| Show TEACHING OF elementary LATIN the mastery of a foreign language is never easy whether the natural or the analytic method of study is used there is is entailed a vast deal of work on the teacher and much careful study on the pupil this is especially especial iv the case with a dead language because here tor for two reasons the natural method generally considered the easier lor for the pupil though perhaps not so efficient as the analytic a na is out of the question but few teachers tea cheri are themselves fluent speakers of the language its vocabulary and grammatical structure do not adapt it for everyday conversations such as interest and amuse the students of a living language hence the grammatical method must be made the basis of the work this is necessarily the case W with th the latin the most generally studied of all the dead languages the latin is ip a language of inflections everything in it dep depends i enas upon these the meaning of a sentence may bein be intensified fied by the position of its words it must be determined entirely by hair form for example the simple sentence the boy loves his sister way may be eo expressed with equal correct correctness niss in in any of the following forms t phe so Yore mem or ok since is always in the nominative and ardowin the accusative the meaning of the cannot be thi mistaken staken and ana a I 1 decided addan advantage t age i is trained gained by placing words in that p aart art of the e sentence sen tente where hey will receive their E proper emphasis it ft will be observed vod fro from M ifil th that ems essential 1 I rules of grammatical structure must Q he be understood before even the simplest sentence can be thoroughly mastered this fact naturally leads to the following general method of teaching the language a method to which in ih the abstract all teachers must conform first the laws ot of grammatical forni form and structure are given including declension conjugation syntax etc secondly idly these laws are illustrated by numerous latin sentences which must be turned loto into english Ittig lish thirdly english sentences are translated into latin and lastly to fix more thoroughly his knowledge of the language the student is required to c compose P 0 s e L latin sentences of his orvn own the T effar first fir st third hird t and fourth processes will so far a as S now appears be practically the same with all teachers but the second is most important because the student is preparing to read latin much more than to write it ahr in this pio process cess many teachers have been led into a wooden unnatural way of conducting latin translations a method which gives no room for enthusiasm and interest but depends entirely upon dogged deterra macion and plodding work walle these we re expressly essential esdert thil in the study of law LA it be 1 admitted that they are aate assisted by bor ii a properly excited interest in the method referred to the sentences are generally subjected to a word by word an analysis alsis first find your subject then its modifiers the predicate its modifiers the object if there is ore one its modifiers then put these together in the english this is nothing but vivisection the sentence dies under the operation in every instance the life which properly belongs to every language for even dead languages have life in living mouths cannot possibly survive the ordeal and long before the pupil has determined the relations of word to word he has a corpse on his hands which has become more or less loathsome to him its loathsomeness being usually proportionate to the difficulty of translation besides the habit thus formed grows with the progress of the student and becomes a necessary element ot of his study of the language he finds no opportunity to break himself of the custom ot of tedious translation he must necessarily read a sentence through then go over it again and again endeavoring to fit its various parts together to guess at their meaning and vainly to infuse life into it if however the proper method metho dof of study is followed from the first there is no reason why the student should not become able to understand a latin sentence oi of complexity proportionate to his advancement with one reading the method referred to is thus briefly explained and illustrated its central idea is the mastery ot of all the possible meanings meaning of each word as it is read or heard with the assurance that every succeeding word will throw light upon u on its predecessors until the deanin meaning 1 of of all is determined by the last word 01 of the sentence to illustrate take the simple sentence nomen et ima kinem amid amici semper in menotia ha omen may be nominative accusative or light is thrown on it by its connection by et with the accusative noun maginel magi nem this connection shows shoves the student that both words are accusatives the objects of a transitive verb to follow amid from its ending may be genitive singular or nominative or vocative plural the thelast last of these grammatical relations is barred froth the fact that the word is not set 0 off from the rest of the sentence by commas but a choice must not be made as yet between tho the otner two hence while name and image are objective attics amid may mean of a friend or friends friend s nominative semper to means eans fal always ways in memoria can have but one meaning in memory there is but one word amid amici concerning whose meaning the hearer or reader is in doubt the last word hababa ha dispels this doubt being singular in number it cannot have amid amici tor for its subject the two decisions are at once formed when the verb is reached that amid amici is the genitive singular of his friend and that contains its own subject and means he held by this process which is much more easily performed than described the full meaning of the sentence he held in memory the name and image of his friend has been grasped woman ed in one reading as quickly as the roman would have seized it contrast this with the other method first find your subject nomen and amid amici are both tried and after a time found wanting then we fall back on the hi he of odthe the verb hab ha ebal the modifiers of the verb as next found semper and in memoria these are translated tren we go back to nomen and imagined em and tack them on the verb as ob objects mag j t lastly the awkward lifeless structure is is completed by the addition of the genitive a amid qualifying nomen and imagined the sentence has first teen reen read then hunted over three or four times and finally hammered together on the english plan of construction when one reading in te more expressive latin order should have served the purpose no matter how complicated the sentence this plan of reading can be followed true willbe it will be slow and conscious at first but with increase of practice the process of assimilation will become measurably natural and easy there is no reason in in fact why the reading of latin should not become quite as agreeable and easy as the reading of any of the liv living VILLARD languages WILLARD DONIE DONE |
