Latina Est Gaudium (Now with extreme textbook geekery!)

[akujunkan]

Score! A friend and I spent a couple of hours rummaging through the local used book store today. This place has grown tenfold during the three years I was in Japan; what started off as a two-room storefront operation has expanded into two levels and myriad little rooms branching off in unexpected locations, in the traditon of the finest used book stores in the world. (I'm looking right at you, Caveat Emptor!)

Anyway, while poking around I came across a book entitled Second Year Latin, and whose name was that on the spine if not Mr. Charles Jenney's himself! Predictably, I was ecstatic, as it was priced at a mere $9.99 and still in pristine never-been-touched ex-schoolbook condition.

I have a great deal of love for Jenney's latin textbooks and their wonderfully unapologetic focus on grammar, and the fact that they're organized more intelligently than the other systems. (I'm looking at you Wheelock's; you're one of the main reasons I dropped my Classics major the other being that pesky Greek requirement.) My heart will always belong to the Cambridge Latin Series, but Jenney's is much more suited to individual review and as a grammar resource for all those bits I never quite picked up in class.

"Enjoy it," the Owner Lady told me as I left the store. "I guess..." (I doubt this was a book she'd ever expected to see leaving her store.)

But alas, my enthusiasm has faded slightly in the intervening hours, as I am not certain if what I purchased was in fact, Jenney's Second Year Latin or Scudder's Second Year Latin, and a Library of Congress search has not yeilded definitive results. But hey, it still contains Caesar's De Bello Gallico, which is what I've been itching to read of late (and the reason I'm brushing up on Latin in the first place).

That will be all.

Comments

[sara-tanaquil.livejournal.com]

The description/reviews on Amazon sounded appealing. I am deeply suspicious of any treatment that omits Greek accents, though. (Not that he's alone in that. The accent system is so arcane that many teachers of Greek throw up their hands and don't even attempt to teach it. Don't get me started on why that's a HUGE mistake. ^_^)

Feel free to take me up on the tutoring offer! I've received so much Japanese help here on LJ, it would be fun to help others with the langauges I'm actually trained to teach.

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

Hm. I'm assuming omitting accents either makes it difficult to read poetic verse, or that they come into play during conjugation/declension, rather like patchim in Korean.

My Latin teacher during freshman and sophomore year of high school only insisted on us remembering the macron over a in the feminine ablative, which made me lazy and is one of the things I'm trying to correct now. So yeah, I'm all about keeping everything intact from day one of instruction.

[sara-tanaquil.livejournal.com]

that they come into play during conjugation/declension, rather like patchim in Korean

It's closer to this. I suppose being able to read accents might make verse easier (they sometimes tell you where the long vowels are), but that's less of an issue.

which made me lazy and is one of the things I'm trying to correct now. So yeah, I'm all about keeping everything intact from day one of instruction.

And here's where you really put your finger on it. The truth is, a person can learn quite a lot of Greek adequately without understanding the accents, which is why many teachers don't try to teach them. But sooner or later, if you're a serious student, you will realize that not knowing them is getting in your way, and then it's really hard to go back and fix what you should have learned from the beginning.

If you start really getting into the Greek, I can send you a handout that I made for my students years ago. Nobody's explanation of accents is perfect, but a lot of my students have told me that the handout helped a lot.

(I try hard to teach the accents, but I don't penalize quite as much as I should for accent mistakes, so I always wonder how much of it is sticking. Just yesterday one of my students from last year asked me an unrelated question about Greek, and when I pressed him on an accent issue, he snapped out the correct answer right away. I was so proud!)

Hey, (somewhat) unrelated question -- what are you doing to review your Latin? I mean, do you just reread the textbook to refresh your memory and try to work through the Caesar readings, or do you write out exercises/paradigms, or practice forms on a computer verb drill program, or what?

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

I'll have to hit you up for that accent sheet once I get back into the Jones book. And way to go with your former student!

Incidentally, why is it that so many people use counterproductive methods when teaching foreign languages. Here we have Greek and Latin teachers ignoring fundamental parts of the language to 'help' students while Japanese and Korean teachers 'help' their students by using romanization before teaching Japanese or Korean script. (>.<)

My Latin review is decidedly old school in its approach. I'm taking Jenney's first year text and doing a unit a day, but doing it well: reading until I understand, writing down my answers to all the exercises, looking up everything I'm unsure of, reading aloud, and forcing myself to compose the entire answer sentences in my head before I start writing them down.

When I'm really stuck on something I'll look at the relevent chapters in the other texts I own (Using Latin 1, Cambridge Unit 2, Wheelock's, Jones, and Our Latin Heritage.)

[sara-tanaquil.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you're doing great. Seriously, don't hesitate to post questions in your journal when you have them. I'd be happy to help.