either, and the student needs to know that fact very well. Some endings aren't unambiguous, and sentence clues have to be resorted to in translating. You don't want to end up with two "-ae" cards, but just one, showing all the possibilities the student knows to date on the other side.)

 

I don't really favor the "of the table, to the table" renderings for flash card purposes because they are too narrow (the ablative has so many uses!). I don't mind them as much for illustrative purposes in the context of a grammar lesson, but I think they are too limiting to memorize as one-for-one substitutions.

 

(Off topic, I just noticed you are also the "make what you can out of the ingredients you have" lady from the other thread and that is exactly how the cooking gets done around here. Please send me roasted turnips with applesauce boiled down to heighten its flavor, seasoned with rosemary from your pantry. Thank you.)

[a couple of Latin-learning questions]

On American vs. British case order:

 

For purposes of supplying what's required on a test, your children will easily be able to change the case order and supply what's needed in their new venue, even if they have to write it out the way they learned first and then manually swap.

 

For using the info from the paradigms, it won't matter. That is, if you know what the accusative singular of a third declension noun is, and what the accusative case is used for, you're good to go, regardless of what niche in the paradigm you visualize that info as being located in. When you read or translate a sentence no one cares how you visualize the paradigm--only that you recognize the forms and know why and how Latin uses them.

 

Paradigms aren't an end in themselves; they're a means to mastering the case endings so that forms can be recognized and produced at will, and for that purpose, it doesn't make much difference to the student which order the forms are learned in . . . since you want to get beyond having to recall the whole paradigm in order to "find" one form, anyway. In fact an excellent habit, after learning a paradigm, is to drill the forms separately on flash cards so they achieve mastery on a, here I go again, case-by-case basis, which supports fluency.

[a couple of Latin-learning questions]

Bluegoat, I hear you completely about tradeoffs. Every teacher, every program, has to leave out in order to leave in, and so it comes down to program priorities. Authors have their reasons for tilting towards morphology or tilting towards syntax. I think it's great when authors explain what they value so users can tell if that's what they value, too.

 

One way some programs handle the "how can we get to translating if we are busy learning every form on earth at the same time" problem is to narrow the field to certain related forms initially, translate with those, then widen the field to some additional forms, translate with those, etc. This can be another way to get to translation quickly.

 

It's also partly a matter of how much time a student is going to be able to spend on which subjects.

 

I really see room for a lot of different program decisions so long as the reasons and the costs are understood, and there's a plan.

[a couple of Latin-learning questions]

I'm glad this was helpful!

 

You mention another great factor: when something like noun gender is withheld for later, children can end up feeling as if they're doing something the long way/doing something twice when they could have just done it once.

 

There's also the potential for sheer betrayal: what, there's more, and you didn't tell me? :001_smile: (Forgetting maybe who the "you" is--is it Mom, or the author?!)

 

There are definitely times for saving something for later (any curriculum is a set of decisions about what's for now and what's for later . . .) but a program can always give children some information about what they aren't covering in detail yet, just to give a framework. (Between "withhold" and "inundate" there's a lot of space.)

 

So, a program can present a paradigm and have the child learn it, without explanation, and that has value. But another option is to teach even a pretty young child a paradigm, plus explain that nouns (or whatever the case may be!) come in noun families, noun families have certain family traits in common, we're learning the first noun family now but we'll be learning others later, etc. . . . to me that has even more value.

 

Happy "Latining"!

 

(And I thought you were determined, not panicked.)

[a couple of Latin-learning questions]

I missed this post-holiday thread but thought I'd add a Valentine's Day P.S. to the helpful answers already given.

 

 

The reason that at some point children must know their noun genders is this: it's impossible to use adjectives properly in Latin without knowing the gender of the noun. (There are other constructions that depend on noun gender as well.) Some programs try to simplify life for the student early on by leaving noun gender till later, on the theory that you don't need to know it until you're going to do something with it, while others have you learn the gender from the beginning, on the theory that it's easy to do and saves time and trouble later. (I'm one of the "others" who think it saves time and trouble later to learn it from the beginning, and that's how I structured the program that I wrote.)

 

On a similar note, it's essential to learn two forms of the noun, not just one, in order to decline the noun correctly later. You see this illustrated in a typical dictionary entry, such as "discipula, discupulae, f." Without knowing both forms--the nominative singular and the genitive singular--you can't know which declension the noun belongs to, and without knowing that, you can't decline it, and without knowing the declension endings for a given noun, you can't recognize what noun job the noun is doing in a Latin sentence, or translate correctly from English into Latin.

Similarly for Latin verbs, there are good reasons to learn all four principal parts. (They're called "principal" because they're important and foundational--and they really are!) Different verb tenses (and other verbal forms) are derived from each of the four principal parts, so you can't use a Latin verb in every tense without knowing the four principal parts. You also can't know which set of verb endings to use without knowing which conjugation a verb belongs to, and you learn that by knowing the four principal parts. Again, some programs choose to postpone two or three of the principal parts, while others teach them from the beginning. (I like giving them all from the beginning.)

 

(A program can conceivably withhold the genitive singular of nouns, and just TELL you which declension a noun belongs to, or withhold the full set of verb principal parts, and just TELL you which conjugation a verb belongs to, but this doesn't teach the child how to tell, himself, which declension or conjugation a noun or verb belongs to.)

 

So when you look at a program and you see that the full vocabulary entry is not given--there aren't four principal parts for each verb, there isn't a full vocabulary entry for each noun--then it's important for you to know that the program designer has a well-thought-out reason for that decision. Someone will have to add the missing information later, if it's not there from the beginning, and it will either be the program author, or it will be a parent like you who sleuths on her own and figures out what to do.

 

Good question! Enjoy your Latin studies!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[French speakers: What can you tell me about French Bible translations?]

Your question got me curious. Were you able to find any information about the translation philosophy of the French translations you found? The older/modern language distinction is useful and interesting, but at least in English versions, I've heard also of the formal/dynamic equivalence issue, and that cuts across modern language versions. So the NIV is dynamic equivalence, more willing to rephrase in an effort to be contemporary/accessible, while the NKJ is formal equivalence, sticking closer to the actual language of the original, even though both are modern language versions. Theoretically the same distinction could exist in older versions too, though I'm guessing (ignorantly) that older versions may have more often been aiming at formal equivalence. I'm a fan of formal equivalence translations for study but sometimes supplemented with dynamic equivalence versions as a kind of commentary.

[does everyone try to study latin?]

I too would like to refer to the article a PP linked to. There the author of the article said

 

"Latin only helps with the Romance languages, it won't help with the myriad other prevalent, spoken languages in world (Chinese, Russian, Arabic)."

 

 

I would have to respectfully disagree with that author. Latin is a helpful foundation for any inflected language, and that includes Greek and Russian, with their inflected noun systems. Neither of those is a Romance language, but they share with Latin a noun system in which the noun endings change to convey the grammatical function of the noun. Sure, you could start with Greek or Russian and skip Latin, but Latin gives you the word roots on which a great deal of English depends, PLUS an introduction to an inflected language in your own alphabet. It's easier to tackle an inflected language with a foreign alphabet when you've already had some exposure to an inflected language in your own alphabet!

 

 

The article author also says

 

 

"Some say that you'll understand the English language and its grammar better by learning the Latin language. But wait, English can't easily (or intelligently) have Latin grammar forced on it . . . You don't need to learn the Latin language to understand English grammar in depth."

 

 

My husband found that English grammar only came to life for him when compared and contrasted to the grammar of another language. What grammar is becomes clear in a unique way when you study more than one grammar.

 

 

Roots studies can be valuable, and not everyone has to study Latin, but I wanted to add another point of view on those couple of points so that perhaps someone doesn't skip Latin thinking it's of less value than it is.

[Diminutives of Katherine]

I'm a Katharine (yes, with an "a" . . . ). To most people, I'm Katharine. To my family, Kath. To one English teacher, Kate, and somehow from that teacher, this was okay by me.

 

I knew a Catherine who went by "Cat."

 

This is off-topic but Katharine seems to be a beloved name in many languages . . . it's found in Greek, Russian (Ekaterina, with Katya, Katyusha and Katyushenka as diminutives; Welsh, I think (Catriona); etc. It seems that where there is a K or hard C, T, R in that order, you may have a parallel name.

[Fascinating Russian phonics debates...]

I haven't read this whole thread but FWIW, here's a link to an older discussion of Russian texts:

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-92037.html

 

There I mentioned that in college we had used Stillman and Harkins. Well, the version that was extant in 1981 and 1982 . . .

 

You would still need a native speaker to help you hear what the letters and syllables are supposed to sound like, especially for "palatalized" consonants, which are virtually impossible to describe and which sound like nothing that exists in English. But as a sound grammar-translation, parts-to-whole type textbook, it was excellent.

 

Russian is beautiful--enjoy.

[I stink at marking poetry....]

Sagira, I'm glad you enjoyed it! Whoever wrote that little poem was a genius. I love the way the lines not only embody the stress pattern of the feet, but illustrate the mood of the feet.

 

(Hmmm, if feet have moods, some of us have grumpy feet--oops, different kind of feet:)

[I stink at marking poetry....]

Here is the foot poem along with some other useful material on meter. Maybe it's old hat and exactly what you're struggling with, but maybe it's helpful.

 

The iamb saunters through my book; [short long short long etc., or low high low high]

 

 

 

 

Trochees rush and tumble. [long short etc.]

 

 

 

 

If the anapests run like a scurrying brook,

[short short long]

 

 

 

 

Dactyls are stately and classical.

[long long short]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www1.assumption.edu/users/ady/HHGateway/ExpInt/dtmeter.html

 

I wish we'd just say "low and high" instead of "short and long," but there you have it.

[I stink at marking poetry....]

Hi, Faithe--

 

One more idea for you. Yes, you're right, you have to get the stresses in order to determine the meter.

 

Maybe you can get hold of some poems which someone else has assessed, and test yourself against what they say the stresses are? Then if there are differences between what you thought and what they said, you can look over the differences and try to see why they had it the way they did.

 

Or maybe just start with a marked poem that someone else has marked and try to hear why they marked it the way they did. Try to match the up and down marks they have supplied with the up and down your voice travels in your head as you read the poem. (You know you can hear up and down in your head or else everything you read silently would sound boring to you.)

 

If in your head is too "quiet" to hear the up and down, try to read out loud but looking at their ups and downs at the same time. Not trying to make your voice do what they say, at first, but just trying to hear what your voice naturally is doing, and to notice how that corresponds to the marks they made.

 

This is a lot like what happens when you sing a hymn and look at the music at the same time. I can't read music as in sight-read from scratch, but I could tell if we were singing the hymn to a different tune than the one printed, just from the pattern of ups and downs and the note lengths. And that correspondence between what our voices are doing and the printed notes mostly just sank in from years of singing.

 

Happy exploring. If something works for you, would you come back and tell everyone?

 

But last of all . . . if you can hear the rhythm of poetry and appreciate it, that IS the main thing. The business of feet is just a way of appreciating it further.

 

I'm remembering a great little poem that teaches the four feet. Something about the dactyls being stately and the anapests swift. I'm going to look for that. It describes and embodies the meters at the same time, so it's helpful.

[I stink at marking poetry....]

Hi, Faithe--

 

Are you able to sing? If so, I think you can learn to mark poetry, and the accent in words, too. The accented syllable of an English word, that dictionaries show as accented, is spoken louder and higher--that is, higher in pitch--than the unaccented syllable.

 

Think of "Oh, say can you see"--the music to it. "Oh" is sung as two syllables, with the first one higher in pitch than the second. (OHoh.)This is the same as the pitch pattern in the word "castle." (CAstle.) If you sing "Oh" the way it's sung in "Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light," then say "castle," or "needle," or "camper," or "streetlight," you'll hear how the pitch patterns are the same. Likewise, if you think of the "can you" part of the song, that has the second pitch higher than the first. (can YOU.) Now say "away" (aWAY) and you'll hear the same pitch pattern. Or "sauteed" or "replied."

 

Once you can learn to hear those differences, you'll be able to mark poetry. Read a line out loud, then repeat to yourself the up-down pattern using "la's" (la LAH la la LAH, etc.) instead. "There once was a dog named Plaid." "la LAH la la LAH la LAH." If you can't make out the stress pattern when it's all cluttered up with meaningful words, you'll probably be able to make it out with just "la's." Mark THAT with those little scoops and lines. Then read the line again with the real words and see if you can now distinguish the stress pattern.

 

Enjoy. (or RAther, enJOY!)

 

--a poetry lover

 

P.S. Here's what I think most people will get from the line of poetry below:

 

la LAH la LAH la LAH la LAH/LAH la LAH la LAH la LAH la LAH/LAH la LAH la la la LAH la LAH.

 

(I actually hear something a bit different in my head for the middle section, something closer to LAH la LAH la la la la la LAH, maybe because I like to mute all the ups and downs in the center line to echo the meaning, in which something is hidden, latent, below. I'm really still hearing LITTLE up and down differences between all those la's, but so much smaller than the BIG up and down differences I hear at the beginning of the line, that I could almost write it with a slew of little la's. Because in poetry we're actually not hearing only up and down, we are also hearing how much up and down.)

[Tell me what sewing machine to buy.]

Sergers are complicated. They have three or four or five threads. Handling the tension issues correctly is much harder than with a sewing machine. And you have to have lots of thread for every job.

 

For what you'd like to do, a non-serger that does a good set of overlock stitches would be ideal. You can hem a number of different ways, either with a straight stitch (topstitching style, as on jeans or many casual khakis), or using a blind hem foot. For pants I actually usually find it easier to hem by hand instead of going the blind hem route. Setting up a blind hem foot to take up just the right amount of cloth so that the stitches look nice is a bit tricky. But a blind hem foot can be nice when you have a long, long, straight hem to do.

 

For taking in sides of things, a good way to go would be a straight stitch, or a straight stretch stitch, then trim off the excess fabric and overcast it. Even a simple triple-stitch zigzag works as an overcast. It's not as pretty as a dedicated overcast stitch but it's fast and secure and not a thread hog.

 

You can also get away without a stretch straight stitch on knits by using a regular straight stitch and stretching the fabric just a tad as you sew. Then the stitching won't break when the garment stretches.

 

So really, you can do everything you asked about w/ a machine that does a straight stitch and a triple stitch zigzag!

 

I have a Janome DC 2010 and I love it--it has a very nice set of overcast stitches, plus all the basics, and I got a good deal on sale--but I also evaluated the mechanical Janome which costs a bit less and it was a very strong contender.

 

Happy shopping.

[Has anyone used this to seal in toxic paint?]

Ecos Atmosphere Purifying Paint

 

We have a paint situation gone terribly wrong involving a latex paint that isn't done outgassing after 6 weeks. It's making us ill. The APP from Ecos would be worth the astronomical price if it worked, but wouldn't be if it doesn't. Does anyone have any experience with it--or with anything else--for this type of situation?

 

We have evaluated BIN shellac as a solution, which some advise works wonderfully once its own initial but short-lived smell clears, but we've been told not to use it on every wall as it seals walls too well and can create a mold hazard in our climate (humid summers) because it doesn't let the walls breathe.

 

That's when I found this Ecos option, but the price (note the link is to the QUART) is very high.

[Where is Harold Camping now?]

He says the "church age" is over. I believe I heard that he explains away the "no one knows the day or the hour, not even the Son, but the Father" verse by saying that that applied during the church age, but now that the church age is over he had discovered the day and the hour of Christ's return.

 

As for the church age being over, as one of our pastors said yesterday, "I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." Not much room in there for the church age just ending because someone says it has . . .

 

Double-check me on this, but I believe this is what I heard.

[Lively Latin Users...]

A heavy three-hole punch from Staples is great for converting paper to binderable sheets, or you can invest in some three-hole paper and print on that directly.

 

Once they're in a binder, you can use Post-its, the little ones, as chapter markers, and have your own handy textbook. It's hard to know how the world continued until now without Post-its. Previous generations were clearly more skillful than we are.

 

I'm very conscious of this issue, and a big fan of holes and binders! Having a binder going is a great help because you can file completed papers right with your text materials if you like.

[Latin...]

Better to have a good routine down with your child first, in the other, even more essential subjects. Good study habits, strong reading skills, some English grammar exposure are all very helpful before beginning Latin.

 

I agree with Ester Maria that grades 4-6 are a terrific starting window for Latin for many children.

 

If your child needs a little more grounding in the basic subjects now, then if you DID start Latin now, you'd have to confine yourself to a program that doesn't actually cover all that much Latin--a vocabulary-and-chants starter program. These can be fun for the right situation, but they don't cover anything you can't cover later, and it sounds as if that would just be a distraction for you at the moment.

 

In a year or two you'll have a much wider range of options than you do now. Enjoy!

[How important is a foreign language in the grammar stage??]

I'm all in favor of Latin (that's why I wrote a program), but I'd just like to comment on the idea that a child's window for learning to speak another language without an accent closes by a certain (fairly young) age. I'm sure that the experts who say this have their good reasons for saying it, but I don't believe it's true for everyone, so I agree with those who say it's never too late to start.

 

This is only anecdotal, but I began French at 12 and acquired a good accent (not flawless but good), and I began Russian at 17 having only heard it spoken for about two hours out of my entire life previously, and acquired a very good accent, according to native Russian teachers. Perhaps there are some purposes for which this level of accent proficiency wouldn't have been good enough--I guess I couldn't have become a radio announcer in France, for example, and no doubt in some parts of Russia I couldn't have blended in as a spy--but there are enormous numbers of purposes, personal, academic, even vocational, for which the level of accent proficiency I'd acquired in those languages would have served me very well.

 

My husband has worked with many very capable people from other countries who have traces of an accent when they speak English, and yet it doesn't hinder their ability to function very effectively here. They don't lose respect and they lose few opportunities. Having a perfect accent is a wonderful goal--I loved applying myself to making the sounds of a foreign language, that was part of the fun, and when I teach, I teach pronunciation--but I hope no one worries too much about starting at the perfect age on this account alone.

 

None of this is meant to criticize those who raised this issue as a consideration. I just want to chime in on the "anytime is still a good time" side, even though there are wonderful benefits to beginning early.

 

Enjoy your journey!

[Latin ?]

Here's a past thread listing programs in each type:

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101153

 

Perhaps there are newer ones as well.

 

A seventh grader can begin Latin in either type of program--that's really a matter of your own philosophy and preferences and your past experience with your child.

 

Susan Wise Bauer is partial to parts-to-whole programs (her term), but there are fans of both kinds at this forum.

 

I'm exceedingly partial to parts-to-whole programs myself [grin].

 

Many people find that parts-to-whole programs are easier to follow for Latin beginners and for Moms who are learning Latin themselves. In this type of program grammar instruction is generally explicit in the student text, and the grammar instruction precedes the translation work for the chapter. Translation skills are built on the foundation of mastery of applicable grammatical components like verb and noun forms. Fans say that well-done examples of this type of program are efficient and interesting (if they offer enough translation); critics say they are intrinsically stultifying.

 

In whole-to-parts programs, reading passages come first, with grammar explanations either following later, or located in the teacher's materials. The idea is that the student is guided into grammatical knowledge as needed by inference from the reading material. Fans say these programs are natural and stimulating; critics find them confusing.

 

Enjoy your research and your hunt!

 

(By the way, possibly more people will jump in to answer your question if you mention your interest in parts/whole issues in your subject line. You could win one of those blazing envelopes!)

[neighbor's daughter had kidney stones, now cannot keep food down, needs leads]

That looks like some helpful nutritional information. I'll be passing all these replies on to my neighbor. Thank you, everyone, very much. By the way, she had begun to eat a vegetarian diet before the kidney stones began. I've wondered if she might have an inbuilt metabolic issue that didn't mesh well with the dietary change, even tho' it was a change in a direction that's very healthy for some people.

[neighbor's daughter had kidney stones, now cannot keep food down, needs leads]

Thank you for all the helpful replies. I hope this young lady doesn't have a kidney infection. I'm glad that you all are doing better yourselves. Anyone else want to comment?

[neighbor's daughter had kidney stones, now cannot keep food down, needs leads]

. . . which is why her Mom is so concerned!

 

I had heard about the lemon juice also. Can't go wrong with lemonade so I am certainly going to pass that one along as one thing to try adding. They have been to a pretty fancy specialist and their daughter has had many tests. I am not sure of which ones but I can find out if need be.

 

Thanks for the info!