06-24-2017, 04:46 AM | #61 | |
Hedge Wizard
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06-24-2017, 04:51 AM | #62 |
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Thank you for correcting me! It's certainly true to say, though, that far more people in the 1950s and 1960s had an understanding of Latin than do today. I wasn't taught it in school, but learnt both Latin and Greek with the OU.
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06-24-2017, 06:00 AM | #63 |
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Although I did Latin at secondary school up until 'O' Levels (1968-1973), I don't retain much these days. Amo, amas, amat and mensa, mensa, mensam is about all I remember. I read Latin (and Greek) authors in translation nowadays.
As far as I can recall, the main use of Latin (especially for Victorian authors) was to be able to write about pornography and deviancy so that women and servants who chanced on the passage would not be able to understand it. I think Gibbon did that when writing about the homosexual amours of the Roman emperors. The other use was to display your classical education for all to see by the use of apposite quotations. |
06-24-2017, 06:25 AM | #64 | |
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06-24-2017, 07:17 AM | #65 | |
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You've got to remember that Latin has no word for homosexual sexual behaviour. The Romans just saw it as part of the normal sexual continuum. The main criterion was not to be thought effeminate by being the receptive partner. I'll take your word for Martial; Aristophanes is bad (hem-hem) enough, especially Lysistrata. |
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06-24-2017, 07:25 AM | #66 | |
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Martial was essentially what we'd call today a "gossip columnists", who wrote witty and exceedingly insulting epigrams (short poems) about the leading lights in the high society of late 1st-century Rome. Here's a translation of the rude ones, which I can't possibly post here : https://www.well.com/~aquarius/martial.htm |
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06-24-2017, 09:03 AM | #67 | |
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Kids here now have to take one year of foreign language in school. I think the language offered is French. |
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06-24-2017, 09:06 AM | #68 | |
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06-24-2017, 09:35 AM | #69 | |
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It was a long time ago, but my (public in the American sense) high school offered French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, Latin and Ancient Greek, of which I took four years of French and five of Latin (two concurrently). |
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06-24-2017, 09:48 AM | #70 | |
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Except for the migrant workers (oilfield), our area is 45% Hispanic (Mexican) as of the last census. So Spanish is not a foreign language here. Now many kids here do college courses in high school. So they have more choices. I have a cousin that in September starts high school/college. She will be in 9th grade. |
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06-24-2017, 11:46 AM | #71 |
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I know I'm coming across as buzzkill here, but it seems to me that a college course for a ninth-grader can't be much of a college course. For advanced older students, I think that's a great option, but I think that saying someone just out of middle school is qualified to take college courses just makes a mockery of higher education.
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06-24-2017, 12:01 PM | #72 |
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I took four years of Latin in high-school (early 80s) on a strictly voluntary basis (though I believe two years of an alternate language was recommended for general college prep curriculum at the time).
Not sure that I ultimately needed it for my continuing education, but I never regretted taking it. I still occasionally fall back on that knowledge to this day. |
06-24-2017, 12:05 PM | #73 | |
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I find it very easy to believe that a Freshman in high school could take and pass a college course. Shari |
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06-24-2017, 12:06 PM | #74 | |
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Now I could see an advanced junior or senior taking college level courses or the prodigies doing it at a younger age but not your typical freshman. It makes me wonder are they actually college classes and how are these kids going to do when they get to the University level courses? |
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06-24-2017, 01:40 PM | #75 |
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The basic English courses taught in college now are teaching the students things they should have learned in High School or earlier. I find it amazing that some schools have stopped teaching middle school students how to count change. It amazes me how many times I have had sales associates that are unable to count change back if something happens to the computer.
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