So much more than I expected.

I decided to take this class partly because of an undecided major, and partly because my friend was taking it and convinced me that I should join her. I'm really glad that I did follow her lead and take this class. I'm taking much more from it than I had anticipated. I never thought I would leave this class knowing more English grammar than when I began. After being exposed to Latin, it makes me feel as if English is a lazy and kind of informal language. One must really understand parts of sentences to be able to properly decline nounds and adjectives, and to conjugate verbs.
I really enjoy the way the book teaches through stories because it makes it much easier to learn. On top of making it easier to learn, it gives us the opportunity to take away some Greek mythology. This class has given me a much greater appreciation for the Roman world, and just language in general. I am definitely taking much more from this class than I ever could have expected. : )

-Alyssa Rigolo

Forever with Me

So when I first told my family that I wanted to take Latin as my language requriement for graduation they thought I was nuts. My mom literally said, "Who in their right mind would learn a dead language?"

Umm... I would.

I guess I decided to take it because of a book actually. And not even a Latin book. I decided to take Latin because of the Daughters of the Moon series by Lynne Ewing. It's this series of books about four girls that were born with these special abilities; one can read minds, one gets premonitions, one can become invisible, and one can jump back and forth through time (that one's my favorite, her name is Catty :] )

Anyway, these girls have dreams of this woman named Maggie and when they finally meet her one day she tells them what they really are :

"Tu es dea, filia lunae. You are a goddess, a daughter of the moon."

She tells them this in Latin and somehow they all understand. Turns out Selene, the goddess of the moon and the girls true mother has given each of them their power and by using their powers together they can fight off the greatest evil in the world, the Atrox. Oh and they were all born KNOWING how to speak Latin.

Crazy right?

Anyway, there are 13 books, I've been reading them since I was a sophmore in high school and the last book came out recently (I'm a senior at USF), so I've spent years reading this language wishing I could understand it, or at least learn how to pronounce the words correctly. :] So when the chance came around, I jumped on it, and I'm so glad I did. haha! When I first saw 'filia' in our text book I was really excited because I already knew what that one meant.

So now that I told you all about why I decided to take Latin you're probably wondering why I titled this blog "Forever with Me". A few years ago I got a crescent moon tattooed on my lower back because these books affected me so strongly and just recently I decided to add to it. Soon the profile of a woman will be added inside of the moon and the words 'Filia Lunae' will be forever at her sides.

-Jessica Dingman

Latin Lover

I majored in Biomedical Sciences for a year before switching my major to Anthropology, and looking back I can definitely see how a background in Latin could help one understand medical terminology. In fact, understanding the Latin vocabulary can facilitate in building one's general English vocabulary and vice versa. I have been studying for the GRE recently and I have noticed how many of English vocab terms have Latin roots, which has aided my comprehension of both vocabulary for my GRE and for my Latin 1 class this semester. I think it is amazing how ancient languages such as Latin can find their way into modern ones such as English, even after all the changes English has undergone over the centuries.

-Chris Griesbach

Brittnay Glatter

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/latin.htm

I was searching the internet looking for some intertesing Latin information and I found this great website. On the website it has the old Latin alphabet. I'm glad that it is not that which we are using or this class would be even harder than it is! Nonetheless, it is an interesting website that has other older languages and their original alphabets if anyone is interested in other languages.

Excellent Complement to Other Languages

Learning Latin has helped me understand more about English and has been a great complement for Spanish and other languages. I'm currently taking Russian as well as Latin and some of the structural similarities have made it helpful to take both, though sometimes I mix up the languages in my head.

I also enjoyed translating passages and creating mental pictures from non-English words. It was helpful to have large stories to translate because it offered context for the words that we were using.

Latin offered a historical background to a number of common English words, which better helps me understand the intended meaning and current usage of those words. Also, focusing on Latin from more of an academic, written standpoint rather than speaking it was helpful to building a general sense of Western languages.

All in all, a good experience that challenged my brain.

-Christian Marble, LAT1120.001

I thought the Latin course was very interesting. The stories to translate were helpful because it allowed me to memorize the vocab and see the conjugations in a useful manner.
The Latin Lab was much more difficult when the answers were taken away, but I found it helpful in studying for the quizzes since you could take it over again.

I liked how Latin was so useful despite it being a dead language. I've taken Spanish before and found a lot of similarities between vocab and the way things are conjugated. That made it a lot easier to get through. Also a lot of English words have clear roots in Latin and since I am a creative writing major I found this incredibly useful. Most unusual words in English come from Latin or at least have a root that you can see. This has been helpful defining words both in English and Latin.

Latin is just something very different. It's one of the older languages and that fascinates me because it really had to be created from scratch. For all the cases and conjugations they have come up with it's very impressive.

I enjoyed this class and although it was tough making time to study for tests every week. I believe this kept me on top of my work though so that's not too bad.

-Ashley Kennedy

Fellow Students of Ancient Languages

Hello again everyone,

So, we are in the final few weeks (days) of classes for this term. Congrats to those who have made it to this point, especially those on the 2-day matrix for Latin. I found an article out here on the net, not exactly pertaining to Latin directly, but it covers students learning about Ancient Greek, and Akkadian. For those of us beginning and finishing our first semester of Latin and thought we hard it hard. Check out what Akkadian is...it's an ancient Semitic language written in Cuneiform. Its actually the 3rd oldest language according to this article. Very impressive, yah?

http://thehoot.net/articles/4474

For those more curious about Akkadian, here is a wiki entry for the language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_language

Semper,
Candis B.

Five Minutes, Everybody!

.....Which is about what is left from this semester as we head into the lions---ehm, the final exams, I mean! It's been such a whirlwind, especially with the new two day schedule, but you people (Latin I, Latin Ia, Latin III) have more than risen to the occassion---I still cannot believe how good everyone has been this semester, how quickly you have scaled the steep learning curve of Latin. Triple wow for all sections. Get some rest over the weekend and I will see you for our tests on Tuesday.

Vestra,

EM.

I find this shocking!

Several Councils in the UK have banned the use of Latin phrases by employees in official speech.

I also find this ironic. While the US is increasingly embracing and renewing interest in Latin, it seems that some people in the UK are rejecting it.

~Rachael

Brittnay Glatter

In our class I some people were saying that some of the words in the book were not in the dictionary. In order to help with the translation I found this great site that has a very extensive dictionary for Latin words and translation help. I hope you all find it useful. Here is the link.
http://www.nd.edu/~archives/latgramm.htm

I think that recenly the latin labs have been getting eaiser. I know that I have been doing better on them. But I do think that it is frustrating that the anwsers are taken away. I think we should be able to view them after we have taken the quiz. I will take a quiz like 5 times and still not know why an anwser remain wrong. Hopefully this will be something that can be changed for the next semester.
-Brittnay Glatter

Brittnay Glatter

Although this is not DIRECTLY about Latin it does have a lot to do with the fact that it is a "dead" language. The article is from the New York Times and it writes about resurrecting dead languages and specifically about the dead languages of India. I hope that you all find them interesting and can see the relation to our class. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/world/asia/11tribal.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

As we come to the end of the course I am really starting to see how much Latin can teach us about English. All the grammar we are doing now, including demonstrative pronouns, relative pronouns, prepositions and others is exactly what I am learning in my mass media class. I think having the writing class has helped me be more ready for the Latin because I know what kinds of words the grammar pertains to.
-Brittnay Glatter

Brittnay Glatter
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080414-emperor-picture.html

This is an older article but very interesting nonetheless. it is about a statue of a roman emperor found. I think it pertains well to our class. it seems like in the book we learn a l

Trial And Error

So, once again its time to do the weekly Latin Online Lab. This week its mostly about the Dative case, yay more cases. :) I'm afraid to admit the hardest part about Latin 1 so far is the case system. It was not so bad when it was just once case or two cases to deal with, but with all of them stacked together it gets rather confusing. I'm trying my hardest to get the cases learned and under control, anyone have any tips or suggestions to share that may make getting the crazy cases straight?

Semper, Candis B.

Rome in 3D!!!

So, I was messing around with google earth for my Oceanography class, of all things, and I found a new setting where you can explore Ancient Rome in 3D!! It was neat for me to be able to see the places that I'm translating about in class. I totally recommend you taking a look at it, because I found it to be fun and very interesting! I hope you enjoy it! : )

Here's the link:

http://earth.google.com/rome/

Thanks,

C. Danielle G.