After translating, a girl looked at the book with a puzzled frown.
“Wow. Latin is like really bad English.” ( Her classmates loved her for this. So do I)
This, however, may be the best.
” Latin. Its almost like a foreign language.”
That’s one way of looking at it.
My high school science class was taught by a joyless woman with short hair, glasses and beady eyes. We called her the mad scientist. I postulated that a microbe had landed in her terrarium one day and went wild. And there she was. The final product.
I recall my sense of hopelessness in that class. I just had no idea what to do. Latin grammar is for many of my students what earth science was for me. BORING. I warn them.
“YO! BORING STUFF STRAIGHT AHEAD. LISTEN UP. PROP YOUR EYELIDS OPEN.”
The brain starts to gel. You lose the first couple of sentences, and then suddenly you wake up to someone saying
“ But the passive infinitive endings in third conjugation “
Or maybe “ So would this be the ablative of agent or the ablative of instrument?”
You, dear reader, if Latin was never inflicted on you ( Did I really just say that? Shame on me) are possibly wondering
“ What the hell is an ablative?”
Or maybe, seeing the words conjugation and infinitive, you just skipped this whole paragraph. GET BACK HERE. I promise that any grammar you read about here you can instantly forget.
SHORT BORING EXPLANATION:
See, in Latin, you can say things in pretty much any word order you want, and its going to mean the same thing all the time. Whereas, in English, if you take words John cooked Mary dinner and switch them around, maybe Mary is cooking dinner or the dinner cooked John. However, because Latin puts a little code at the end of each word, the sentence will always be John cooked Mary dinner, even if the word order says Mary dinner John cooked. The codes are called case endings, and ablative is the name of a case. There are lots of ablatives. Ablative of price, of time, accompaniment, means and instrument, comparison, agent, et cetera. WAKE UP. Thank you.
One day I presented the ablative of respect. At that time, we had a school wide character education project. Every month had a word for character: integrity, honesty, compassion, loyalty, and so on. When I came up with the ablative of respect, they just didn’t believe me. One girl gave a loud whoop of laughter.
“ ABLATIVE OF RESPECT?? Whats next? The ablative of sportsmanship?” (wait till she finds out about ethical datives)
Occasionally I say it out loud.
What do I do? I teach the grammatical complexities of a language no one has spoken for several centuries. So, what do you do?
Sometimes I have trouble rationalizing why people should take Latin. This is my compelling recruitment speech.
REASONS TO TAKE LATIN:
1.
2. I’m thinking, I’m thinking. Don’t rush me.
3. We have a secret handshake.
4.you don’t have to talk through your nose like in French. Really, does that sound romantic to you?
5. you don’t sound like you’re clearing your throat getting ready to spit like in German.
6. I have nothing against Spanish. Some of my best friends are Spanish teachers, but does that mean you have to take a class with them?
7. You learn a lot of big English words that you will spell incorrectly.
THE DARK SIDE OF LATIN
1. Latin is boot camp for grammar. It’s like the book, ” Everything you never wanted to know about grammar and had no intention of asking.”
2. No one speaks it anymore. On the other hand, no one is around to laugh at your accent.
3. Did I mention you learn a lot of grammar?
4. Your Latin teacher has a short term memory loss problem.
5. People frequently say things like, “LATIN???? What are your taking THAT for?”
and when you don’t have a snappy comeback you feel inadequate.
Every student who reads this says the same thing.
“We have a secret handshake?”
Heard in the Classroom 