Catullus project

I'm starting to work on a project that will help students working on their own be able to read Catullus's poetry. Now, I'll be the first to admit that Catullus may have had a bit of, well, questionable content in his poetry. However his poetry can really resonate with young people—I know it did for me.

It is grossly incomplete and in the beginning stages of work, but I'm working in sort of a greatest hits order—the stuff students are likely to read anyway. If you want, you can check out the first one that I've got complete in both Latin and English.

If you were a student studying this poetry, what else would you like to see?

Reading out loud

Here is me reciting Catullus 101.

Do you see what I did? Yes, I read it out loud.

This is really key to making progress with Latin. Or any other language really, but especially with Latin since you won't be hearing much of it.

So here's a New Year's resolution for the silent Latin readers: read out loud. It will help.

Final M!

To nasalize, or not to nasalize. That is the question.

Without a doubt, nearly no one today nasalizes the final m these days. That doesn't mean you shouldn't know about it. I've got two reasons.

1. If you know about nasalized m, certain aspects of poetry become easier to deal with. Particularly the dreaded elision of final m. But that's for advanced students. My other reason applies to everyone.

2. If you can make the sounds of nasalized m, you can quickly see why there is no -om at the end of words. This could help beginning students work through some of the pops and ticks of the second declension. The declension where o reigns supreme, until you get to the Accusative singular.

Not convinced of the value of this?

Try the experiment for the day. Say "cum" with a good French accent. Make that -um come out your nose! Now, go back and say the antiquated form of it: quom. Again, get a good French accent going on the -om. Now, obviously the initial consonant is different. The vowel sound, if you're doing it the right way, should be very similar.

Of course, you don't have to believe me about this nasalization thing. Check out what other folks have to say here and here (because quoting Cicero is pretty much an argument ender).

This work by Peter Sipes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.