AUDIOBOOK: Stirling's Eutropius Paraphrase

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metrodorus
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AUDIOBOOK: Stirling's Eutropius Paraphrase

Post by metrodorus »

John Stirling's Latin paraphrase of Eutropius.


Recorded 2017 - if you are interested in the audio version, it can be found at Latinum. http://latinum.org.uk The text can be located on Google Books.

Little is known about Stirling's life except that he held a MA, served as chaplain to the Duke of Gordon, and wrote a large number of elementary books "designed to teach Latin and English, most of which are extremely rare" (Alston).

I stumbled across Stirling's work during a routine search for new materials a few years ago, and immediately recognised how useful it would be.

Latin paraphrases are an excellent bridge for a student who has already mastered the basics, and wants to develop fluency rapidly. Stirling preferred the use of paraphrases to translations - when using a paraphrase, your head is 'in the Latin'. It is like riding a bicycle with learner wheels. You are actually riding, but with support.

Knowing a language is not knowing how to translate it; it is being able to think in it, and read it on its own terms.

Stirling's valuable collection of texts are a goldmine for Latin students. Before Google Books, only a tiny handful of scholars would have had access to any of Stirling's Books - if indeed they were even aware they existed in the first place; the last time they formed part of a Latin curriculum was in the late 1700's. Some of his paraphrases are not yet available as scans on any platform.

Stirling was writing during the twilight of Latin education; by the early 1800s students in England were learning English Grammar (the heresy!), and the days of all-Latin schools, where students were punished for speaking anything apart from Latin, even in the playground, were numbered.

Nationalism was on the rise across Europe, the Germans with their German, the Frenchmen with their French, etc. Spoken Latin had few advocates in this new world, and withered away; tools like those built by Stirling no longer had use in this changed linguistic landscape.
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Last edited by metrodorus on Tue Aug 29, 2017 2:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I run http://latinum.org.uk which provides the Adler Audio Latin Course, other audio materials, and additional free materials on YouTube.

nomen
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Re: AUDIOBOOK: Stirling's Eutropius Paraphrase

Post by nomen »

Interesting, I had not hear of Stirling's works. I looked up his Eutropius and it seems to be not a paraphrase but rather a re-ordering of the Latin into an English word order. "Postea Numa Pompilius est creatus rex." I wonder what you think of this from a pedagogical point of view, it would seem to work against the concept of learning to read Latin in its own natural Latin word order.

metrodorus
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Re: AUDIOBOOK: Stirling's Eutropius Paraphrase

Post by metrodorus »

This is called the 'ordo verborum', and was a very common pedagogical tool in the 1700s and earlier - at a time when students were expected to be able to read and write and converse in Latin. A great many eighteenth century student editions contain such an 'ordo'.

Why? It was seen as a fast way into a text, and superior to using a translation, as the student's head was 'in the Latin'. Only after standards started to fall, after spoken Latin fell out of use in the schoolroom and in the schoolyard, was this method abandoned, as students then needed a translation; even the ordo was too difficult.

Such a text is to be seen as an intermediate step - absolutely not to replace the original, but to be used to speed up access to it.

It should not be used by a student for longer than necessary.

Eutropius' Latin is very simple, so there it little re-writing involved, apart from a re-ordering into a simpler construction; more complex texts such as Virgil and Ovid involve far more paraphrasing in Sterling's editions.
I run http://latinum.org.uk which provides the Adler Audio Latin Course, other audio materials, and additional free materials on YouTube.

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