A Greek's Journey in Beginning Latin

Eleni Manolaraki (University of South Florida)

In this paper I discuss how I utilize my national background as a Modern Greek to abet my teaching methods in beginning Latin. The basic philosophy behind ‘playing’ the foreigner while being the foreigner is simple: I instill in the students the idea that their journey in Latin is parallel to my journey in English as a foreign language. This is both a sincere confession and a pedagogical ‘game’ of sorts. By exposing my own linguistic vulnerability, I indirectly declare myself sympathetic to the troubles of language acquisition.

My paper offers three specific examples of how the triangulating of Latin, English and Modern Greek promotes my teaching purposes. First, in the teaching of principal parts of verbs I regale the students with the mnemonics that I too used to memorize long lists of principal parts in English: eat-ate-have eaten, drive-drove-have driven, lose-lost-have lost, etc. Second, I insist on the ‘open’ or ‘Mediterranean’ pronunciation of vowels such as –I- (/ι/) and –E- (/ε/) by asking students to pronounce correctly my own name, common Italian words (macaron-I, p-E-sto), or even Spanish words that they are very familiar with, due to the specific location of our institution. Pronouncing these vowels ‘Mediterranean style’ helps students remember similar morphological forms such as Dat. Hosti and Abl. Hoste. Third, in supplementing the ‘Roman civilization’ section of our textbook Oxford Classical Latin, I ask them to think with historical and global perspective. Horatia’s arranged marriage to Decimus (OCL chapter 30) seems no more primitive or strange when compared to common marriages in modern Greece or the arranged marriages between Indian families in America today.