More wired than a Roman Internet café

October 2010 Blog Posts (7)

Cursum Latinum revisited

A few months back, as an offshoot of Schola, I started a second interactive site, the Universitas Scholarium.

I had the germ of an idea - to recreate a germ of a Renaissance Learning Community, in Latin, covering the breadth of subjects that would have been covered, plus some modern ones.

That site died when NING went behind its paywall, although funds were found to keep SCHOLA alive.

The idea sat on the back burner.…

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Added by Latinum Institute on October 22, 2010 at 3:00pm — No Comments

The first time a word is encountered, it needs a quick translation, or ,better, a picture or a gestural explanation, especially if it is somewhat abstract.

After that, the brain must be left alone to build its own semantic web for that word. This is a chaotic process, with constant revisions taking place, with meanings constantly shifting and adjusting. Authors can use words in subtly different ways. This cannot really be captured by a translation. It is akin to the method new words… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on October 14, 2010 at 6:20am — 5 Comments

The idea of Europe

Europe, and European civilisation? Where lies its heart? It lies in the Rome of Caesar, the Rome of Cicero. From the fall of the Roman Empire, until the edges of living memory, the throb of the culture of Rome was the heartbeat of European civilisation. Alongside it, beat the secondary hearts of the Church and the Synagogue – but it was Rome that provided the cultural lifeblood of secular Europe.

In the… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on October 9, 2010 at 8:00pm — No Comments

Online classics at the University of Connecticut

Salvete! I'm excited to update some information I posted a while back about the University of Connecticut's Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies program's online offerings.

This spring I'll be offering an online advanced Greek course, CAMS 3101 Topics in Advanced Greek, for three credits, on selections from Plato. The course will be offered in a game-based format, in which students will participate as senior operatives on a mission to infiltrate the Academy and discover the… Continue

Added by Roger Travis on October 8, 2010 at 11:13am — No Comments

English Commentary

I came across an interesting editorial today in an edition of Horace - in which the author, writing a translation of the Delphin commentary on Horace, felt the need to explain himself,and effectively, apologise for writing a commentary in English, and not in Latin.

This edition, however, has a very useful Latin paraphrase running alongside the original Latin text, which could be useful to teachers teaching Horace.

This, only in 1832.

By this stage, Latin was no longer being… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on October 6, 2010 at 5:00am — 3 Comments

Memorisation

repititio mater studiorum.

Almost all the Renaissance writers on language learning emphasise the importance of memorising chunks of text - Vives advocates memorising at least a line night.

The benefit of this is that the student has paradigms internalised, to draw on at will. If a student is going to compose poetry, or read poetry with ease, without having to scan, then knowing a selection of poems off by heart, with their metrical structures, would also be… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on October 5, 2010 at 4:30am — No Comments