Learn and teach Latin here

Greatnan Apparently Napier and "I have Sind" is apocryphal - but it should be true.

The Corsican language is said (by Corsicans) to be the closest language to Latin and Latin itself used to be spoken there. The last Latin speaker died within living memory - just.

Ad nauseum

Oops sorry! Gm Wrong spelling and I think I've got the wrong thread

I gave up Latin after I was off school for a month with measles, I missed all the lessons when they were learning all the tenses and I never did get them sorted out properly. But even with the little I did I can remember finding it quite thrilling to read Caesar's Punic Wars in his own words instead of a translation.
As a scientist my daughter finds Latin very useful as an international scientific language, and since she wasn't taught much English grammar at school she relies quite heavily on her knowledge of Latin grammar.

Deedaa I never understood English grammar until I did Latin - then I not only understood it, I was grateful it was so simple in comparison!

Looking back though, I think it was also a case of good and bad teachers. My English teacher was a judgmental impatient bitch. My Latin teacher was one of those gifted teachers who just know how to impart knowledge.

Semper inops quicumque cupit
Whoever desires is always poor.

We learnt almost all the English grammar we needed to know in primary school, though we continued to practise it in secondary and it was tested in the Higher exam. So we understood the terminology of grammar - tenses and so on - by the time we started on Latin and French. My DS2 took up Spanish again at university, having given it up after GCSE. He just didn't know the terminology and I sent him a module I'd written for my mature students. Latin would have done him a power of good!

I suggested learning some Latin to a fellow student at Queensland University who was having trouble with English grammar. She did start Latin, but gave it up 'cos it was too hard! In the end I made up a sentence for her, using all the different parts of speech, and labelled each one with its grammatical name and position in the sentence, eg 'dog' noun, subject, 'bone', noun, direct object, 'black', adjective etc etc. She told me later it had helped enormously.

I wish I had received a primary education like yours, Anno. At my useless Catholic elementary school in the 1940s, all we learned was the catechism, much of the New Testament, hymns and prayers in Latin (without translation), arithmetic up to long division (no fractions or decimals). The only geography, history or science I knew was learned at home by voracious reading - luckily, my parents were both avid readers.
Once I had learnt all the school was prepared to teach me I spent my last year marking the sum books of other pupils. But at least I still know the Cardinal Virtues, the Seven Deadly Sins, the Fruits of The Holy Ghost, and the sacraments. Very useful in trivial pursuits.

He he, Greatnan. I know those too, and you did have a bad time of it. But happily for me, it wasn't all I learnt. We did lots of nature study, art and drama, and, high spots of the week, an afternoon of history and a quiz on Fridays where we had to research and ask the opposing team a question. Excellent training for pub quizzes I agree.

A motto for this forum could be:

Contra principia negantem non est disputandem.

Could you translate, please?

I wonder if my school was particularly bad? It was in a deprived area of Salford and most of the children in my street would now be classed as having special needs. The convent grammar school was a big improvement - still lots of religion, of course, but the individual subject teachers seemed to be good. There were no after-school activities of any kind though - the spinster teachers headed off for their homes in the leafy suburbs , so there was no drama, music, sport, chess, etc. There was no encouragement for any kind of creative or sporting talent. We were not allowed to compete in local school sports (not that I would have done, anyway, as I loathed sport and usually hid in the toilets during gym/games lessons) because some of the other schools' pupils wore outfits that showed some of the thigh above the knee! We had to kneel down to show that our gym dress touched the floor!

Sorry!

Debate isn't possible with those who deny the foundations.

In other words, if debaters don't agree the meaning of terms and principles then it's impossible to have a proper debate.

Sounds like prison Greatnan. Quite horrible. Still, you survived to tell the tale.

Thanks!

I studied Latin o level and and found the root words a great help when studying French,Spanish and Italian.

A level Latin was a great help with Old French at university. Unfortunately I don't get much opportunity to use it nowadays (or Old French come to think of it).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases_(full)

MiceElf it strikes me that your quotation could be used in many places on this forum!

Grannyactivist I think I like yours best of all

I agree Ella - but I do love saying 'in flagrante delicto' and my family grew tired of hearing me roll my 'r's as I called for 'audi alterem partem' when there was a disagreement. .

What a brainy lot we are on Gransnet. I wonder what percentage of Mumsnetters learnt Latin (unless you're all on Mumsnet too)!