Re: Latin a loglang? (was Re: Unambiguous languages (was: EU allumettes))

--- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
>
> So you doubt the existence of courses such as
> Cambridge Latin Course?
Never in my life ! I just said that Latin we learned
was something different.

I also have a "Assimil" method ("Latin without toil")
home. There you can find such dialogues as:

- Ave Mauriti ! Quid agis hodie ?
- Eo in stadium. Certamen est magni momenti. Augustani
Taurinenses adversus Gratianopolitanos. Quid de hoc
arbitraris ?
- Nihil ! Praeterea tale certamen futurum esse
ignorabam. De quo ludo agitur ?
- Incredibile est ! Nonne scis factiones ambarum
urbium folle rotundo excellere ? Anceps exit exitus.

(etc.), which happens to be about a football (or
soccer ?) match. Torino against Grenoble. Not too hard
to understand. But rather different from what we were
taught.

> This is silly - the above course has been around for
> a few decades now;
> once upon a time I taught it to schoolkids.
>
> Besides, what's the problem? Russian, e.g., has just
> as 'complicated
> grammar' as Latin, but no one denies that it's a
> modern language and books
> teaching Russian don't feel compelled to present it
> as an "algebraic
> puzzle".
Chekhov or Pushkin don't scatter the words all around
as Cicero or Virgilius do. The syntax is much closer
to Western languages (the vocabulary may be
difficult).

>
> For goodness sake! Do we give Racine to those
> learning French? Goethe to
> those learning German? Shakespeare to those learning
> English? Do we start
> people off in Russian with Tolstoy, or Dostoyesky or
> any of the other
> Russian classics?
>
> Of course not! So no one in their right mind is
> going to use Cicero when
> _learning_ Latin.
It may be, but the fact is that this was is done in
France, or maybe was done (I don't know what methods
are used just now).


=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


	
		
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