Latin: Classic Or Dud?

latin was hands down the most actively useful in quotidian life subject i studied in school (you know, once i'd learnt to read and write and so on) (i would add basic maths but it transpired the other day that i have actually ~forgotten my times tables~ wtf). just in terms of understanding unfamiliar words or phrases, getting by in other countries etc, plus my latin teacher turned out to be right in how it helped you think logically! i never believed him at the time. shoulda done it for A-level instead of maths, because all of that shit is gone from my brain now.

I think ancient Greek is very evocative in a way that doesn't come across in translation, there are little things about the language I really love. Like how the placement of articles can change the meaning of a phrase, it's so small and subtle and beautifully effective! And words that are translatable, but require a paragraph rather than a word or phrase to do justice to, so they pack more of a punch in the original. I haven't had that experience so much with Latin but if you love the language more than I do I can see how you might.

Also, Casuistry is in one respect quite OTM about the compound words, although I don't know about eudaimon in particular, or how much they changed in classical times...when I attempted to learn a little modern Greek, I got horribly confused by words that clearly had roots I knew in ancient Greek but mean totally different, if related, things now.

I have no idea what made me think of this but did any Americans who took Latin use the Ecce Romani books? I can still remember all the names of the characters. Gaius Cornelius! Flavia! Latin was my favorite class in HS for a while. I really enjoyed it but I like language classes in general so that's not too surprising.

oh god we used those

they were pretty good iirc

lol maybe they're the only Latin textbooks in the whole world!

our first latin teacher had a cane and dished out after school detentions if you smiled

our second latin teacher was a mr. p enis

i would just like to register my distaste for the latin wikipedia and its unforgivably dorky (and inconsistent in wikipedia terms) latinizing of forenames

http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanus_Gerrard
http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonillus_Messi
http://la.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcellus_Proust

we used ecce romani too! marcus and cornelia and sextus!

latin is easily the subject i studied at school that i use most regularly in quotidian life. easily!

and i only did it up to gcse - so so so stupid of me to choose maths over it for a level on the basis that it'd be "more useful". i could not have been more wrong.

^ You said that in 2008.

Yeah, Ecce Romani! Did they ever get out of the ditch?

That entry on Messi is v short!

^ You said that in 2008.

― Josefa, Thursday, November 3, 2011 3:59 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha latin did not teach me to read threads before posting obviously

We used Cambridge Latin Course textbooks (I had to google the names of the people to figure that out - Caecilius, Metella, Grumio etc). I dropped it at 13, didn't want to do GCSE.

i did not study it but acquired those later, i wondered how they ever got through any high school classroom without hours of ppl going "SEXtus? snort"

gaius more like GAYus amirite

if it was good enough for monty python...

Day 1: Kennedy's Latin Primer. I've had this copy since I was a teenager and still teach with it today. Despite being published under Benjamin Kennedy's name, it was secretly written by his daughters, Marion and Julia. See Stray 1996 https://t.co/eon4yNYMdW pic.twitter.com/Z1mlw81ykh

— Dr Hannah Čulík-Baird (@opietasanimi) February 14, 2019

so the iconic Molesworth image of Kennedy hunting some grammar is a LIE

the daughters wrote the revised primer of blessed memory but BHK had previously hunted down the grammar for an elementary primer

Kid's in her second year. She loves it. Old Greek not so much her thing.