I wondered earlier why it would matter if he ran quickly or not - it doesn't really help for an exercise like this to ignore obvious clues like "dying" and "in time", does it. I am hopeless, but it's nice to learn from that prof through you.

I see what you did there. Now I do, you used that word before, but I needed caps to notice it. Which is just... sad. I should maybe learn to read before I bother with English grammer standers.

:) I am just kidding.

The grammar really worries me. When the prof explains it, I kinda get it, but I would have never figured that out on my own. Right now I have an 83%, and I need a 73% to pass. It would be better to have a higher grade in case I bomb the midterm and final. And I can't proceed with my certificates without passing this course.

Sorry, I am freaking out.

You aren't going to bomb it, you won't go down from 83%, but up.

madre de dios
 

My sister-in-law, who is cooking our Thanksgiving dinner, has announced that the main dish will be SPAM.

There are three clauses, each set off with a different color, but the main clause in blue has, as its DO the second subordinate clause (begins with “that”). The first subordinate clause (who is cooking our Thanksgiving dinner) is an adjective clause modifying the subject of the sentence (S-Vt-DO). The adj clause is also S-Vt-DO as is the main clause of course. The second subordinate clause (that the main dish will be SPAM) is S-VL-PN.

the woes of explication

part of me feels like a ridiculous luddite traditionalist for wanting a grammar school education for my kids, with at least two years of latin

and then I see things like this thread and feel helplessly vindicated

why luddite and why latin?

To be totally honest, I really don't think there is any practical value in learning grammar to this extent. The purpose of grammar is to standardize language so we can understand what we are trying to say to each other. Once it gets esoteric enough that a bunch of people with liberal arts degrees are standing around desperately trying to comprehend how the grammar rules themselves break down, and not what the meaning of an actual text is supposed to be, the discipline has effectively just become a self-serving academic ivory tower thing (IMHO).

I can't really say how important it is to a non-native speaker because I have a pretty good intuitive sense of grammar just from reading and writing a lot. The technical grammar rules always just fucking blew my mind when trying to learn a different language, and the only way I could ever learn was by imitating the structures used by better speakers.

But I'm just not convinced of the efficacy of making kids learn this shit, when in my own experience, grammar is a more or less mechanical system which can be intuitively learned via a healthy amount of reading and writing.

It's important to learn to steer a car if you are getting your license. You need to feel out the handling, how the wheel responds, how the g-force feels when you turn the car at different speeds, the resistance you will feel while going around tight corners, etc.

But it's not necessary to take apart the entire steering column and learn to put it back together in order to know how to steer correctly.

yeah, i think you are right. this class is, after all, for people wanting to become editors.

I can't help but feel like learning Latin is a waste of brain resources. I obviously won't tell you how to educate your children, but I'm curious to know why Latin rather than one of the many more useful languages you could have them learn instead.

yeah like spanish, arabic, or mandarin.

not to mention slovenian!!

well, a luddite because the language that most "future-proofing" parents want their kids to learn these days, is Python.

And Latin because it's so regular, and because it's dead and static, and because it distinguishes between subject and object with word endings rather than word order. So it almost immediately involves the analysis of sentence structure and general grammar.

Well, Latin would be in addition to other languages. I took French, Latin and German at high school. At my school, we picked up German in your second year of high school and French and Latin in the first year. It's the same at the school I would like my kids to attend.

They have to take one modern language - they can choose from Mandarin Chinese, French, Japanese and Spanish, Te Reo Maori (we're from New Zealand). Additionally, they can take Latin.

Then in their second year, they can pick up German.

My kids are 13 and nearly 10, and they already have Mandarin Chinese classes every day at their school, because we currently live in Singapore. So my elder son will either take French and Latin or Mandarin Chinese and Latin. I'm not sure whether they'll allow him to take Mandarin/Latin. My high school ran those classes at the same time, so it wasn't an option for me. That's why I picked up French instead.

Latin is also great because it involves studying one of Western Civilisation's most influence empires, its history and politics, and culture.

Plus, every Latin teacher I've ever met has been totally unhinged. They're the best.

My first Latin teacher was a heavy smoker with emph****a, in her 60s. She set aside two classes every year, just to tell the story of the Trojan war, to her 'freshman' class. For two consecutive days she told us not to take out any of our books, but to just sit and listen. I first heard the story of the Trojan War from another human mouth, a tale being passed down from one generation to another. I sat with all my 13 year old classmates, shocked and enthralled by the tales of rape and deceit and love and murder. She leaned backwards on the front of her desk and heaved and gasped as she told it, croaking out the ends of sentences sometimes, before noisily drawing in more air. It was fucking epic.

That is some old school shit right there. A lot of teachers these days are getting kids to write entries for the class blog on their iPads, and getting them to do all their homework online so that the website marks it and spits out a progress report without the teacher having to do any work.

I doubt students will remember any of those lessons though, the way that Mrs Hereford's Trojan War storytelling Latin classes are burned into her students mind forever. That is the essence of high school teaching - the imparting of precious information from one generation to another. When you are part of a classroom like that, and the walls seem to dematerialise as you connect with a tradition of teaching and learning that is thousands of years old, as you learn a language that is thousands of years old...you become more fully human, somehow. I want that for my kids.

kill me now!

Kids, don't try and rephrase when you're already mid sentence. It's just sad.

that's a cool story vixnix

Iliad pwns

wait

why did a Latin teacher devote two class periods to retelling a Greek story

Yeah it was special! She was a special person.

She would come in every day and say "Salvete puellae" and we would chant in unison "Salve, magistra."

She died at the end of my second year of high school. It was really sad :(

But every Latin teacher I've ever had has been special. It takes a special kind of person to master a language when so many people say things like

takes a special kind of humility to put work into learning a language that 80% of people feel is useless and not worth learning. And to spend your life teaching that language to others, fielding constant criticism about how useless your job is...

because it's a Western Classic that Latin students have heard and learned for thousands of years, I guess.

I'm sure you know that the Romans borrowed heavily from Greek culture, and that Greeks were valued as teachers for Roman youths. Greek classics are Roman classics, in a sense. Latin and Ancient Rome are inextricably linked with Ancient Greece.

thus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeneid

yeah didn't the romans believe that they were the descendants of troy cos like Aeneas escaped carrying his dad or something?

I do know that Greek culture was a precursor to the Romans, but I guess I didn't realize that Greek lit and mythology was considered that closely related. Because the Romans went to such great lengths to rewrite very similar but different versions of all the gods and shit, I guess I assumed it was more of a take your culture but not really give you credit kind of thing.

Definitely didn't realize that learning Greek stories is a big thing for Latin students.

I've always assumed that Latin students would learn about Greek stories, but actually I suppose in schools where both Latin and Greek are offered, it probably isn't such a big thing for Latin students.

No school in New Zealand offers Ancient Greek as far as I know, and Classics is only for the last two years of high school. So I think usually, high school Latin tends to involve some ancient history/Classics.

I was taught (in Latin class) that the Romans accepted the Greeks as their academic superiors, and that many teachers were Greek. Romanising the Greek Gods was a bit different, because those stories became the Roman folk religion before Christianity, so just like any religion, it took on aspects of local culture and was reinvented using the local language.

But you're right...I'm not sure that all Latin teachers would think it was important to spend two class periods just telling the story of the Trojan War. But they do tend to be passionate eccentrics, so they're likely to do stuff like that, even if they don't do that specifically...

I've had that reply sitting there for two days, waiting to be able to post it...the board went dead at the same time that I finished writing it. Lame!

There is no way around it if you have Latin for more than 2 years, besides Virgil a lot of the classic texts you read and translate for weeks and months will involve Greek history, mythology and philosophy. So when your students translate Ovid about all these topics for months, you can't really ignore the content as teacher.

Also, the stories are entertaining. A dead language isn't all the exciting to teenagers, if you throw in some juicy (and bloody, if you can) history, you are better off.
My Latin prof was a version of the type Vix described. I loved her. She was nuts, all Latin teachers at my school were, not sure another type exists. But man, listening to her sit there, describe beheadings in great detail, was like watching a one person stage play, a good one at that.

teach the kids anything but Latin

yes i would prefer quenya thank you very much

metal, mf, do you even hear it?