Latin question

[EKS]

I am open to any and all suggestions on this.

Autumn is dyslexic. According to the woman who did her testing, adding Latin to our curriculum will help, not hinder, Autumn. For a dyslexic fifth grader who spells on a second grade level, understanding word roots would add a logical sequence to her spelling and vocabulary instruction that would make it easier for her to understand.

You seem to be well versed on this topic. Would you suggest using a grammar based Latin program (like Lively Latin) alongside a program like "I speak Latin"?

 

My 15yo son is dyslexic and has been reasonably successful with Cambridge. When I say "reasonably successful" I mean that he is getting an A in an outside class that uses Cambridge; however I have *no* visions of him reading Ovid or Virgil or anything else in the original Latin. He is only doing this to have a foreign language on his transcript.

 

We did do Getting Started with Latin as well as Latin Prep and So You Really Want to Learn Latin. He did ok to a certain point and then would hit a wall. It was very apparent that he would need to do far more work than a non-dyslexic student to get through a grammar-based program. I have bigger problems to deal with in trying to educate him (such as helping him learn to write in *English*).

 

I would take a look at Getting Started with Latin for your daughter. It's inexpensive and straightforward and teaches Latin in tiny increments. It was perfect for my son when we did it. I wish that the author would continue with a series. Oh well!

[Nomen Nescio]

I think there is an *enormous* difference between using something as a stepping stone and using something as a stand-alone course. Many of those courses are not supplementary courses to grammar-based courses, but are used as stand-alone courses and for many people, that is as far as they get, i.e. they get nowhere, quite literally, because the only Latin they saw was "fabricated" one.

I see praise for "natural method only" principles, but I have yet to see even a convincing anecdote that anyone has ever gotten all the way to reading classical authors without formally studying grammar. And even if they did, I'm pretty certain they made life harder for themselves than necessary.

 

I do recognize that a certain amount of "fabrication" and adaption needs to be there as a stepping stone. Yet, there is a huge difference in doing that - and minimizing it - and seeing an actual value in that, i.e. making entire courses based on fabricated dialogues and things of the kind. Gradual progress - from fabrication to merely adaptation to no-adaptation but with commentary for unknown things, to full texts - seems like an ideal solution to me and I would not award a credit for programs like CLC or LL as stand-alone courses

Oerberg does transition to fully original Latin texts in the second volume in the series Roma Aeterna. But, the jump between the end of the first book and the beginning of the second is pretty wide. I think maybe you could bull your way through on mere persistence, but the formal study of grammar would make that persistence pay off a lot better.

 

Spoken Latin is another beast, though. As long as it does not turn into a conlang and does not suffer Hebrew's fate... Think of Mishnaic-Rabbinical Hebrew vs. "modern, resurrected Hebrew". The former has an authenticity within its fairly limited scope; the latter is a conlang with an extremely artificial feeling to it and real difficulties as to how to "behave" in a modern world. In the process of several generations of being spoken outside of a religious context, it did reach a sort of "naturality" - too bad that it became a different language in that process. And that reading and understanding that Hebrew actually makes serious semantic blocs for people attempting to understand Biblical and Rabbninical layers of the language. By resurrecting Hebrew, they largely destroyed Hebrew - incredible, but true.

At the Conventiculum, Tunberg also made this point, though I'm still not clear on how this phenomenon is manifest. It seems to me that as different as my English is from that of Shakespeare, it would be a lot harder to understand Shakespeare if I didn't know English to begin with. I'm also not clear what about the reconstructed Hebrew you're describing as a "conlang". Latinists fret about minting new words, but a language is not reducible to its catalog of words. If new words were all that was added to Hebrew, that doesn't seem like a deal-breaker. Even if new derivational rules arise, or obsolete ones suddenly become productive again, that doesn't seem to break anything. It's happening rapidly in English, but we can still read Mark Twain, who wrote multiple generations ago.

[Ester Maria]

I'm also not clear what about the reconstructed Hebrew you're describing as a "conlang". Latinists fret about minting new words, but a language is not reducible to its catalog of words. If new words were all that was added to Hebrew, that doesn't seem like a deal-breaker. Even if new derivational rules arise, or obsolete ones suddenly become productive again, that doesn't seem to break anything. It's happening rapidly in English, but we can still read Mark Twain, who wrote multiple generations ago.

The short version would be that they not only added new roots and created new words based on the morphological requirements of the language, but the semantics changed big time. I think there *is* a possibility of a fairly felicitous compromise, but the mainstream modern language has definitely become a constructed language, which messed up the "mental relationship" with the older layers of the language. There are Jews who adamantly believe that the holy language should not, and should have never been, "furthered" to that level of a conversational language and "misplaced" from its "context" - and while they may have typically religious grounds for that reasoning, I simply see that what happens in your mind is that it is now a language of a different culture, and it becomes increasingly difficult to understand traditional scholarship on its own terms. Sounds crazy, I know, and I could give you many trivial examples, but I do not think it is about any trivial example per se, but the overall cognitive effect is quite significant, plus there were some morphosyntax issues too, but this topic is so out of the format of the forum (it is a dissertation type of topic, really) that I will stop at that LOL.

 

You could argue that the semantic shifts which messed up Latin happened already with Christianity (think "anima") and that furthering the registers of the language within our culture is not really a big deal because of the continuity of the academic register until fairly recently, etc. I am not so sure about that, because I feel that the language has pretty much exhausted itself in its "natural" settings in which it was used and is quite often turning into its parody today when actively spoken.

In many ways this is a "religious" (for lack of a better expression) issue for me rather than a perfectly logical, rational opposition, but I prefer Latin to remain "encapsulated" within its world and I would not use it as the language of today.

 

Maybe, just maybe, in the case of Hebrew the benefits do outweight the disadvantages and it maybe was the best course of affairs albeit with sacrifices along the way, which can maybe be amended in some ways; but I do not think Latin has, or will be able to have, nearly as strong or as "needed" agenda to make a comeback as an international language, language of scholarship, active daily use, etc. I am not even fully opposed to some, dosed, active use when learning the language for pedagogical purposes - but I am really against furthered Latin.

 

I am too tired to be coherent at this point, but I hope you can make some sense out of it LOL.

Edited August 2, 2011 by Ester Maria

[JadeOrchidSong]

Bill, you can find lots of elementary simplified readers here and read on something called GRASP metod here (which is not exactly the same thing what I did with my daughters, but the closest description of it that I found - again, though, it requires a knowledgeable teacher, but just for your information of loosely what I had in mind). That site is generally good, go to "acceleration readers" too here and see how they syntactically break down things. THIS is crucial - and it goes directly AGAINST what most reading method Latin texts do with overfocus on "intuition" and not enough focus on dissecting of this type. When I grade Latin translations, I take each little part in those types of units.

 

On an example of the samples from one Italian textbook used for beginner Latin study, you can see how the material generally gets organized:

Here you have exercises for a lesson. If you skip that table and see "esercizi di applicazione", you see that the format starts with practice of forms (conjugate these - in order for it to become automatic), continues with the practice of form recognition and adequate translation (recognize these), then you have exercises of translation to-from with minimal help. Skip vocabulary and tables, you will see more of those sentences - all of which are still pretty much made up at this point (these is all beginner Latin content). If you scroll further to "versioni di ricapitolazione", you will see that they include sort of slightly 'pedagogically altered' texts, which is what they typically do at the beginning. You just cannot avoid it because while there are few isolated sentences which can serve as an illustration of something studied, to get big chunks and translation exercises, you need to adapt. But here is the thing: they attempt to mimize "inventions" and "interventions" (which is hard at the beginner levels), so they tend to paraphrase a lot. They DO NOT invent stories about Roman families specifically written by textbook authors' to read.

A bit further, though, in the same textbook, like in the sample here, look what they do: scroll to exercises and see that they are all taken from authors, i.e. the original texts, whenever possible, are used to be worked on.

(And as you can see, perfectly to Ester's taste, it is a fluff-free sample. :tongue_smilie: I dream of such textbooks, though I am not familiar with that specific one, it may be that it does have visual distractions in the printed form.)

 

You can learn practically all of Latin morphosyntax from resources like this, better than the vast majority of textbooks I have seen AND fluff-free. Click to "iter tertium", then to "il caso latino e le funzioni logiche" for a demonstration of cases, scroll down to tables and see examples from literature (there in red) right away. If you look further into the course, most of exercises are lit-based. Heck, they teach basic syntax via long excerpts from Aeneid and Bello Gallico.

 

A program like this last one on the market would be bought by a few dozen people, if that much. People prefer colors, fluff, stories about Roman families, more color, more pictures, more fluff about Roman history, "the word of the day", more fluff and color, pedagogically bad sequences of which you cannot make head or tails because they are so disjointed, etc. I considered it, but (i) I pick my battles, and (ii) I do not have enough high formal qualifications specifically in Latin, i.e. I know Latin, but I am not an expert, so I do not dare to make a course, it would be too great responsibility for me and I am not sure I could do it justice and pretend the level of scholarship I do not have. But this (last one) is a perfectly ordered course (and totally free online - if you speak Italian - but I am showing it for the sake of structure), with pedagogically perfect examples, I would maybe amplify it a bit if possible and attempt to add more and earlier reading (though I would base it on postclassical Latin and Vulgate, and use classical Latin for the actual study), but for the most part, if I were to make a course, it would largely be like that. The language is so clear that it can be used by a grammatically literate child too - not sure about elementary, but a concentrated and bright middle schooler could go through it with no problems, in my view.

 

On this site you have collections of translations (solved multiple times) assigned in Italian lycees from 40s onward, you can search entire databases based on textbooks used. Keep it away from your kids if they speak Italian, though, because all the solutions are there too, LOL. Italian students love this site for obvious reasons, darn cheaters of 21st century. :tongue_smilie: Not very useful to you, maybe, but if you manage to figure out difficulty levels, you can at least see what types of texts are worked on for various levels and arrange your readings accordingly.

 

And finally, if you are really into the whole "using" Latin thing, a group of students from one Italian lycee organized a whole course based on dialogues (they even filmed them!) and usage-based grammar here. I do not guarantee the quality of this as I did not actually review it, it is only something I came across while searching for things for you, but I assume they have technically correct formulations if they did it under the supervision of their professor.

EM, thanks for such rich resources. I enjoyed checking these out.

[SnMomof7]

So, to go back a few steps. Based on EM's recommendation to sit down and READ Latin to your children while translating - is there an interlinear Vulgate in Latin and English out there somewhere? That would make things simpler for parents who are learning Latin themselves while trying to educate their own children :).

 

I was re-listening to the Bluedorn's lecture on teaching classical languages at home, and after learning the alphabet and pronunciation and learning to read in the target language, they then recommend reading from an interlinear line by line to yourself. Why not count the wee ones in on this too?

[SnMomof7]

Ah, here is an online one:

http://www.sacredbible.org/studybible/index.htm

 

It does come with notes too Bill - check it out!

[Ester Maria]

Ah, here is an online one:

http://www.sacredbible.org/studybible/index.htm

 

It does come with notes too Bill - check it out!

This is a "bad" thing if you do not know Latin. The English translation does NOT break the text into small chunks and then addresses each chunk individually, it is simply Latin text + English text, but if you cannot analyze the Latin text yourseful and break it down to your children literally, it can be quite problematic.

 

For example:

 

{1:3} Dixitque Deus: Fiat lux. Et facta est lux.

{1:3} And God said, “Let there be light.†And light became.

 

It should actually be broken down, like this:

Dixitque: "and (-que) said (dixit)", Deus: "God"

Fiat: "let-be-made/become", lux: "light"

In conclusion: And God said, "Let there be light."

Et: "and"

Facta est: "made-it-was", i.e. it was made, lux: light

In conclusion: And light became.

 

Only when you break things like this approximately does the text begin to make sense with time to the littles (the big ones can analytically work through the same text in both languages and infer most of those things on their own, but for littles, I really recommend detailed breaking down of things). This is why it is tricky to do if your command of Latin does not allow you to "manipulate" the text this way: I used to change syntax too to make things easier, etc.

My point, which perhaps I didn't get across clearly, is that I would enjoy a resource that included multi-level analysis (with notes and commentaries) of some more difficult (and genuine) Latin writings that (with the addition of these parsing and notes) gave me an idea of how Romans actually wrote and constructed sentences.

 

One great thing about Latin is there are a zillion out of print Latin books, that Google has thoughtfully scanned for us. Here is an example, perhaps, of exactly what you are looking for:

 

http://books.google.com/books?id=xhZAAAAAYAAJ&dq=intitle%3Aparsed%20intitle%3Acompletely&pg=PR3#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Spy Car]

One great thing about Latin is there are a zillion out of print Latin books, that Google has thoughtfully scanned for us. Here is an example, perhaps, of exactly what you are looking for:

 

http://books.google.com/books?id=xhZAAAAAYAAJ&dq=intitle%3Aparsed%20intitle%3Acompletely&pg=PR3#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

Very close my friend, thank you so much!!!

 

The style is a bit busy, but this is very close to my ideal, and the Aeneid is close to my heart.

 

I really appreciate the link.

 

Bill

[Sahamamama]

I'm sure Ester Maria will be happy to write us a dream Latin curriculum in her spare time :)

 

Didn't EM have a baby last year? Doesn't she have older children to teach? :D I'm still plodding through with Father Henle, conquering those Gauls all over the place. :lol:

[Spy Car]

Didn't EM have a baby last year? Doesn't she have older children to teach? :D I'm still plodding through with Father Henle, conquering those Gauls all over the place. :lol:

 

The advantage of celibacy :D

 

Bill

[Emerald Stoker]

nm

[SnMomof7]

For some reason I can't actually get that first Google book to load for me at all, it is stuck in snippet view and won't show me the pages (though others display fine).

[Emerald Stoker]

nm

[SnMomof7]

There you have it HG - I think that's likely - as long as it's not just me!

I can't either, Jennifer--I think Americans can access more Google books than we can in Canada.

 

Huh. That's odd. Can you get to the books.google.ca version?

 

http://books.google.ca/books?id=xhZAAAAAYAAJ&dq=archibald%20maclardy&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Emerald Stoker]

nm

[SnMomof7]

Dear GGardner,

 

No, unfortunately (at least I myself can't--I'd best not speak for all Canadians!!)--I just got the snippet view. But it was wonderfully kind of you to think of it, and to post the link that way, too--thanks!

 

Ditto.