The Lingua Latina board

Textkit Community Open Board
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Lingua Latina (Hans Ørberg) is a two part series entirely in Latin that will allow one to read the language without relying on translation; this is accomplished by starting out with very basic Latin sentences whose meanings are obvious to the student, coupled with illustrations that help present the meaning of the text. The text becomes more complex as the student reads on, but it is done so that the student always understands the material (the text is smoothly graded), not relying on translation before understanding takes place. The grammar is still taught at the end of each section, but the grammar is there only to reinforce what has been learned by example, rather than learning the grammar first, translating the Latin text into the student’s native tongue, and thus understanding the Latin text.

In these forums, certain people (myself included) have neglected this approach to learning Latin by denying its legitimacy. However, this is how all the modern languages are taught: the primary rule is do not translate; immerse yourself in the language. Ørberg has written two books that allow this to be done. It is through doing this that the student reaches a level of proficiency that allows them to read and understand directly (no translation of the target language) Cicero et al.

This is by no means an attempt to invalidate teaching grammar first; it is just an attempt to open up new ways of teaching for those who want them. I doubt very much that benissimus, for example, or whiteoctave, translate anymore. But to deny that this method works, to dismiss it enitirely or to stifle any attempt at bringing it to light is uncharacteristic of Textkit and not at all progressive. Part of the beauty of these boards is that they are an autodidact’s haven. People have different learning styles; I think we should be open to all of them, and make them legitimate by providing an outlet for a method of teaching as well-established as this one is in the modern languages (inflected or not).

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I have recently ordered the first half of Lingua Latina, both to review grammatical concepts and vocabulary that have grown vague in my mind, and to evaluate its utility as a teaching tool. Creating a forum dedicated to the series would be an excellent means of focusing discussion, at least for me, and also for others.

David

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Speaking of Lingua Latina

I have a translation question. Lingua Latin Part One Familia Romana

Page 107, line 104 Venter vacuus est mihi. Is this a dative of possessor contsruction? My stomach is empty.??? I’m not sure.

Double checking. Any assistance greatly appreciated

Brian

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Page 107, line 104 Venter vacuus est mihi. Is this a dative of possessor contsruction? My stomach is empty.?

Yes, I think so.

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Salue, Brian.

Yes it is. In Latin, as in the modern Romance languages (and also German, actually), to refer to any body part with the possessive pronoun “my” is frowned upon. Outside of Anglophony, it’s always “the stomach to me is empty.” And if it’s understood to whom the body part belongs, it’s always just “the hand is hot,” “the head is in pain,” and so forth, and never “mine” or “yours,” etc.

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Always? In Dutch we say “mijn buik is leeg”, just the same as in English. Or is Dutch part of Anglophony? And what would the same sentence be in German? It is not “mein Bauch ist leer” after all?

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Well, in Italian (the Romance Language) we do use possessive adjectives and pronouns: the “dative” construction has completely disappeared.[/i]

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Don’t you say in Italian “Mi fa male la testa”, I thougt that was just what Lucus meant, and what about “Ho mal di testa”, no use of a possessive pronoun?

I ofcourse started learning Italian a long time ago (over 17 years), so could it be that the examples I gave are really outdated now :open_mouth: ?

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Ah really? I’m unfamiliar with Dutch, and German is the extent of my Teutonic experience. “Der Bauch ist leer” is what I would expect, and “der Kopf tut mir weh,” etc.

Well, in Italian (the Romance Language) we do use possessive adjectives and pronouns: the “dative” construction has completely disappeared

Ciao, Elessar! (un bel nome elfico!) Usiamo gli aggettivi possessivi per il corpo? Da quando? Cioè, si usano per referire specificamente a ‘me’, o a ‘te’, ma di solito sono sottointesi, no? “Mi fa male la mano,” ma, “Mi fa male la mia mano, e non la tua,” ecc. “Lei mette la testa sulla spalla,” e ci vuole il contesto per chiarire di cui appartiene quella testa, e quella spalla.

Don’t you say in Italian “Mi fa male la testa”, I thougt that was just what Lucus meant, and what about “Ho mal di testa”, no use of a possessive pronoun?

I ofcourse started learning Italian a long time ago (over 17 years), so could it be that the examples I gave are really outdated now ?

I’d say you’re right on, Adelheid.


A proposito, Elessar, mi piace tanto il tuo LatinBlog! Anch’io ne volevo fare prima o poi, ma tu hai vinto. :wink: Macte! Me spero nuntios tuos quam saepissime legere!

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Ciao, Elessar! (un bel nome elfico!) Usiamo gli aggettivi possessivi per il corpo? Da quando? Cioè, si usano per referire specificamente a ‘me’, o a ‘te’, ma di solito sono sottointesi, no? “Mi fa male la mano,” ma, “Mi fa male la mia mano, e non la tua,” ecc. “Lei mette la testa sulla spalla,” e ci vuole il contesto per chiarire di cui appartiene quella testa, e quella spalla.

Giusto, non avevo pensato alla frase :slight_smile:
Ma comunque il significato del possessivo è nella particella “mi”, e aggiungere l’aggettivo per mano sarebbe del tutto inutile (non può far male a me la mano di un altro, trapianti esclusi :slight_smile:)
Per lo stesso motivo, non è necessario l’aggettivo nemmeno in “Ho lo stomaco vuoto”.

A proposito, Elessar, mi piace tanto il tuo LatinBlog! Anch’io ne volevo fare prima o poi, ma tu hai vinto. Macte! Me spero nuntios tuos quam saepissime legere!

Gratias sescentas tibi ago :slight_smile:

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Always? In Dutch we say “mijn buik is leeg”, just the same as in English. Or is Dutch part of Anglophony?

I believe Dutch and English could be counted as sister languages, and I would call them both Anglo languages. The British Anglo-Saxons and the Dutch come from the same stock, unless my history is faulty, so it would make sense that they would be similar.

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Ha, you are right! Wikipedia (it wouldn’t spread false info about THIS now would it :stuck_out_tongue: ) states that Swedish, Norwegian, German, Dutch and English belong to the German subfamily of languages.

I should start reading that book on Indo-European linguistics already! Argh, and I just checked: it is mentioned in Wheelock too (and I actually read that introduction not too long ago)!

I must be getting old…

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Of the world’s most widely spoken languages, Dutch is the one closest to English. Of all living languages, Frisian, another language spoken in the Netherlands is the closest to English (from what I understand, it is somewhere between English and Dutch). I have heard that the sentence “Good bread and good cheese makes good English and good Frees” is equally understandable to both English and Frisian speakers, accents nonwithstanding.

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I met a couple of ladies who spoke frisian and dutch (and english and latin and german and italian… :open_mouth: ) I asked them to speak it for me and I was surprised that I could understand a little of it. Actually, one of them is a latin teacher and encouraged me to find a program or something online… So I came here. funny

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Whenever a dative of a personal pronoun is used with a form of the being verb, it is generally considered to typically be a dative of possession.

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I for one have never actually meant to say that the Lingua Latina series is ineffective. The reason for the jokes and mockery is that a certain member of the board has attempted to defame other proven reliable methods for learning Latin and then conveniently suggested Lingua Latina as the solution. Naturally, those who use the grammatical approach are offended by his claims that it is the inferior method. In fact, nostos, it is the same sort of ridicule of which you are trying to portray Lingua Latina the victim.

More importantly, he has also attempted to convert new posters to Lingua Latina when all they were doing was asking for help on some Latin questions. I am not alone in believing that this is beyond mere endorsement, and virtually identical to advertising, and it is annoying. I mean, just look at the first page of [u]this thread[/u] if you don’t know what I am talking about. He’s a new student, in a class, he’s learning, but he asks for help and then gets recommended a new book? That is not what he asked for and not what he needed either, and I see this is as an abuse of the authority that comes with knowing more about a field than someone who is just starting.

Anyways, I will be happy if a new board is made for Lingua Latina, although I would really prefer if all the Latin boards were recombined so that we might have less confusion from newbies and that the posting might be less diluted.

Hi Lucus,

Are you just triangulating this Latin “rule” from its modern descendent languages, or did you actually read this in a reputable grammar? I know of several examples of possessive adjectives being used with names of body parts, including uenter and caput (couldn’t find manus though). The dative of possession seems to be only one option, as was my original belief.

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the use of a possessive adjective with a body part is in no way ‘frowned upon’: it is used as required - whether for the sake of metre (sometimes a superfluous poss. adj., just as perhaps a less common deponent might replace a typically active form) or indeed where there is a necessity thereof for emphatic reasons, whilst a romance language might use the disjunctive pronouns. latin is notably more flexible than your romance languages or that teutonic titfest they call german - all mere fragments of classical glory. take for example silver usage of seneca the younger: since we are on the subject of possessive adjectives, did hans orberg tell you (in latin of course) that the genitive of the personal pronoun is never used in a possessive sense, that we use the adjective instead, as all other primers? well think again: e.c. cuperem itaque tecum communicare tam subitam mutationem mei (I. VI. 2.)
a romance language such as french does not have “l’évêque de moi” instead of “mon évêque”. your naiveté in that which concerns the apparent ‘similitudes’ between highly inflected latin and a very vulgar descendant thereof such as italian constitutes ill, i fear, with being a true classicist.

~E

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I should clarify. I think that the issue has been a heated one and thus it became much more polarised for the sake of argument than any of us really do in our normal learning, all beginning with E’s initially facetious post on Lucus and Hans that spiralled into what I view as personal attacks. This post was in the wake of that one; the fuel might have run out, but the flame was still burning.

I hadn’t intended to portray either method as victim to anything (I dislike that word and am ashamed that I would post a topic that could even marginally be interpreted as such; what I write often has connotations which are not immediately visible to me). I never meant that you, benissime care, were stating that that LL was ineffective; it is very possible that no one ever said this exactly (except me; I recall something to the effect of ‘Dowling expects that with a few overall grammatical notes, you’ll be able to deduce whole slews of Latin constructions’, dismissing before knowing anything about Ørberg or LL). Very like me to use myself in reference to the whole :frowning:

By the same token, I didn’t mean to imply that grammar first is in any way inferior (I know you weren’t referring to me but I want to be absolutely clear on my position), or that it doesn’t work. Quite obviously it does very well, as you, whiteoctave, and several others here can attest to with plenary conviction. I myself have learned 36 chapters worth of Latin this way (and will continue to the end, prefer it or not), do not believe that Wheelock is as bad as his critics make him out to be (it’s an intro, dammit, not a monograph), and will continue to refer to my A&G and G&L whenever something doesn’t want to get into this brain. It also seems to me that had I not had such a strong grammatical background first, the stuff said in LL, for example the ‘derivational morphology’ there given (Zaarin in another topic, though he was saying something else entirely), probably would have made much less immediate sense to me than it does in actuality.

Yet it remains that on these boards, there is nothing but the grammar first approach, which tips the scales because, in my view, it makes the grammar last approach seem inherently flawed (or else we’d have a representation of both of them here). I don’t feel that grammar last is inherently less effective than grammar first, or vice-versa; I firmly believe it is all a matter of learning style. Why not have them both?

Anyways, I will be happy if a new board is made for Lingua Latina, although I would really prefer if all the Latin boards were recombined so that we might have less confusion from newbies and that the posting might be less diluted.

I think it is not the book you use but the style that’s employed in that book which truly makes the moderators more or less apt to handle particular questions. Why don’t we switch the Latin boards to an amalgamated grammar first board and a new grammar last board (in more formal and descriptive terminology)? I doubt that either will drop out of use. Also, we could have a one paragraph note briefly stating the philosophy behind each of the approaches (without, of course, employing phrases that detract from one method in order to bolster the other) so that each states clearly what it is doing; that way we have two strong boards instead of four Latin boards with three being diluted ones. Also I think that many people will use them both.

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One more thing, cuz it’s been a while now and he hasn’t responded to this so I’ll give my opinion on the issue.

Although I absolutely agree with your annoyance at having him say the grammar first method is inferior (rather than inferior to him, or not mentioning it at all which would be best), I don’t think that what he is doing is anywhere near endorsement. I think he promotes the book so much only because he truly believes in it. LL is the only book so far, at least which I have seen, to go by the grammar last method, and therefore he supports it fervently.

Though it is much easier to assume that he is somehow scamming the newer members of this board, this, in my opinion, looks at him from the wrong angle: it assumes he has ulterior motives and provides an explanation for those motives. I feel that this assumption is false, and that he does not mean to scam anyone. No where has it been mentioned except in this thread that what he is doing is unethical, and I doubt he himself sees himself as trying to ‘boost the sales’ of LL. Think of the publishing industry: he could only get maximum $1.50, maybe $2 per book he sells. He sells 20 books, that’s 40 bucks max. I think someone who can afford a trip to Italy to study for a semester or two wouldn’t waste his time on such a pittance.

I also feel that he ‘advertises’ because he feels that the scales are tipped towards grammar first. He has, in the thread you’ve given, shown that his enthusiasm for the book is genuine (not caring about the fact that the book was bought, just caring about the fact that someone else actually learns from it).

I really see nothing wrong with what he has done thus far.

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I did say in another post that I thought that Lucus was in a kickback system, but that comment was very tongue-n-cheeck :stuck_out_tongue: I agree he does it because he honestly believes it’s the best Latin book.

On the other hand, mentioning the book in a thread such as Benissimus described is not the best thing either.

Personally, I think Lucus should just put it in his signature, and write about it in his actual posts much less frequently - but this is just a friendly suggestion, not that it’s bad if he does otherwise or anything.