Once upon a time I misformed the gerund of studeō by writing ad studiendum [sic]. It seemed natural, and I even began to second-guess myself: is this a 2nd conjugation verb (studeō, studēre)? Maybe I’ve misremembered and it’s 3rd-iō (studiō, studere [sic]). But that just couldn’t be the case. So why did I make the mistake?

I’ve since seen the same error in the latest edition of John Traupman’s venerable and handy New College Latin Dictionary. In the English-Latin section, under ’study period’ (i.e., ’study hall’) you’ll find spatium ad studiendum [sic].

So why did he and I make this mistake? We’re joined by many others, both on the web and in manuscripts dating to at least the 14th century.

I can only guess that it’s from the -i- in studium. Is the noun more common than the verb? Any similar errors committed by readers?

A colleague kindly handed me a printout of the following e-mail from the College Board, and I was surprised to see that it hadn’t made its way to my inbox. I noticed no chatter on the lists (though I receive the digests), and Google is so far silent:

Dear AP Latin Educator,

We are writing to provide an update to the message you received from us in June 2009, concerning the process for revising the AP Latin program. In that message we indicated that the AP Latin Development Committee had met in March 2009, to make the following preliminary decisions about the new AP Latin course:

Revise the current AP Latin: Vergil course to include two authors, and both poetry and prose readings.

Retain Vergil, but reduce significantly the number of lines of the Aeneid currently required in AP Latin: Vergil.

Include Caesar as the prose author.

Since the time of that message the AP Latin Development Committee has spent several months working on the new syllabus of required readings, considering very carefully the many thoughtful suggestions received from AP Latin teachers and college and university faculty. While the new syllabus isn’t ready yet for publication, we can now share the following details, which would, at the earliest, take effect in the 2012-2013 academic year. For Vergil, the number of lines of the Aeneid read in Latin will be reduced approximately by half; required reading in Latin comes from books 1 through 6 only. For Caesar, the required reading in Latin will come from both the Bellum Gallicum and the Bellum Civile.

There’s more, including information on various conferences where the details will be discussed, but frankly I’m ready for bed, and I’d rather not keep typing. You can rest assured that the current AP Vergil syllabus will remain in place through May 2012.

I noticed the following comic linked on the Latinteach list this morning, and found a way to work it into today’s lesson on the uses of the subjunctive (and now I see that Karen Moore has posted it to her Latin Alive blog as well):

I find it helpful to talk about the subjunctive as the mode of subordination, whether implicit or explicit. I put the comic up as a power point, talked about why the pun worked, then told the story of Oedipus, ending with the familiar punchline: ‘What was Oedipus’ fatal flaw? He conjugated when he should have declined.’

The kids then used their dictionaries to look up the root words and to work out other words in English and in Latin on the same roots. We talked about yoking oxen, being joined with your mate, and finally came to conjunctions, which join words and clauses together. ‘So if a conjunction joins words and clauses together, what do you suppose a subjunctive verb does?’ We compared the word subordination, and went into the notion that the subjunctive marks a thought that is joined with but subordinated to another, whether stated or implied.

Jussive, hortatory, optative, potential: all depend upon an implication of will, desire, or possibility (e.g., ‘I hope that…’, ‘it’s possible that…’, etc.). Rather than talk about ‘independent’ uses of the subjunctive, I talk about implicit vs. explicit subordination. The implied idea isn’t always easy to put into words, but it is easy to see that the subjunctive verb depends on something that isn’t expressly stated, being either easily inferred or picked up from context.

We had talked previously about the ability to express the same thought in different ways (modes) as a way to introduce the subjunctive, and my examples were tacē! (’shut up!’), tacēbis! (‘you will shut up!), and taceās! (‘you should shut up,’ unless you want a knuckle sandwich, for example).

Perhaps the most exciting and rewarding class I took as an undergraduate (about 7-8 years ago), was Languages of Ancient Italy with Rex Wallace. We studied and read Old Latin, Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Etruscan, and some other inscriptions. We had an incredibly fun time interpreting the Iguvine Tables, of all things, and I was able, on a trip to the MFA in Boston, to read the inscription on an Etruscan sarcophagus.

And so I’m very glad to see Professor Wallace’s book, Zikh Rasna: A Manual of the Etruscan Language and Inscriptions., receive a positive review in the BMCR (though it’s likely to be lost on many non-specialists and American classicists who tend to neglect modern languages beyond German and French). The review, by Roberto López Montero, is in Spanish and is quite enthusiastic:

La aparición del volumen de R. E. Wallace supone, desde nuestro punto de vista, un gran acierto. Se echaba de menos, dentro de las publicaciones sobre lengua etrusca, una obra que no sólo recogiera el estado actual sobre el conocimiento de la gramática, sino también que la presentara con orden y en un solo volumen. … La obra de Wallace, por tanto, constituye un claro ejemplo de precisión sobre el conocimiento actual de la lengua etrusca. Consideradas las salvedades a que hemos hecho referencia en la recensión, nos parece un manual imprescindible para todos los que quieran acercarse, de forma científica y global, a la lingüística etrusca. El autor no sólo conoce bien los últimos logros de la Etruscología de los últimos años sino que, además, los ha sabido presentar de forma ordenada, diáfana y precisa en un volumen donde los ejemplos acompañan todas las aserciones. Esto constituye, en conjunto, una de las grandes novedades del libro, al que le auguramos un éxito merecido.

Basically he says that the work is one of precision and a solid, scientific, comprehensive handbook for anyone interested in the study of Etruscan.

Now who wants to buy a copy for a poor teacher?

(PS: I saw some disparaging remarks elsewhere on the internet regarding the book’s title, Zikh Rasna, and while my Etruscan is beyond rusty, I think it should be translated not ‘Etruscan Writings’ (or according to the other commenter, ‘Etruria Text’) but rather ‘The Etruscan People Write.’ Anyone with a better familiarity or access to the book?)

This, from Wolfgang David Cirilo de Melo’s review of Michiel Arnoud Cor de Vaan’s Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages, is the best and most insightful comment I’ve read in the BMCR in quite some time:

Pater is said to go back to a nursery form *pa, phonologically *pH2. Much as I like the laryngeal theory in its modern form, a phonological representation of babies’ first babbling seems slightly over the top. Exactly the same could be said about atta “daddy” < *H2et-o-.

I told that to my wife and her friend this afternoon as though it were a knock-knock joke, but they didn’t find it as funny as I did.

I picked up an idea mentioned by one participant at the recent Latin workshop at Dickinson college, namely the use of dice to drill forms.

With this page, titled ALEAE IACTAE ESTOTE!, students cut out one die for person and number (1st Sg. through 3rd Pl.) and one die for each tense (Pres., Imp., Fut, Pf. Plupf., & Fut. Pf.).

My students have been finding it alternately fun and challenging to produce these forms, but the real value is that students who have struggled with learning verb endings and the principal parts of verbs are now finding that it all makes sense.

As a corollary I’ve also given them an adapted list of the top 50 verbs according to Oerberg’s support materials, as well this nice, color-coded sheet on using principal parts.

I hope others have as much success with them as I have.

Christopher Francese, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Dickinson yesterday (“Active Latin in the Classroom: Strategies for Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Students” with Milena Minkova and Terence Tunberg), has an excellent series of podcasts on Latin poetry, and I don’t know why I haven’t seen these until now.

Listening to Oedipus’ Self-Blinding, there was a sort of grotesque pleasure in reading the Latin as he gave his translation. But he also includes some notes on meter, and finally reads in Latin.

This is a marked improvement to Arms and the Man, which included just a Latin reading. Thankfully this was improved upon in Quintilian on Pauses in Aeneid 1.1-8, which is exactly what I’ve been looking for in a podcast from a classicist.

So we can add Franchese’s Latin Poetry Podcast to our feed readers alongside the always interesting Classics in Discussion from Warwick.

Here’s hoping that more follow these exempla virtutis.

I see that a new introductory Greek textbook has been reviewed in the BMCR, and the reviewer makes comparisons to Athenaze. But how does it compare with Luschnig? I only ask because I want to see my name in print for a while yet.

One thing I’d wanted for a long time to help prepare my students to read authentic Latin was a good outline map of Rome that would give them a pedagogically useful way of thinking about the regions of ancient Italy.

It’s been a while since I drew map, but if I recall I based most of it on the full-color map found in Shepherd’s Historical Atlas.

And here’s a PDF of the Regions of Ancient Italy, which can be printed off for your students.

Of course it would be wrong-headed to think about these regions as anything like modern states, and any detailed study of a particular period would necessarily vary from what I’m presenting here, but I think the following is useful, and my students seem to have learned a bit about the regions. We’ll see how well it helps them as we move forward, and can think about various places mentioned in texts as falling within a much more quantifiable map.

When I teach the map I have students first pay attention to some major groups, namely Galli, Etrusci, Latini, Sabelli, et Graeci. Then I talk Roman expansion, have them mark the major areas, and fill-in the gaps.

And here’s your answer key:

Just saw this on the Classics-L list: Claude Levi-Strauss has died. He lived to be 100. Here is a link to an obituary. The opening:

L’ethnologue et anthropologue Claude Lévi-Strauss est mort dans la nuit du samedi 31 octobre au dimanche 1er novembre à l’âge de 100 ans, selon le service de presse de l’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) contacté par Le Monde.fr. Plon, la maison d’édition de l’auteur de Tristes Tropiques, a également confirmé l’information diffusée par Le Parisien.fr en fin d’après-midi. Claude Lévi-Strauss, qui a renouvelé l’étude des phénomènes sociaux et culturels, notamment celle des mythes, aurait eu 101 ans le 28 novembre.