Post drifts valet observatio
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Just read this on the Internet:
Latin can improve your English vocabulary. Deepen your communication skills. Enhance critical thinking. Give you a new perspective on language.
Sounds like encyclopaedia salesmen patter to me. Has anyone who was force-fed Latin at school actually found any benefit in it? Even Kiswahili must be more useful to learn with an estimated 200 million first & second language speakers, rather than the odd Catholic priest mystifying his congregation with something that hasn't been widely spoken for over 1500 years.
IV, as the Roman golfer shouted.
Latin can improve your English vocabulary. Deepen your communication skills. Enhance critical thinking. Give you a new perspective on language.
Sounds like encyclopaedia salesmen patter to me. Has anyone who was force-fed Latin at school actually found any benefit in it? Even Kiswahili must be more useful to learn with an estimated 200 million first & second language speakers, rather than the odd Catholic priest mystifying his congregation with something that hasn't been widely spoken for over 1500 years.
IV, as the Roman golfer shouted.
I also reckon there were transferrable skills when I started to program as again there is a grammar and a syntax,
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Hard to say, it has been spoken continuously since Roman times but whether one of Jule's finest would recognise it, who can say? Then again, we know that the pronunciation and structure of English has changed over the centuries - ever heard Shakespeare as he would have heard it?
Ninthace - was it not ‘Gallia omnia divisia est in partes tres’ - much more difficult to translate grammatically under my very demanding Latin master [who was ex-RAF, “five horrid years” in India in WW II - we became great friends when he retired] - but of course Caesar did not have the benefit of Kennedy’s wisdom back then ... and I agree as to the later benefits of the tortures we endured at school, I still reach for my precious Gepp and Haig Latin dictionary now and then when I want to fix a meaning exactly.
Beags - thanks for your mention of ‘causas’ .. the proud motto of Sheffield University is “Rerum cognoscere causas” ... which is of course open to the most widespead abuse ... but my favorite translation remains as “to go and see her old man”.
Reverend mods, top marks for preserving these wildly offtopic remarks here - I had no idea how erudite was the community of my former fellow aviators - they are fun, and a bit of fun is most welcome now - thank you.
[but please please let us not get on to Chaucher! ]
[Oh, and hat-tip to albatross also for that very astute comment today]
Beags - thanks for your mention of ‘causas’ .. the proud motto of Sheffield University is “Rerum cognoscere causas” ... which is of course open to the most widespead abuse ... but my favorite translation remains as “to go and see her old man”.
Reverend mods, top marks for preserving these wildly offtopic remarks here - I had no idea how erudite was the community of my former fellow aviators - they are fun, and a bit of fun is most welcome now - thank you.
[but please please let us not get on to Chaucher! ]
[Oh, and hat-tip to albatross also for that very astute comment today]
Last edited by dogle; 6th Apr 2024 at 00:02. Reason: typo
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Yes. Some people do. You can see this in the movie "The Passion of the Christ" which was done in the original languages with sub titles. (Mostly Aramaic and Latin, but I think some Hebrew was also spoken).
To be honest, the Latin sounded a lot like Italian to me.
Allegedly, among the Romance languages, Romanian is the closest to Latin of any of them, but how far it drifted I can't say.
To be honest, the Latin sounded a lot like Italian to me.
Allegedly, among the Romance languages, Romanian is the closest to Latin of any of them, but how far it drifted I can't say.
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I don't speak Italian, but my degree is in classics. So when I go there I speak Latin with a world-war-two-film Italian accent. They love it. Use ut and the subjunctive and they swoon.
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My Father & step Mother had Italian friends who would drive to London every summer in their ancient Beetle. My stepmother spoke fluent Italian and the women would chatter away merrily but my Father and the husband would converse in Latin.
Oh Lord - 'ut and the subjunctive'! One of the real horrors of Latin. Along with gerunds and gerundives, ablative absolutes, 'A, ab, absque, coram, de palam, cum, and ex or e...' and other grammatical tortures inflicted on me at prep school whilst I was covertly reading 'The Airfix Magazine'....
Oh Lord - 'ut and the subjunctive'! One of the real horrors of Latin. Along with gerunds and gerundives, ablative absolutes, 'A, ab, absque, coram, de palam, cum, and ex or e...' and other grammatical tortures inflicted on me at prep school whilst I was covertly reading 'The Airfix Magazine'....
When I was introduced to Latin, mensa (table) was used to teach the endings for nouns of the first declension, which I remember to this day!
I found the vocative case mysterious. How often did Romans want to talk to a table?
I found the vocative case mysterious. How often did Romans want to talk to a table?
Sometimes, when I have been teaching, it has felt like I was talking to a room full of tables.
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How did she construe that?
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