Latin curriculum review

I'm putting together a page of what is available for Latin programs. My intention is that this is aimed at home-school and self-study Latin students. You can see it here. Right now it's not much more than a rough draft in sections, but I figure it is of more value to you as a published page than waiting for me to get my act together and finish it. So read it and learn about the textbooks available.

Indirect Speech, Part 3

Last time we covered the basics of indirect speech. Here's a sample to refresh your memory before we head to the details.

Latin: Puto Iohannem ambulare
English: I think that John is walking.

But what if we think John was walking earlier? Or that he will be walking later? Right now, all we say is that we think that he is walking right now. How do we deal with tense? All we have is an infinitive. Well, infinitives have tense. So let's stack them up.

Future: Puto Iohannem ambulaturum esse.
Present: Puto Iohannem ambulare.
Past: Puto Iohanem ambulavisse.

The key thing to remember is that the time of the infinitive is relative to the time of the main verb. So the future sentence in English is "I think that John will walk." He hasn't yet, but I think he will. The past in English is "I think John has walked." There's still some tweak left to tense. Check this:

Main verb Imperfect: Putabam Iohannem ambulaturum esse.

See what I did? I changed the main verb, but left the indirect speech as future. This might be said in English as, "I was thinking that John would walk." Of course "would" isn't the only word I could have used. We've got a lot of will/would/may/might flexibility in English, depending on our level of certainty. It's almost baroque really. But I digress. Latin keeps it clean and simple. The infinitive is time relative to the conjugated verb.

What if we want to go passive? I'm going to ignore the possibility of future passive in the indirect speech (I've got a reason). Let's look at an example first.

Latin: Audio meum cattum ratum cepisse.
English: I hear that my cat caught a rat.

Or does it mean this:

English: I hear that a rat caught my cat.

Um. Uh-oh. We've just uncovered the problem with indirect speech in Latin. Both the subject and direct object are in the accusative case in Latin. Never fear! There is a way out. Here's what I want to say in Latin:

I want to say: Meus cattus ratum cepit.

But to say this leads to the trap above. Never fear. Turn the sentence into a passive version of itself.

Now it's passive: Ratus a meo catto captus est.

See how I got rid of the direct object? Good. But we're still missing our indirect speech magic. I'll perform the magic, and you see if you can explain what I did. Again with audio.

Magic: Audio ratum a meo catto captum esse.

And of course if I'm hearing the rat in the act of being caught, I'd say this:

Caught red-handed: Audio ratum a meo catto capi.

Isn't that an odd passive infinitive? I've pretty much shown you the basics and the details of indirect speech. Ready for a quiz?

A defense of Latin

This is my response (paragraphs added) to one woman's anti-Latin blog post.

As a Latin teacher, this is how I make my living. But you're right. For anyone living in or around or near a large community of foreign language speakers, the conclusion, which you draw, is correct. Resoundingly so. However. (And here is my standard defense of Latin when vocabulary/grammar/writing advantages are cast aside—and frankly those are skills separate from Latin, whatever uses Latin may have in teaching them.) In order to know where you're going, you must know where you came from. Latin is our heritage as Western Christians. From antiquity through the medieval era to the Renaissance, Latin was the intellectual language of the Christian West. Even after Latin's second death in the Renaissance, people with serious educations (the American founders for Americans) were steeped in the Latin tradition. Latin is where we, collectively in the West, came from. 

My secondary argument is that Americans (and I see you're living in Costa Rica, so this may be moot) live in a deeply monolingual world, which is a pity in its own right. Any foreign language will broaden a child's education, so why not pick one that will enrich their understanding of their own culture? You're shockingly fortunate to be living in a country where you and your children are able to learn a second language and culture by immersion. You're doubly fortunate to not have to do it as a disadvantaged immigrant. Maligning Latin to people who may have marginal use for low-level Spanish isn't useful. 

I am also painfully aware of how ungood many Latin curricula are, so I won't build them up. I'd also tell someone who wants to learn Spanish to learn Spanish, not Latin—no matter how useful Latin may be toward learning Spanish. Yes, Latin is strangely popular among homeschoolers—I am delighted by that for reasons of light and heat at home—but it isn't for everyone.

Again, I reiterate, maybe Latin isn't for you. But to write it off as foolish or time-wasting is just as bad as me suggesting that learning Spanish is to learn the language of farmhands and fast-food workers. Que no digo. The vast and screaming majority of  students don't even bother with a foreign language at all. So no matter what language (and I'm rather fond of Latin), there's work to be done.

In the Department of Education’s more comprehensive survey of college students, the proportion of students taking no language courses was 58.4 percent. (Panetta)

We in America have a privileged situation. We speak the most geographically widespread language with a very high number of native speakers and economic privilege: English. True, Latin isn't a help on that count, but at the very least it will give students a direct understanding of what their non-native English business partners went through as well as a deeper understanding of their culture's past. 

But as long as elite U.S. schools and universities continue to put little emphasis on the acquisition of foreign language capabilities, American executives will be monolingual and U.S. corporations will have to try and use English or buy foreign nationals who have the language ability where the business is located. A sad commentary for the strongest and most competitive economy in the world. (Panetta)

Sure, Latin has traditionally been associated with an elitist education, but there is zero reason for that to be true. Many homeschooling parents don't know Latin, but that's no reason to give up hope. Need help? I'm here.


Note: I don't really agree with Panetta's conclusions, but his analysis of the state of foreign language teaching in America is quite damning.

Indirect Speech, Part 2

In part 1, I described what indirect speech is. After all, we do have indirect speech in English. A bit of a basic feature. Anyway, in this post we're going to focus on how Latin does it.

Here is my example of English acting like Latin, which is to say it's indirect speech without "that".

English acting like Latin: I know John to be walking.

It can be broken apart into two sentences.

Sentence 1: I know John.
Sentence 2: John is walking. 

Sentence one is the key bit. Look at the verb. Not just any verb will do the trick here. You can't say this:

Garbage: I dance that John is walking.

You need a special verb. Let's call it a head verb for our purposes. Why call it a head verb? First, it is easier to remember than verbum sentiendi for beginning Latin students. Second, the verb originates in your head: hear, see, think, feel, etc. 

Ok, so now to make our two example sentences into Latin.

Sentence 1: Scio Iohannem
       Yes, I know that scio isn't the correct verb here, bear with me for the example.
Sentence 2: Iohannes ambulat.

Again, we meet the key condition for indirect speech: a sentence with a head verb. That done we can do the grammar magic so we can combine the sentences. So you know, it's not this easy:

Latin garbage: Scio Iohannem ambulat.

What's wrong here? I dropped the second Iohannes. He only shows up once. The answer is in the verbs: how many? Two. Any way of putting them in two clauses? No. That's the problem. You only get one conjugated verb per clause. And the verb here is scio. Full stop. Ambulat needs to do something else so it can stop being a rule breaker. 

What can we do? We have two options. We can either go the participle route or the infinitive route. Since we're talking about indirect speech, we're going the infinitive route. So, let's transform sentence to to prepare it to go into sentence 1. (Because the other way just doesn't work.)

Sentence 2: Iohannes ambulat.

Two things are going to happen. I'll do them one at a time. First, the verb needs to become an infinitive.

Sentence 2: Iohannes ambulare

But now we have an ungrammatical sentence. We have an infinitive, which can't have a nominative case noun as subject. Infinitives have accusative case as their subject. Strange but true. So let's fix it.

Sentence 2: Iohannem ambulare

Ok, now we're good to go. Let's line the two sentences up now.

Sentence 1: Scio Iohannem
Sentence 2: Iohannem ambulare

Oh hey, waitaminit. I see the same word twice. Iohannem. This must be where the sentences are joined. Easy! Ok, so now try it. Make two sentences out of it.

Sentence 1 and 2 together: Scio Iohannem ambulare.

And that's the majority of the work in indirect speech in Latin. A few more details are in the next post.

Indirect Speech, Part 1

There's no doubt that the first time students run across indirect speech, they're somewhat surprised. After all, up to that point, it's nothing but nominative for the subject. Then we drop a bomb on them: well, actually accusative case can be a subject too. But only for infinitives.

In English, it's pretty easy to do indirect speech. Pop in your reporting method—see, hear, think, say, etc.—and add a that. You're on your way.

Direct: John is walking.
Indirect: I see that John is walking.

Latin is a bit trickier. There is no word that corresponds to "that". Well, there is, but it isn't used in classical Latin. For now, I'll pretend that medieval Latin doesn't exist. (Not true, it exists and is fabulous, but students should learn the classical version first.) Latin does something much different. It is almost as if you are joining two sentences together. English can, but rarely does, do the same thing. Let's look at a quick English example.

English acting like Latin: I know John to be walking.

See how there isn't a "that" in the sentence? Good. It is as if I joined these two sentences.

Sentence 1: I know John.
Sentence 2: John is walking. 

I did some grammar magic and got our example. This is what Latin is going to do.

Next: I explain it how Latin does it.

Advanced Latin

I'm teaching an advanced Latin class this year. I'm writing about this so that all of you learning Latin can see what you are working toward.

I'm using the Vulgate—the Bible in Latin—as the text for class. Given that I am working with Christian homeschoolers, it may seem like I'm trying to curry favor. I'm not. I think the Bible is a great text to start students in on unadapted Latin literature. Here's why: students should be at least broadly familiar with many portions of the Bible. This will allow them to focus clearly on the language being used and not what is happening.

Twenty years on, I still remember my first encounter with Caesar. He's considered an easy author. But I always felt I was going so slow—and I suppose I was—that I couldn't ever get a feel for the larger context of the work. Then to compound matters, Caesar was talking about things I had never heard of. Who were the Allobroges and where were they from? The Vulgate gets around this. Students know many of the stories, which are (mostly) short episodes.

After students take their work home, we meet again to dissect the text bit by bit. This week we read Psalm 23 (or is it 22?). We shredded it to bits and put it back together in class. It was amazing. The best part? We do it every week.

If you're studying Latin, keep at it. Eventually you can get to where you are reading real, Latin literature. It is closer than you think. Keep it up.

The Exile of Aeneas (Book Review)

The Aeneid is the epic from antiquity that most people are the least familiar with. The Exile of Aeneas is a step toward fixing that. Instead of a translation or adaption for children, Ed DeHoratius presents the story as a series of choices for the reader. Since the story is not as familiar to students and Aeneas is an all too-human hero, students will have a chance to see the story unfold for themselves as they are faced with the no-win choices Aeneas had to make. For students who are more familiar with the story, the choices available to Aeneas are made more immediate in this style of storytelling.

Bottom line: Making the Aeneid fun.

End of the year

We're grinding in on the end of the school year. From my own experience as a student, I know it is far too easy to slack off at this time of year. And from the the teaching end, everything seems to get more and more hectic. Between those two, you might be ready to let the Latin slide. Which is completely understandable.

But I've got bad news. Latin, or any foreign language for that matter, is not a skill that does well with neglect. Don't take my word for it. Check out what the Augustine Club at Columbia University has to say. They've got some other interesting web resources, but this is particularly pertinent for us.

So if the end of the year is overwhelming to you, I'm there with you. But while you are struggling, don't forget to spend some time every day with Latin (or whatever foreign language you're studying). It doesn't have to be an onerous task that makes you want to give up all hope. Just scale back your expectations for the time being. Keep at it, even if it feels like you're not making progress—your persistence will meet with success. You can master Latin. And always remember, Rome wasn't built in a day.

If you need any specific help or encouragement, drop me a line at pete at pluteopleno dot com.

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

Slowing down to master it all

I've been busy trying to break through writer's block on another project, so I've been quiet. No more.

I was working with a student this week and noticed that in certain situations he was making errors. One of the things I like to do with students is to label sentences so the structure of the language is obvious. (I'm partial to something that looks like a modified Shurley grammar but whatever you use, stick with it.) The idea is to do this so much that it becomes second nature to the students.

However. Students left to their own devices like to hurry through work. I don't know why, but I was (and occasionally still can be) certainly guilty of this habit. As a result, students make sloppy errors that mislead. They can answer questions about the reading perfectly well. They can draw pictures about the story. Or answer questions (correctly) about the grammar. But there it is, the Accusative object of a preposition labeled as a direct object.

The problem for us is to tease out which is an error from going too fast and which is an error in understanding. This is not easy, unless we take time to go over errors with students, and time is certainly a precious commodity. What is better is to encourage students to slow down. Yes, that means their studies will take longer, but over time they will master the material and need less time.

So try to convey this message: Go slow, take time now and build good Latin skills OR whip through and need to unlearn bad habits to learn the correct skills.

My coop just cancelled its weekly meeting

And, in fact, mine did.

You know it's going to happen if it hasn't happened already. Something—snow, construction or something else—crops up and cancels the weekly meeting of your Latin group.

So what to do?

If your student is struggling, this is a good time to go back and review difficult concepts. If your student isn't struggling, this is a good time to go back and review difficult concepts. No matter how well or poorly you are doing in Latin, review is always good. Firming up paradigms (also known as noun and verb charts) is always good for students in grammar driven curricula. Spending time with the readings is great for students in reading driven curricula. In other words, you're going to gear your activity to the curriculum—which, if you've gotten lucky or chosen well, matches your student's learning style.

The key is to spend some time every day. Language is a use it or lose it sort of skill. So for learners of all stripes, daily practice is better than taking the week off. Even spending ten minutes each day is better than lumping in a one-day, hour-long catch up session before heading back to the coop. I can't emphasize enough that daily exposure is superior to anything else. Even if you go back to the beginning of the book and review there, you're ok. It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you're doing something instead of knocking off for the week.

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