Macrons in Latin and accents in Greek

[LauraClark]

Talk to me about macrons in Latin. Do you teach them? I'm using Latin's Not so Tough which uses them, but thumbing through First Form Latin it doesn't look like they do. 

On a separate language topic: we're also doing Greek and I'm not requiring ds9 to add accent marks. I know they're important, but he hasn't really learned what they do yet so I figure we'll start including them in our Greek writing when we learn. But, is not writing the accents a bad habit to get into?

[Eilonwy]

Not sure about Greek, but in German/Welsh/French the accents sometimes distinguish words from each other, and tell how to changing the pronunciation, so I do encourage my kids to use them and I use them myself. It gets them more used to how the words look. If it was the last straw, though, I wouldn’t insist at the expense of making progress in the language.

[Zoo Keeper]

Short answer:  YES in Greek, you need those marks. 

Long answer: Sometimes, as the form of the word changes (is declined or conjugated, etc.) the accent changes or is a "marker" for showing how the word has changed.  It isn't just about how to pronounce the word.

[LostintheCosmos]

6 hours ago, Zoo Keeper said:

Short answer:  YES in Greek, you need those marks. 

Long answer: Sometimes, as the form of the word changes (is declined or conjugated, etc.) the accent changes or is a "marker" for showing how the word has changed.  It isn't just about how to pronounce the word.

⬆️ This. Of course, it is notoriously difficult to just memorize the accents, and it's not that hard to find an actual classicist who will confess he or she never really mastered them. It is much, much easier to get the accents if you listen to the language. There are more and more spoken Greek resources out there all the time, and I highly recommend incorporating some if you want to make remembering the accents simpler. 

For Latin, I do prefer resources that include macrons, and we also use a lot of audio. As in English, vowel length can be the only thing that distinguishes two words or two forms of the same word. I don't require macrons in my students' written compositions (though I do include them in their Latin copywork), but we do work on our pronunciation (I need the most work! my Latin education included macrons in all written texts, so I tend to remember them, but to the extent we spoke Latin, there was no attempt to distinguish vowel length, ergo, loquor sicut barbarus).

[cintinative]

Yes, I required them. Sometimes the difference between one word and another was only the macron.  I marked off partial points for missing macrons. In Spanish there are some words where the only difference between them is the accent.

ETA: we did LFC A through C and Latin Alive 1 and 2

Edited January 27, 2021 by cintinative

[LauraClark]

Thank you so much for all the replies.  I see that I should focus more (personally) on the pronunciation of Latin.  It's both really fun and really daunting to be learning along with a 9 year old and I think I'm mispronouncing a bunch because I haven't really been paying attention to the macrons (partly because Prima Latina/First Form doesn't use them and I thought they were a pretty good curriculum?) - I guess at first I was kind of thinking they were just "helpful" marks like you find in Teach Your Child to Read.  Oops...

And I'll have a discussion with him about the Greek - I'm actually pretty lazy in my personal Greek translating and skip them because I'm mainly using an online lexicon anyway.  Maybe I need to work on my own writing first...😬 

[cintinative]

 

I found this:  https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/macron-or-not-macron/

"In Latina Christiana and the Forms Series, words of two syllables are unmarked, since the accent must be on the penult. All words of three or more syllables have an accent mark, only if the accent is on the antepenult. In other words, the penult is the default accented syllable and is unmarked unless the accent is on the antepenult, in which case it will be marked. If you are confused by all this, you can see why I decided to simplify pronunciation and not teach the rules of accentuation based on long and short vowels."

It sounds like it is a difference in approach. I have always thought of MP's Latin as solid, so I guess this is a matter of personal preference? My kids would have much preferred to leave it aside.

Edited January 27, 2021 by cintinative

[LauraClark]

3 minutes ago, cintinative said:

 

I found this:  https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/macron-or-not-macron/

"In Latina Christiana and the Forms Series, words of two syllables are unmarked, since the accent must be on the penult. All words of three or more syllables have an accent mark, only if the accent is on the antepenult. In other words, the penult is the default accented syllable and is unmarked unless the accent is on the antepenult, in which case it will be marked. If you are confused by all this, you can see why I decided to simplify pronunciation and not teach the rules of accentuation based on long and short vowels."

It sounds like it is a difference in approach. I have always thought of MP's Latin as solid, so I guess this is a matter of personal preference? My kids would have much preferred to leave it aside.

Thank you for that. And yes, my kids would much prefer to not have to do any extra work...or really any work at all - ha!

[cintinative]

I am seeing comments online about putting in macrons that really matter because they affect the meaning. I am not sure what that means, but possibly that is how CAP handled it?