More wired than a Roman Internet café

Latinum Institute's Blog – July 2010 Archive (5)

translation

I was curious how a lot of 19th century textbooks dealt with the difference between the praetereunte /imperfect and praeterito/perfect: I found translations that distinguished between them, while not ( to my ear) signifying a great difference in meaning: namely I loved for the imperfect, and I have loved for the praeterito. I had loved for the antepraeterito.

To my ear I 've eaten dinner, and I ate dinner are almost indistinguishable - using these methods to render the tenses in… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on July 26, 2010 at 5:59am — 2 Comments

Academic Language and Latin

The article below shows up yet another area where I expect…

Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on July 24, 2010 at 12:09pm — No Comments

Latin and Chemistry Textbooks

If you are interested in Latin and Chemistry, as I am ( I am a Chemistry teacher by profession), then this selection culled from google books might interest you.

Google books constantly amazes me - more and more Latin texts appear on google every day - we are very fortunate, I doubt at any point in history has anyone had access to such a complete and diverse library of texts in Latin, and we have it at the press of a few keystrokes.…

Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on July 18, 2010 at 10:31am — 4 Comments

One good reason for teaching grammar

Many English Speakers Cannot Understand Basic Grammar

ScienceDaily (July 6, 2010) — Research into grammar by academics at Northumbria University suggests that a significant proportion of native English speakers are unable to understand some basic sentences.

The findings -- which undermine the assumption that all speakers have a core ability to use grammatical cues -- could have significant implications for education, communication and linguistic theory.

The research, conducted by… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on July 6, 2010 at 5:47pm — 1 Comment

Achieving rounded fluency

Most students of Latin, in my estimation, have a very narrow band of fluency. The same may even be true of many Latin teachers, who struggle with texts that they have not prepared.

A question I have asked myself, is this: what does one need to do, to get 'broad-band, fully functional fluency?.

The answer is simple, of course - much reading. But reading what?

My solution is this - after completing an initial Latin…

Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on July 3, 2010 at 8:00am — No Comments