dulcia discipulis doctores crustula demus:
Making Latin Palatable

James C. McKeown (University of Wisconsin)

It is often said that learning Latin promotes exact and logical thinking. This view, maintained particularly by teachers of Latin, is based primarily on the rigorous attention to detail needed in reading and writing a language which functions so differently from English: without a precise and consistent regard for inflection we cannot hope to understand Latin properly. A large part of classroom time must inevitably be devoted in the early stages to teaching the morphological variations in Latin verbs, nouns etc., explaining how and why they differ, and applying the rules by constant repetition and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the fundamental importance of an exact mastery of inflection perhaps inhibits many of us from applying in our Latin classes some of the techniques and approaches to early language acquisition which are normal and highly effective in the teaching of modern languages. Students of modern languages are encouraged to read newspapers and watch movies well before their level of formal grammatical instruction allows them to have a complete understanding of what they are reading and hearing. Classical Latin may be a ‘dead’ language, but there is no reason why Latin teachers should not make some modest use of such an approach, challenging students with passages of Latin in which unfamiliar material is not glossed with marginal notes.

This approach has several advantages:

• it boosts a student’s confidence to be able to translate a paragraph of Latin well enough to get the general idea of its content (very few students will be as anxious as their teachers about their exposure to unfamiliar grammar, morphology and vocabulary)
• students learn to read naturally, assessing whole clauses at once, not accounting for each word individually
• vocabulary can be learned in context, by deduction, not in isolation in word-lists
• it is generally acknowledged that students should be exposed to Roman authors as early as possible, but it is extremely difficult to find passages written with the morphology, grammar and vocabulary familiar to students at any particular stage in their studies; sight translation for general comprehension allows real Latin texts to be introduced almost immediately.
• perhaps most importantly, students enjoy learning Latin this way.