Aestas

I had my last MARS 1F90 lecture last night, which was bittersweet. As with all of my classes, I'm looking forward to the term being done and not having to do assignments and readings. However, I know within a month I will be lost without those assignments and readings. Dr. Basson finished off the lecture with the quote, "Quam sit humaniter vivendum?". So...how will I live a more humane life this spring and summer? Well, here are my goals:

1. Continue with Wheelock. I plan on taking Latin next year as well. Dr. Parker did say that we would be working with Wheelock next year, but I would like to go through and do questions in the back of the book and get ahead at least a few chapters.

2. Finish 38 Stories. Goes with above.

3. Attempt to read Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis. 

This will probably be done hand in hand with this:

4. Learn Spanish! My brother has offered to lend me his Rosetta Stone Spanish set. I have no idea why he has this as he doesn't travel and is in school for landscaping...never mind.

I obviously won't stay in studying all summer! The kids will be off school soon enough (too soon). I'm going to congress at the end of May (as part of the Canadian Society of Medievalists), I have a big Geocaching weekend at the end of June in Tottenham, and I will probably be going up to Ottawa to visit family in July. Plus maybe I can take Wheelock to the beach?

Incipiamus

I know, I know, it's been awhile! But here I am, finally posting, so yay for that. What reminded me that I needed to post? Well, my desk is currently covered in Latin.

It is about 2 1/2 weeks until the Latin exam! That means the prep and studying has started. Right now I'm going through my notes and making sure I have everything, and copying info from my notebook to the binder (aka The Massive Holder of Important Stuffs). I've also evaluating the battle damage to my copy of Wheelock and doing some mending.

Where's Red Green when you need him?

I'm also in the midst of trying to print off all of the handouts that turned up in my Brock mailbox this afternoon:

Of course, printer ran out of ink halfway through printing :/

Last item of preparation is downloading legally obtaining season 3 of Game of Thrones. No, I have not seen the Red Wedding yet. Yes, I know what happens, I couldn't take it anymore and googled it. Now I need to watch it in preparation of season 4 (binge-watching!). Just keep in mind that sentences like "Nihil scis, Ioannes Nix" may appear somewhere on the exam.

Mors

I was looking to fix this little gemmam of a picture since I realized it was wrong, and I decided to look if there was an actual verb for "to be dead". I came across an interesting page on my internet journeys, Latin Death Words. They say the Inuit have hundreds of words for snow, and the Romans had at least 24 words or terms to describe 7 modes of death. I would like to point out that death by poison was obviously a big issue as there are three terms for it; also same for noble suicide, which has four terms. Anyways, I didn't end up finding a verb, but I did fix the picture to the best of my abilities:

I apologize, this is really short blog entry, but I am in the midst of a paper for MARS which is stressing me out to no end. I will, however, fulfill the (personally set by me) geek quota with this photo of my son with a dalek:

Mea filia callidissima abdebat.

Plus Etymologiae

This link came up on my Facebook feed recently from Mental Floss, 11 Weirdly Spelled Words - And How They Got That Way. I thought it would be a good followup to the last blog post. It's interesting to see how some English words came to be spelled the way they are, especially the ones that seem to make no sense (I'm looking at you, words that begin with k but are followed by a consonant). I was not aware of the so-called "Latinizing" craze of the 16th and 17th centuries (but to be fair, I wasn't there). I like how they were trying to "fancify" (I don't know if that's a word and I don't want to live in a world where it's not) words, just to make things complicated for us. Things would be a lot easier if receipt didn't have that sneaky p. And really, I feel like they were just doing it to be jerks. It's really a stretch to take the s out of insula and stick it in iglund to make island. To be fair, it's not just the Latin-English. Look at colonel! That's just evil.

For a bonus (Latin word turned English alert!), check out 10 Old English Words You Should Be Using. On that note, I will close with this:

Etymologia

One of my favourite YouTube channels is Mental Floss (http://www.youtube.com/user/MentalFlossVideo). Every week they have a list show with facts on different subjects. This week's show was "40 Weird Word Origins".

Now, as I really enjoy etymology, I thought this was a great subject. Of course, there were a lot of words with Latin origins, so it's a great topic for a Latin blog!

Here is a list of the English words discussed that were derived from Latin:

• Lemur - meaning "spirits of the dead" or "family ghost", according to my Halloween vocab. Derived from lemur, lemuris. Also, if I have a family ghost, I'm cool with it being a lemur.
• Muscle - meaning "little mouse". Derived from mus, muris (mouse) and the suffix -cle, altering noun to make diminutive.
• Salmon - meaning "to leap". Derived from salio, salire, salui, saltus; Latin equivalent salmo, salmonis.
• Apprehend - meaning "to grasp". Derived from...(wait for it)...apprehendo, apprehendere, apprehendi, apprehensus.
• Candidate - meaning "white robed". Derived from candidatus, candidata, candidatum.
• Nice - meaning..."ignorant"? Really? Apparently derived from nescius, nescia, nescium.
• Noon - meaning "9th Hour". Derived from nonus, nona, nonum and hora, horae.
• Escape - meaning "out cloak" according to Mental Floss, but I have to disagree. Wouldn't it make more sense to be derived from ex- (out of) and capio, capere, cepi, captum (to take hold of/grasp)?
• Ambulance - meaning "walking". Derived from ambulans, ambulantis.
• Lobster - meaning "locus", but this one I had trouble with. According to my handy copy of The New College Latin and English Dictionary (tagline: The Only Latin-English Dictionary Available At Chapters In St. Catharines ™), locust is locusta, locustae, and lobster has it's own Latin word, astacus, astaci. I don't know if the word lobster has been heavily modified or the dictionary is just not giving me another word.
• Senator - meaning "old". Derived from senex, senis.

Many of the other words would also be derived from Latin indirectly, particularly the French and Italian words. It's interesting to hear how words form and the journey they take to become part of out vocabulary.

Harrius Potter

When I tell people I am taking Latin, I usually get one of two responses depending who I'm talking to. The response from the older generation (i.e. parents/grandparents) is something like, "Oh...why?" or "Isn't that a dead language?" or "Why on God's earth would you take that?!" The response from the younger generation (i.e. people my age-ish) is surprisingly different. People are actually impressed. Of course my brother Chad is not included in this, as he is unimpressed with anything I do, ever:

Anyways, a common comment I receive is, "Soon you can read Harry Potter in Latin!" And herein I think is where Latin becomes cool again. Harry Potter. It goes without saying that the Harry Potter books were some of the most popular books of the last 50 years. There aren't many popular modern books that incorporate Latin as part of the story as much as the Harry Potter books. There are very interesting posts on the Hogwarts Professor and Greek Geek blogs that explore the Latin used. Obviously a lot of the Latin is not great, with words made up and mixing in other languages. A debate has arisen online: Is it a terrible thing that the books use "Dog Latin", or is just the fact they use Latin, bad or not, a good thing? I have to agree with the latter, because to even spark an interest in the language is a good thing. If someone becomes interested in Latin, they will want to research more into it, perhaps even learn it, and in that case they will (hopefully) learn proper form and words. And learning to speak Latin like Hermione Granger is not a terrible thing.

Myself, I'm taking Latin partially because it's strongly recommended for my major (Medieval and Renaissance Studies). The other reason is from reading historical fiction. In the books I read (which generally take place in late Medieval-early Renaissance Europe), Latin is a language frequently mentioned as being a language spoken at court and in the church. As I read these novels, I'm often on Google researching characters and events as I go. I love language in general, and learning Latin is an extension of this Google research on a larger scale. Hopefully with more prestige?

Nope, he's still not impressed.

Interpretationem

A friend of mine (and fellow book lover) posted this really great quote on Facebook today:

I was really excited that it was Cicero since I'm turning into a Latin nerd (as a side note I looked like I actually knew my stuff when Cicero came up in my MARS seminar last week). However, being the Latin nerd I am slowing turning into, id mei animo nocet to see a Cicero quote in English (thanks Wheelock!). So I scoured the internet (looked at the first 10 results on Google), and then thought, Hey, I've learned most of these words, I can probably do a bad translation of this. As such, here is my translation (though I've substituted locus instead of "room" as I had trouble finding a satisfactory word for "room", and "place" still gets the message across):

I read a quote recently in Les Miserables that was very interesting to me because Hugo described is as being written in "barbarous" (or "dog") Latin. Hugo was discussing a superstition in the region of Montfermeil that the devil had chosen the forest as his hiding place for his treasureand would bury it at night and the one who came upon his treasure would meet certain death. Tryphon, a Norman monk/sorceror, was said to have written the following about the superstition: 

"Fodit, et in fossa thesauros condit opaca,
As, nummas, lapides, cadaver, simulacra, nihilque."

My basic understanding of this quote is "he digs, and finds treasure in the dark ditch, coins, corpse, phantoms, and nothing."). Even to me this seems like terrible Latin, and makes me appreciate Wheelock that much more. Ugh.

Finally, I have to share this, as someone obsessed with all things British (esp Corrie):