Maximum grammar geekery, or What on earth is a gerund, anyway?!

Has it ever occurred to you that lots of the terminology for Latin grammar is what it does? It’s really helpful when trying to explain it.

Consider the Present Participle. The word ‘present’ is itself formed from a present participle in Latin, praesens, meaning present, at hand, prompt etc. And the present participle means something that is happening now, in the present, promptly if you will. Brilliant! But what I really like is that it looks like the Latin form – it’s last three letters, at least. The -ent of ‘present’ resembles the -ens of the Latin form, which corresponds in turn to the -ing of the English form, eg doing – they all have ‘n’ in the middle of the three letters! Am I taking this a bit far? I usually draw my students a little memorial diagram to highlight the ‘n’ thing, like this:

 

The present participle: does what it is! (Also, one of the more dull images of all time, but this is a post about Latin grammatical terminology. There’s a funny image further down.)

Let us consider next the Perfect tense. The word ‘perfect’ is itself formed from a perfect participle, perfectus, which means finished, ie the meaning of the perfect tense, an action finished, by definition, in the past. Genius!

And the Imperfect tense? Well, that means ‘not perfect’, an action that was ongoing in the past, not finished  – she was doing her homework (imperfect tense; as yet unfinished) when the dog ate it (perfect tense; it’s finished now, isn’t it?).

How about tricksier stuff, like the Gerund. ‘The whaaaaa?’ I hear you cry. Don’t panic! It’s a verbal noun — a noun formed from a verb, like the words running or swimming and so on when used in sentences like ‘running is my passion’, ‘swimming makes me happy’. The word gerund comes from the Latin verb gero (in its gerund form, of course) which  is essentially a verb of doing stuff, getting on with things. One of its meanings is to wage war. That’s getting on with stuff if ever anything was. And what does the gerund mean? Well, it generally expresses the idea of getting on with something. There are some eminent examples of gerunds in mottos, such as the Pope’s own motto, miserando atque eligendo, but also the commonly used phrase modus operandi, meaning a method of doing something, getting something done, if you will.

Geoffrey Willans’ and Ronald Searle’s Molesworth’s imagining of the Gerund and Gerundive; image from here

Its partner in grammar crimes against student comprehension is the much maligned Gerundive. I always feel quite sorry for the gerundive. A colleague once made a matching fluffy gerund and gerundive pair of little creatures for her classroom to cheer her pupils up. Now I think of it, the gerundive always looked by far the more mischievous of the two. It essentially means the same thing as the gerund but is more adjectival and passive, bless it – though only in a grammatical sense, as it usually has an even stronger sense of something needing to be got on with. Take one of my favourite examples, nunc est bibendum. This means ‘now is the time for drinking needing to be done‘. See how this cheeky little adjective is not actually describing anything, and despite being passive, translates better here as active. In fact, it usually translates better into English as active, so much so that teachers and students alike often ignore its passivity altogether, or confuse it with its fluffy gerund sibling. So many reasons for students to feel aggrieved towards it, now I come to think of it…. To explain its form, ‘gerundive’ has the Latin adjectival ending -ivum (which you can also see in the word ‘adjective’. I love this stuff!), so it is an adjective itself. Like I say, I love this stuff!

Here are some more of my favourite gerundives from everyday life:

1. My own middle name, Amanda, she who ought to be loved;
2. The marvellous Miranda, she who ought to be marvelled at (not to be confused with verandah, something which ought to be sat on when it’s sunny. I used to confuse these words when I was little);
3. Agenda, (usually boring) things which ought to be done.

As usual, I could go on and on with all this — I haven’t even touched on the cases! — but I will leave it there for now. Happy grammaring!

 

Church Latin? It’s, ahem, all Greek to me…

My husband and I decided a couple of years ago that we would challenge ourselves to visit every Anglican cathedral in England. I like church history, and churches, and my husband likes that churches are pretty good places for small children to explore safely. We have subsequently visited some of the most beautiful places and buildings in the country and both developed a pedantry around use of the word aisle when nave is meant. As well as the splendour of the buildings, there is plenty of opportunity for exploring language since the church is a vast repository of fascinating and arcane words.

When is a cathedral not a cathedral? When it’s a chair!

First word on my list, then, is Cathedral. We tend to think of Latin as being the language of the church, but this word came into Latin from Greek, as you might have guessed from the very un-Latin presence of a ‘th’ in its middle. Greek — and Latin —  ‘cathedra’ means simply ‘chair’. Lewis and Short (my wonderful Latin dictionary) gives a bit more detail: ‘a chair, a stool, esp. one furnished with cushions and supports for women, an arm chair‘, and then goes on to mention it as a bishop’s chair, amongst other definitions. The chair itself is central to the cathedral since the cathedral is the ‘seat’ of the bishop. My marvellous guide book, The Cathedrals of England, by Batsford and Fry, describes Southwell before it was elevated to cathedral status as ‘the bishop of York’s footstool’, back when it was merely a lowly Minster.

In some cathedrals you are hard pushed to spot the cathedra amongst all the other fascinating paraphernalia, but Chelmsford makes much of its beautiful greenish chair of Westmorland slate. Picture from here.

More see, bishop?

The cathedral is also in English home to the ‘see’ of the bishop, which sounds a bit like seat, but refers more to the job of the bishop.

Bishop sounds English, doesn’t it? What could be more English than taking tea with a bishop? Well, it is a very anglicised word, that’s for sure, but its roots are again Greek. Episcopos is the Greek for bishop, and it means ‘the one who looks out’ — like in periscope or telescope. One of the earliest English christian church leaders was a chap called Benedict Biscop. His name gives us a clue as to how the Greek word episcopos became English bishop. It lost its initial ‘e’, hardened its new initial ‘p’ to ‘b’ and softened its ‘sc’ to ‘sh’. Obvious, really.

But what does a bishop do? Looks out from their seat (cathedra!) over their see — which sounds a lot like seat! — but is to do with looking! — onto their diocese. Whoa, there! What’s a diocese?

What’s a Diocese, sis?

This word also comes to Latin via Greek. Cicero used ‘dioecesis’ to mean an area under a governor’s jurisdiction (I know this from its dictionary entry in Lewis and Short rather than an encyclopaedic knowledge of Cicero, I’m sorry to have to admit). It became an area under a bishop’s jurisdiction with the advent of Christianity. In case you are interested, its Greek roots are ‘di’ (preposition meaning ‘through’) + ‘oikos’ (noun meaning ‘house’), creating ‘dioikein’ meaning ‘to keep house’ or ‘administer’. Why it is pronounced to rhyme with sis is anyone’s guess! Fascinatingly, ‘oikos’ also crops up in the English word ‘economy’, which is also all about keeping your house in order.

Ship ahoy!

Ely, one of the most splendid cathedrals in the country, rising ineffably on its improbable hill from the murky flats of East Anglia, is known as the Ship of the Fens. This word, ship, crops up again in church terminology in the word nave. As I said at the beginning, aficionados of church architecture get a little sweaty about the word nave, because it is not an aisle!! The nave is the main central space up the length of a church. It comes from the Latin ‘navis’, which means ‘ship’. Clearly all churches are ships of faith, steering a course through high seas of unbelievers and allegory, disembarking souls of faithful parishioners at their heavenly destination. The tradition of seeing the Church as a ship is as ancient as the Church itself, as far as I can tell from a quick Google.

The Ship of the Fens: Ely Cathedral on its improbable hill. Photo credit P. Wood.

Aisle have two of those flying ships!

If the nave is not an aisle, then what is? Well, there are usually two aisles in a church, one to the north and one to the south of the nave. They are the wings of the ship! Aisle comes via French from the Latin for wing, ‘ala’. My Shorter OED (Volume 1) tells me (via the abbreviation ‘conf.’) that it is spelt funny on account of someone once upon a time having confused it with with the word ‘isle’, island, whilst simultaneously thinking about the French world ‘aile’, meaning ‘wing’.

I really could go on and on with this subject — there’s the font (Latin ‘fons’, a spring), the altar (Latin ‘altus’, high), the transept, the triforium and clerestory and the word church itself to name a few, but I think I might save those for another fascinating instalment of ‘Charlie Loves Dictionaries!’

 

Caroliola et amici sunt in taberna. linguam Latinam loquuntur.

When I look back through the archives of this site, I’m frankly astounded that I’ve written anything on it. You see, I have two small children. The older one started school last term, in reception class. Somehow this is much more exhausting for everyone concerned than when she was at pre-school, even though she only does half days still. The necessity of getting her there, the necessity to provide clean uniform, remember her school bag, remember to put the right books in it, remember to take the right things out of it – none of these things mattered at pre-school. I haven’t even considered the element of encouraging reading and writing skills… So, it’s all quite hard work, and subsequently I haven’t published anything for months. My apologies are offered sincerely to any reader who cares/ exists.

What I have been doing, however, (on top of school runs and infinite laundry etc) is teaching. Teaching A Level Latin, GCSE Latin and A Level Classical Civilisations (and some German). I have also been having conversations with teachers, and students, about teaching, and learning, Latin.

I am a big fan of David Carter’s Classical Workbooks which provide study resources for GCSE and A Level Latin and Greek set texts. I have been talking to him about some of the ideas expressed both in his workbooks and more explicitly on his website, namely immersive learning techniques. He advocates in his books reading the Latin or Greek text ‘many times ALOUD and FAST’. He also advocates knowing what the text means before attempting translation and provides a very literal interlinear translation as an aid. I must confess that although I think this is a great idea and have indeed suggested to A Level pupils that they look up translations in case of really struggling with a piece of homework in order to figure out on their own how it fits together, I still struggle with it as a face to face teaching approach — mainly because I haven’t fully and consciously considered it as an approach until this week. Another of his projects currently under construction is spoken versions of set texts for students to listen to alongside written and interactive texts. His approach to teaching and learning set texts for GCSE and A Level is totally immersive.

Talking to another teacher recently we discussed the Cambridge Latin Course and its potential short comings. Personally, I love Book I, I love Caecillius and all his household, but I really struggle with Book II partly on account of how the characters become less likeable but mainly because the stories become impossibly long. On the grammar front, I feel it is the teacher’s responsibility to fill in any gaps or correct any lies that the books might present (currit does not mean runs!!!) so I don’t hold a grudge on that front. I also recognise, however, that not all Latin teachers these days are subject specialists and perhaps don’t have the skills to fill in those gaps. The person I was chatting with, however, is another advocate for a more immersive learning style and a fan of prose composition in beginner classrooms, a subject I have written about here.

In short, and not least because my children are now fighting each other and it’s bedtime, I feel it is time that Latinists got together and considered new approaches to teaching Latin in schools, and by new I probably don’t mean anything new at all. A glance at American Twitter users’ profiles shows that in the US quite a different approach is taken already – American Latin teachers’ Twitter handles are Magistra or Magister and meet ups in cafés are advertised at which Latin will be spoken. We Brits do not do this. Why not? Like I say, I think it’s time for teachers, academics, teacher trainers and even students to get together and talk about how we teach and learn Latin in Britain today. Caroliola et amici sunt in taberna. linguam Latinam loquuntur.

Salvete Omnes, We have a Cafea coming up this Saturday at 2pm @OgawaCoffeeUSA . please RSVP at the link below. https://t.co/O3cYDMCiSo

— ClipeusBOS (@ClipeusBoston) February 8, 2016

If I were in Boston, Mass. I would definitely go to this.

I’d love to know readers’ thoughts – please do comment!

 

Wet Wet Wet, or Notes on The Gender of Sea-related Substantives in Latin and Kipling

Digiti are male, ungulae female.

Gender is all around us, and so the Latin goes.

Zephyrus is male, Germania female, ita vero.

With apologies to both The Troggs and poetic decency, I will stop there. I have been wanting to write a post on gender and sexism for a while, but there are plenty of bloggers out there far better equipped to tackle that job than I am. I will content myself with some loose observations on the gender of nouns in Latin and English, and some poetic digressions.

Anyone familiar with Kennedy’s Revised Latin Primer is missing out if they have never turned to the back of the book to find Appendix IV, entitled Memorial Lines on the Gender Of Latin Substantives. For here we find such rhyming gems as ‘The gender of a Latin noun/ by meaning, form, or use is shown’ leading straight on to ‘A Man, a name of People and a Wind,/ River and Mountain, Masculine we find’. This continues for several pages and I can’t tell you how much it pleases me. I urge you to look it up.

In English, we do not really use gendered nouns, unlike many other languages, especially the ones with their roots in Latin. English does of course have roots in Latin, and in German which also has genders for its nouns. Old English, a Germanic language, had both cases and genders which over time and usage became slurred out of action. It is mildly interesting, and puntastic, to point out that there was no future in Old English. But back to the Latin!

Many seafaring words in Latin are either feminine or look feminine. Nauta, a sailor, is one noun that looks feminine but is actually masculine and I offer no further comment on this point and will not mention any songs by The Village People; navis, a ship, is feminine. These words give us nautical, astronaut, navigation, navvy, words which have a traditionally masculine feel in English as men have traditionally been the sailors, navigators, labourers. However, ask any sailor or sea-farer to describe a ship or boat and they will instinctively refer to it as female. There’s also a good chance it will have a girl’s name and many theories abound as to why this should be. I like to think it is because men do inherently respect and trust women and there is not much greater trust than that which a sea-farer puts in their vessel as they set out to meet the old grey Widow-maker, who is in her turn deserving of the utmost respect.

Rudyard Kipling (who was incidentally named after a lake) personified the sea magnificently in his poem Harp Song of the Dane Women, from which I plundered the above phrase, the old grey Widow-maker. The poem opens,

What is a woman that you forsake her,

and the hearth-fire and the home-acre,

to go with the old grey Widow-maker?

It continues,

She has no strong white arms to fold you,

but the ten times fingering weed to hold you—

out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

The outlook is bleak, unforgiving, inexorable, sexy, somehow feminine in its murderousness. Needless to say, Kipling refers to the ship also as feminine throughout.

So in Latin the sailors and the ships are feminine, but the winds are masculine, as Kennedy reminded us above. What of the sea itself, whose ‘feminine’ wiles Kipling represents so unforgivingly? Aqua, water, is a feminine noun and can mean sea, but mare, however, which specifically means the sea, is a neuter noun. This word will be familiar to readers with some knowledge of French as la mer. Neuter nouns in Latin tend to become masculine in French, but la mer has defied this tendency to become feminine. How interesting.

Pelagus, a Latin neuter noun for the sea, is borrowed from Greek, in which language it was also neuter, but it seems to have mutated into modern European languages as la plage, la playa, la praia, all feminine nouns again, but meaning beach rather than sea; pontus is masculine, from which the Hellespont gets its name (now the Dardanelles), the sea in which Helle drowned after she slipped off the back of the magical flying ram of Golden Fleece fame, but this word has become le pont in French, meaning bridge. This is because pontus behaved a little like a Norse kenning in its meaning — a sea way, route, passage, hence bridge — and having lost its maritime feel, it presumably resisted any latent transgender feelings it may have harboured to become feminine in French (and there’s no other reason why it would anyway, of course).

Lest you think my argument for sea related words being feminine in Latin is thus far a little weak, here are a few more, which I have melded into a little Kennedy-inspired rhyme:

Carina, puppis, scapha, prora,

triremis and ancora:

keel, stern, skiff and prow,

a ship and anchor don’t you know?

As a final thought, now completely digressing from my themes, how marvellous also are Kipling’s rhymes (see the full text of Harp Song below in Appendix III), and his use of the word kine, an old plural for cow (compare sow, swine).

Appendix  I

In in case you are desperate to know what I was thinking with my opening lyrics, here is the original opening from Love is All Around by The Troggs, covered by amongst others Wet Wet Wet or Love, Actually, depending on your age:

I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes,

love is all around me and so the feeling grows.

It’s written on the wind, it’s everywhere I go, oh yes it is.

Appendix II

Here is a list of vessels registered in Australia (just because it was the first one I found online) which you can use to make your own assessment of the likelihood of ships having female names: http://www.amsa.gov.au/vessels/shipping-registration/list-of-registered-ships/newreg.csv

Appendix III

Harp Song of the Dane Women, by Rudyard Kipling

What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in—
But one chill bed for all to rest in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you—
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,
And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,
Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken—

Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters.
You steal away to the lapping waters,
And look at your ship in her winter-quarters.

You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,
The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables—
To pitch her sides and go over her cables.

Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,
And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow,
Is all we have left through the months to follow.

Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker ?

Post script: To anyone who has read to the end, thank you for bearing with me! This has been my favourite post to date and I hope at least that some of the rhymes have pleased you as much as they please me. Do share your thoughts in the replies section.

Burglar alarms and crepitu alarums

I bravely saw off a burglar last night. I glared at him through my bedroom window and he stopped trying to steal my bike, which pleased me. The sophisticated alarm system which alerted me to the attempted pillaging of property was my squeaky front gate. Ancient Roman alarm systems relied on something only arguably a touch more sophisticated: the flappability of their geese.

It is the early fourth century BCE. Rome is under attack from Gauls. The Roman infantry have fought as hard as they can, but the night watchmen have failed in their duty. The Gauls, under cover of darkness, believe they are heading up the Capitoline Hill to the Roman citadel and an easy victory. But a Gaulish invader puts a foot wrong: he disturbs a goose.¹

My favourite thing about this story of the geese saving Rome is not the geese per se, but rather the vocab surrounding the geese. Livy tells us that it was the ‘alarum crepitu’ of the geese which roused the Roman commander Manlius just in time for him to see off the wrong footed Gauls and save the city.² This phrase translates as ‘by the beating of the wings’, alarum being the word for wings. Whilst alarum has come to be a perfectly good English word for an alarm or call to arms, it has also lost a vowel to become the word — have you guessed it yet? — alarm!

So, whilst I have no sophisticated anti-bike-theft alarm system, if a wing beat was good enough for Ancient Rome, then a squeaky gate is good enough for me. And perhaps an extra chain on my bike.

¹ Not just any old goose, but one of a gaggle sacred to Juno.

² Livy Ab Urbe Condita V, 47.

Latin mottos for swimmers

In honour of my local open air swimming pool, Jesus Green Lido, reopening for Summer this coming Saturday, I am writing some swimming related posts.

This one is for all my Did you swim today? chums: I am constantly delighted, encouraged and inspired by your endeavours in pools, lakes, rivers and oceans, at every point of the achievement spectrum. You guys make me want to spend more time in the water and I thank you for that.

Here is a selection of Latin mottos all about swimming that I made up, with some inspiration from real mottos.

Natando amicitia — friendship through swimming. Very appropriate for DYST, I feel.

Nunc est natandum — Now is the time for swimming! This is inspired by the more common nunc est bibendum, now is the time for drinking. Also a good motto.

Fortius natando — stronger through swimming. This and the three following are variations on fairly common mottos.

Fortis et liber natando — strong and free through swimming.

Ab aqua libertas — from water comes freedom.

Natando libertas — freedom through swimming.

Per aquas ad astra — through water to the stars, inspired by the military motto per ardua ad astra, through hardship to the stars.

Ad natandum paratus — ready for swimming. Another military inspired one. Utrinque paratus, ready for anything, is the motto of the Parachute Regiment.

Sic itur ad aquas — this is the way to the water. This is based on another military motto, this is the way to the stars.

Citius, swimmius, fortius — not quite the Olympic motto, citius, altius, fortius, faster, higher, stronger, but you get the picture. NB swimmius is not actually a Latin word. I made it up.

Animus in natando liber — in swimming an independent spirit. The original reads animus in consulendo liber, in counsel an independent spirit, a phrase from the Roman senator Marcus Porcius Cato. It is the motto of NATO.

Fiat piscina/ stagnum/ colymbus — let there be a pool (man-made)/ pool (naturally occurring)/ swimming pool. Piscina sounds like the French word for swimming pool, piscine, while stagnum is a general word for any expanse of enclosed water, but sounds to an English ear a little less wholesome. I had never come across the word colymbus before researching this post. It definitely means swimming pool, but it is also the name of a type of oyster. My phrase is a play on the biblical Fiat lux, let there be light.

Fluctuat nec mergitur — he/she/it floats and does not sink. This is the motto of Paris, originally an island in the River Seine. Surely a good swimming motto.

Gens una sumus natando — we are one family through swimming.

Semper natans — always swimming.

I hope you have enjoyed these!

If you want to adapt any of them, you can play around with the word order in any of the phrases, but if you want to swap words across the phrases you will have to check the grammar — just ask!

Please let me know if you do use any of them — I would be delighted to hear from you and I would love to see pics of them in action!

Please do share any other swimming mottos you may have come across in the comments below.

Happy swimming! [I’m now wondering how best to say that in Latin…]

Why Latin? You’re asking the wrong question

I have noticed the question Why Latin? being asked a lot on social media lately and there are plenty of good answers out there. However, I put it to you that the wrong question is being asked. Since the people asking it are usually already engaged with Latin in some way or another, either as pupils, parents of pupils, school employees, politicians, people who were forced to study it and hated it, people who didn’t have the opportunity of studying it and hate that, they have an agenda in asking the question. The agenda may be to wind up the teacher, sound precocious to the rest of the class, squeeze more diversity into the busy school timetable, find funding for other worthy causes, just to be contrary. Occasionally the asker may even be asking with a sincere desire to know the thoughts of the person they are asking. It should be noted, in any case, that most of those askers already have a fair idea of the sorts of things their interlocutor might say.

This is why I am about to propose a radical new approach based on my experiences of chatting to people. Now, I like to chat to people — all sorts of people — and being a teacher I regularly get asked what I teach. I do not shy away from saying that I teach Latin and Classical Civilisations and I am not surprised when the reaction is a puzzled face. The follow up question is often, What’s that then? And I have to say, I far prefer this reaction to either of the other frequently reported reactions — ‘Urgh! I hated Latin’ and the rather happier exclamation of ‘Caecilius est in horto!’.

The reason I far prefer this question is because the answer comes easily. Latin is the language spoken by the ancient Romans, and in which they wrote poetry, history, love letters, shopping lists, graffiti, business letters, plays, death sentences, school lessons; it became the European language of religion, politics, science, law, medicine, philosophy, everything in any way academic — as well as plenty of things mundane; its literary output informed a huge amount of what we today consider important literature; in its spoken form it became French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese. I could go on, but I have some self awareness and I don’t like to be too dull to friendly strangers who have consented to chat to me. I might sometimes pad my answer out, for the sake of sounding a little more down with the kids, with interesting facts about films like Gladiator or Harry Potter.

In any case, the next question is never Why study that then? Now, I hope this is not because they would prefer that I stop talking. In fact, I like to think it’s because that answer is obvious. All the other points about it being helpful in learning grammar, syntax, and so on become less immediately significant, though of course still entirely valid and appropriate. Depending on whom I am burbling on to I sometimes even add these points in myself, though if the person has never heard of Latin, I would probably leave out the word syntax.

And so to my conclusion! The next time you get asked Why Latin? change the question and answer instead What is Latin? I’d love to know how this goes down. Perhaps you have even tried this already — please let me know in the comments below.

Like a knife through Cicero’s wordy butter, or How to remember more stuff

I have spent several lessons this week with sixth formers getting old school on our grammar. In the first instance, we had started off by going through some unseen Cicero, and to be frank it was like putting a plastic picnic knife through a block of butter straight from the fridge. We made hard work of it, nearly snapped the metaphorical knife of Latin enthusiasm. It was no good. We needed to warm the butter a little, or perhaps find a sturdier knife to get though our cold, hard, unyielding butter of Ciceronian oratory.

‘Shall we chant?’ I asked. Now, I love a bit of rhythmic recitation of linguistic paradigms, but unfortunately I’m no musician so I am not about to post a video of me dancing around my kitchen table to ‘hic, haec, hoc’ or beating out a rhythm to ‘ego, me, mei, mihi, me’ with my wooden spoons, but hopefully you get the picture. We worked through nouns of every declension, recognised patterns, memorised patterns, my student grinned, I grinned, my baby (annoyingly awake during this lesson) also grinned.

At last we returned to the Cicero and it was obvious that our chanting had paid off. Our knife of enthusiasm, whetted with knowledge, slid easily through Cicero’s wordy butter as it warmed to its rhetorical theme. Nominative plurals were abandoned in favour of dative singulars, genitives were given their rightful status, equilibrium was restored to Cicero’s speech. Everyone was happy. Hurrah!

So, if working through a translation feels like a putting plastic knife through cold, hard butter, then maybe it’s time to get old school with your Latin and restart the chanting.

Also, remember that chanting and singing can work as a revision tool in all your subjects, not just Latin. Try making lists of key facts and putting them to a beat, or to music, maybe to the tune of a favourite song. It will definitely be more fun than just writing it out over and over, or reading and re-reading and I bet you will remember more of it. Happy revising!

Summer’s Here! Top tips for tip top revision

I am not about to tell you how to revise — some people stick colour coded charts all over their walls, others like flash cards — do whatever works for you, but I do have a few top tips to help you focus and stay focused.

Mens sana in corpore sano, or, as I like to say, Healthy body, healthy brain¹

Looking after yourself during stressful times is very important. Firstly, have a proper breakfast to set yourself up for the day. Eat whatever makes you happy, be it porridge or bacon and eggs, just have breakfast!

Secondly, remember to take brain breaks. Stop working and get some exercise, even if it’s just a stroll in the fresh air. Moving your limbs will get everything flowing again, taking deep breaths of fresh air will relax you and if it’s sunny you get your healthy boost of vitamin D too. You will work better if you take a break and come back to it.

Multum in parvo — less is more²

If you are trying to learn lots of vocab or lists of facts, quotations, whatever, little and often is best. Work in short bursts and come back to it. The more often you return to a topic, the better. As above, however, remember not to overdo your studies but take brain breaks.

Varietas delectat — variety is the spice of life³

You might have one subject that you love, but you will have others that need time as well. Equally, you might have one subject that you feel needs lots of time spent on it, but you mustn’t neglect the others. Mix it up. You will benefit from the change of topic and change of approach that different subjects often require.

Finally, good luck in all those exams!

¹ Literally, mens sana in corpore sano means ‘a sound (or healthy) mind in a sound (or healthy) body’. It comes from Satire X of the Roman poet Juevenal, in which he lists what one should desire in life. He apparently felt that ‘virtue’ was the thing. Go on, look up Juvenal’s Satire X.

² Literally, multum in parvo means ‘much in little’ or ‘much in a small space’. It often refers to conciseness, but is also, delightfully, the motto of Rutland, the smallest county in England.

³ The Latin reads ‘variety delights’. My loose translation is in fact a misquotation from the English poet William Cowper, who wrote in his lengthy poem of 1785 entitled The Timepiece, from The Task, Book II, ‘Variety’s the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour’. Cowper was also famed for his translations of Homer. Cool, hey?

Swimming against the tide — adventures in prose composition

One year I had a particularly enthusiastic Year 8 Latin class. Not top set, but definitely a talented bunch. As a treat at the end of lessons we would sometimes spend a few minutes adding to their Latin story about a fish. The story didn’t make much sense and I can’t quite remember the antics of the fish. The grammar was good though. Naive latinists do not think within their capabilities but plot mighty tricky sentences as the whim takes them, so we would spend several minutes figuring how to put that thought into Latin. Out of necessity we would often have to look way beyond our Year 8 capabilities. I would explain more intricate grammar points than most of them would ever need to know, just so our fish could leap further, swim deeper, have more exotic adventures by far than any other Year 8 fish.

I left the school before members of that class reached Sixth Form, but I hear from some of them occasionally and they always speak fondly of those lessons. A few went on to do classics degrees. I wonder if they did prose composition at A Level, a discipline which I re-established in that school, and I wonder if they ever think of that brave little fish having wonderful adventures in grammar back in Year 8.

Did you do pro-co at school? When did you start? How did you find it? Please tell all in the comments below.