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I Like Monday 7
Feb. 17th, 2014 05:21 pmThis Monday, I like... Latin.
Image scanned from Ecce Romani 1: Meeting the Family (2nd ed, Oliver & Boyd : 1982), copyright the Scottish Classics Group, illustrations by Peter Dennis, Trevor Parkin and Hamish Gordon. Used without permission, not for profit and with no intention to impinge on anybody else's legal rights. Please don't sue me!
Socially, secondary school* was not a good time for me; suffice to say I had a very big culture shock upon starting which drove a wedge between my contemporaries and me. But oh! how I loved the work! And amongst the standard English, maths, etc., there was my new favourite subject: the dead language of an ancient empire.
It started with my first lesson and the picture above. It accompanied a short and not-terribly-exciting paragraph about a Roman girl called Cornelia sitting under a tree and her best friend Flavia, who was singing for no particular reason. Having translated the paragraph with just a handful of vocabulary, and no clue yet about things like cases, participles or conjugations, we then answered some comprehension questions written in Latin: simple stuff which only required us to either copy directly from the paragraph or swap a few words around. But then our teacher added a question of her own, which she told us to answer in Latin: "ubi est Flavia?" - where is Flavia?
Most people went with "Flavia est sub arbore" - Flavia is under the tree - although the paragraph never specified that Flavia was under the tree, just Cornelia, and in the picture she seems to standing a little distance out. Others gave a more sweeping answer: "Flavia est in Italia" - you can translate that one for yourselves - but it seemed too general for me. A few went with the plain wrong: "Flavia est in (vicina) villa" - Flavia is in the (neighbouring) villa - certainly the paragraph said that was where she lived, but that wasn't where she was.
Then I saw it, right there in plain sight: "ecce! in pictura est puella, nomine Cornelia. ...etiam in pictura est altera puella, nomine Flavia."
So that was my answer: "Flavia est in pictura" - Flavia is in the picture. And I was hooked.
I always knew it was an impractical subject that would never get me anywhere. The "transferable skills" they tried to sell us about problem-solving skills, methodical reasoning, data analysis and verbal comprehension, were the same you could supposedly get from every other subject on the curriculum. At each major examination stage - GCSE, A-level, undergraduate degree - I considered giving it up. But I just enjoyed it too much! Only when I reached postgraduate level and could pursue only one subject, did I finally let it go, first for the Creative Writing MA and then the nightmarish PhD. (And that's how I ended up with the most unemployable set of qualifications ever!)
As to why I liked it, that's harder to say. I had a talent for it, sure, that helped. I have an interest in classical mythology and history. Having always loved English, learning about grammar in greater, systematic depth was fascinating. Translation was like the best word puzzle ever, and prose composition - turning English into Latin - was the best word puzzle squared. :D Looking back, I suspect that it helped that it was a purely written language. I always hated French orals - no such problem in Latin!
Of course, my knowledge these days is extremely rusty; I doubt I could translate any real Roman text without taking a refresher course first, and I certainly couldn't do any prose composition. But I will always look back on the subject - and on Flavia - with great fondness.
* Secondary school: the second level of formal education in the UK, from ages 11 to at least 16, at which age you can choose to leave education altogether. Here in Northern Ireland, however, most secondary schools will include students up to 18.
Image scanned from Ecce Romani 1: Meeting the Family (2nd ed, Oliver & Boyd : 1982), copyright the Scottish Classics Group, illustrations by Peter Dennis, Trevor Parkin and Hamish Gordon. Used without permission, not for profit and with no intention to impinge on anybody else's legal rights. Please don't sue me!
Socially, secondary school* was not a good time for me; suffice to say I had a very big culture shock upon starting which drove a wedge between my contemporaries and me. But oh! how I loved the work! And amongst the standard English, maths, etc., there was my new favourite subject: the dead language of an ancient empire.
It started with my first lesson and the picture above. It accompanied a short and not-terribly-exciting paragraph about a Roman girl called Cornelia sitting under a tree and her best friend Flavia, who was singing for no particular reason. Having translated the paragraph with just a handful of vocabulary, and no clue yet about things like cases, participles or conjugations, we then answered some comprehension questions written in Latin: simple stuff which only required us to either copy directly from the paragraph or swap a few words around. But then our teacher added a question of her own, which she told us to answer in Latin: "ubi est Flavia?" - where is Flavia?
Most people went with "Flavia est sub arbore" - Flavia is under the tree - although the paragraph never specified that Flavia was under the tree, just Cornelia, and in the picture she seems to standing a little distance out. Others gave a more sweeping answer: "Flavia est in Italia" - you can translate that one for yourselves - but it seemed too general for me. A few went with the plain wrong: "Flavia est in (vicina) villa" - Flavia is in the (neighbouring) villa - certainly the paragraph said that was where she lived, but that wasn't where she was.
Then I saw it, right there in plain sight: "ecce! in pictura est puella, nomine Cornelia. ...etiam in pictura est altera puella, nomine Flavia."
So that was my answer: "Flavia est in pictura" - Flavia is in the picture. And I was hooked.
I always knew it was an impractical subject that would never get me anywhere. The "transferable skills" they tried to sell us about problem-solving skills, methodical reasoning, data analysis and verbal comprehension, were the same you could supposedly get from every other subject on the curriculum. At each major examination stage - GCSE, A-level, undergraduate degree - I considered giving it up. But I just enjoyed it too much! Only when I reached postgraduate level and could pursue only one subject, did I finally let it go, first for the Creative Writing MA and then the nightmarish PhD. (And that's how I ended up with the most unemployable set of qualifications ever!)
As to why I liked it, that's harder to say. I had a talent for it, sure, that helped. I have an interest in classical mythology and history. Having always loved English, learning about grammar in greater, systematic depth was fascinating. Translation was like the best word puzzle ever, and prose composition - turning English into Latin - was the best word puzzle squared. :D Looking back, I suspect that it helped that it was a purely written language. I always hated French orals - no such problem in Latin!
Of course, my knowledge these days is extremely rusty; I doubt I could translate any real Roman text without taking a refresher course first, and I certainly couldn't do any prose composition. But I will always look back on the subject - and on Flavia - with great fondness.
* Secondary school: the second level of formal education in the UK, from ages 11 to at least 16, at which age you can choose to leave education altogether. Here in Northern Ireland, however, most secondary schools will include students up to 18.
