Lesson 10: Why Learn Latin
-it is not just the form of the language itself
-it is reading the substance of those works
Ex. stoic essays of Seneca, where he’s talking about De Providentia, “On Providence,” or Cicero, On Duties
-it is not just about esoteric things, but it’s about how the person should live
-reading On Duties, which is a work that Cicero wrote to his young son after he’d been studying in Athens for a year, he said, this is probably how you want to be thinking about things
-it is an instruction manual on the right and proper action
-students do not take it in high school so it is the least understood and misunderstood
-higher purpose is to engage in a great conversation of ideas and do that in the original language
-Latin = It enables you to talk to Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Caesar, Virgil, Livy, Tacitus, Ovid, Vulgate, Confessions of St. Augustine
-Greek: listen to Homer, tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, history of Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Koine Greek, New Testament in the original
-when baffled by the work order like a puzzle and when put together you will find the ancients speaking to you
The benefits of learning Latin:
-60% of the words in the English language come from either Greek or Latin roots
-what is said for Latin is as true about the Greek language
-in Latin we have phrases that make their way into English
-with Latin, you can break down words
Ex. procrastination
= pro “for the sake of”, cras “tomorrow”, tin "abbreviated form of the verb to have or to hold”, atio = ation “is the verbal action so this is the act of holding off”
Procrastination = the act of holding off for the sake of tomorrow something so putting off until tomorrow
Ex. irrevocable (divide between the 2 r’s)
= ir prefix that negates something, re “again or back” , voc “Latin word voco, vocare, means to call”, able
Irrevocable = is not able to be called back; Latin phrase for a word, once it flies from the mouth, cannot be taken back
-Learning Latin is essential in the realm of medical terminology
-mixed in with biology, chemistry, and physics
-learn all the parts of the body mean in Latin
Ex. Latissimus dorsi = adjective meaning to the side
-Latissimus = this is the superlative of that adjective
-Latissimus = means the farthest to one side or the most outside
-Dorsi = is the genitive of the word for back
-Dorsi= means the outermost part of the back, the muscle group
Ex. xiphoid process
-one of subtleties to bring Greek into the conversation
-it is part of the body if you are learning CPR
-it is the one thing that you try not break when performing CPR but it is the part that breaks every time someone does perform CPR on an actual person
–it’s where you measure up to start doing your chest compressions
Process = pro "to the fore or forward”, ces “sort of going forward”
Process = protrusion
Xiphoid = oid “is like” , xiph “sword”
Xiphoid = knife like protrusion
-students scored higher on their ACTS who learned Latin than any other foreign language
-students exposed to Greek 30 minutes a day for 5 months showed they advanced in other disciplines
-students with 5 months of Latin advanced (1 grade above their grade) in spelling, science, social studies, math problem-solving skills, reading, and in language
The reason to take Latin:
-to learn the basic elements as Latin and Greek are complex languages
-if you learn the basic elements of a more complex language, approaching any other language that is less complex will making learning that 2nd language easier
Ex. Romance languages derived directly from Latin such as Italian, French, Spanish, or Portuguese
-you will be able to break down something complex prefix, suffix, etc….makes language make sense
-learning of grammatical terms like subject, verb or indirect object
-learning basics like person, number, tense, mood, and voice
-learning what the verb signifies = 1st person singular, present, indicative, active
Ex. I call = 1st person singular present indicative active verb
-so every time you look at a verb you start analyzing it according to the criteria of verbal information
-grammar like the perfect passive participle, a participle is a verbal adjective (they modify or limit nouns, but also have verbal qualities of tense and voice)
Ex. broken arm
-the adjective or the participle that describes the are, an arm that has received the action of the verb “break”
Ex. Running water
-is an adjective that describes the water that is performing the action of the verb “run,” “flowing”
Ex. pluperfect passive subjective which talks about the different moods of the verb
Ex. indicative = things that are either statements or questions of fact
-”I see you.”, “Do you see me?”
Ex. Command- declarative
-”see me.”, “hear me”, “sit up straight.” “do your homework.”
Ex. subjunctive = verbs: we can know what is not true or in fact impossible and impossibilities in the past
“May the road always rise up to meet you.
“If I were you” speaks to the impossibility condition of the inability to be you
“Had I only known then what I know now”
–Only in Latin: future passive periphrastic = a way of talking around something, an event that will happen in the future
“This will be worthy to be studied”
-the Romans would have known that it is a sort of polite way of saying, “You will do this”
***to be able to construct and deconstruct language
-ascending tricolon in anaphora with ascendation: better and more elegant writers, better and more elegant orators, and better and more discriminating judges of rhetoric
-anaphora = repeated the same thing for emphasis
-ascending = each elements gets longer as it goes
-ascendation = lack of connectives
Why Latin Should be in your curriculum:
-id est (i.e.) = means “that is”, i.e. = it is
-exampi (i gratia (e.g.) = means “for the sake of an example”
-per se = means “through itself”
- ipso facto = means “by the very fact itself” or “by the deed itself something is done”
-habeas corpus = is used in a legal context means “may you have the body” which is a writ that you would present to a judge, asking for the release of a person (may I receive the body of the person) = request for release
-vice versa (English pronunciation) in Latin is Wi-kay Wer-ay means = “with the turn having been reversed” and so with the tables having been turned
-amplifies student understanding when they read great literature
-they understand how great writers form sentences
-they understand how sentences are constructed in prose composition
-they can then deconstruct those same sentences
-they will learn various tropes, like hyperbaton, which is the separation of a noun from its modifier
-they will learn about chiasmus, which is the arrangement of that in an artful fashion
Golden Line:
-in which we have adjective one and adjective two, verb in the middles, noun 1, noun 2
-Latin has a balance
-Impossible to translate to English with just the word order laid out
Sentence 1:
Latin is written in this word order because adjective 1 modifies noun 1 and adjective 2 modifies noun 2 because they agree in case, number, and gender
-Latin is an inflected language unlike English where word order is essential to meaning
-word order is not as essential in Latin, but the case of that word will tell you its grammatical function so word order is freed up into something for artful
Sentence Fragment 2:
-adjective 1 noun 1, verb in the middle, adjective 2 noun 2
-syntactice enactment = the syntax of the verb “divide” actually literally divides the land from the river, or the divides the land in two (divides 2 lands with 1 river)
Sentence Fragment 3:
-Geek term “tmesis” which is a cutting of a word means “with a stone, he caved in his skull”
-the word for skull “cere” “brum” where we get the English word cerebrum
-verb Comminuit means “to cave in”
-there is action with the rock “saxo” that with the rock he caved in his skull
-noun 1, noun 2, verb, noun 3
Sentence 4:
-not translatable in English
-”I’m wearing you down,” “I’m grinding you down, Rome, with my bare hand,” which is hyperbole, “give your missiles,” which presumably means to hand over your weapons, and then the plural imperative, run away; hide
-divide it differently you get “te te,” “ro ro,” “ma ma,” “nu nu,” “dada,” “te te,” “la la,” te te”
-take two syllables pattern
Sentence 5:
-describes the history of Rome that has not yet been played out
-”And with a huge siege, he was pressing upon the city”
-sentence is a syntactic enactment
-it is a dactylic hexameter = meter of epic like the meter in Homer
-special= there is an open vowel end of 1st word and beginning of 2nd word
-instead of saying “que ur” they elide into one sound “que” there
-special - there is an open vowel with “em” = a French “unh” sound
- “em” and ‘ob” elide
-means is he was pressing the city with a huge siege
-Let’s look at the words “huge siege”
-pressing the city so surrounding the city so the city is in fact surrounded
-the huge siege is pressing upon them so we have elision there
-the huge siege is literally biting into the city itself
-the syntax of a sentence enacts the verb of the sentence
