wellinghall | (no subject)

And I didn't even see the episode! I do, however, read LJ.

It's obvious that I neither watch enough TV nor peruse LJ enough - I have no idea what prompted the poll. I'd like to learn Latin properly, but I never seem to have the time. I actually bought the "Latin via Ovid" course a couple of years ago, but haven't even got throught the first chapter yet.

I've ticked no for the CLC. I've no memory of what we used but Fires of Pompeii didn't jog any recollections so I'm assuming it wasn't CLC.

I did a little 'improve your Latin before starting an MA where It might be needed' course as well as the o-level.

I did it straight after an immersion course on Welsh, with the result that the professors gathered around to listen to me reading Latin, as they couldn't work out how I'd got such a good accent. Unfortunately, they were dissapointed to learn how much of Nennius and Gildas I could actually understand.

I got my Latin O-level by noting that the Unseen Translation was usually one of Pliny's letters, and memorising the lot of them. Also because in our syllabus, in addition to seen and unseen translation, you could either do more of the above, or a literature/culture question, and one of the questions was the atrium of the house of the brothers in Pompeii: I think at that point I had memorised the excavation report and just reproduced it.

I'd like to take the opportunity to recommend The Roman House and Social Identity - S. Hales, 2003 and 'Colour and Light in a Pompeian House: Modern Impressions or Ancient Perceptions' Penelope M. Allison in A Jones and G, MacGregor (eds) Colouring the Past. The Significance of Colour in archaeological Research 195-207. I do wonder if that latter paper has had any influence on Dr Who. Probably not, but it would be nice if it did!

They didn't have the CLC when I learnt Latin. I am, however, teaching my year 10 son out of it. As I have mentioned, I wouldn't like to have to teach it to a whole class or adolescents.

Actually, nostalgia aside, I am deeply ambivalent about the CLC. While I think it in many ways an excellent attempt to revamp the learning of Latin and revive it from the stuffy rote-learning methods of yore, it has (or had - they may well have changed things since my day; I'd like to think so, at least) a major flaw IMO. It does it's job at getting one to to pre-O-level Latin very well and easily, but does not, again IMO, provide a good grounding for then taking Latin beyond O-level. While I am all in favour of the learning of Latin to any level as a goal in itself, it seems unfortunate that the *Cambridge* Latin course seemed not to have the aim of encouraging students to take Latin to A-level or degrees!

I have some books of the CLC, which I picked up thinking they would be useful to brush up my Latin. They weren't particularly helpful, because they didn't cover the grammar fully.

I've just watched the episode, and the Dr Who Confidential. They showed the books! I was like, 'I remember that! Caecilius est in horto and all that!' Hah!

We did most of the books,I just remeber the various colours of them all.. Then when we came to A-level the hard stuff came out..

I gather it's to do with the recent Dr Who...

I did the Oxford Latin Course as opposed to the Cambridge one. Irrelevant I know, but I felt like mentioning it.

In terms of results I said GCSE but I didn't actually take the exam, due to it not being offered. So I might have biased your results a bit.

I learnt with Ecce Romani books. Not that I remembered the name. I remember that Cornelius was the father, Aurelia the mother, Marcus was the son, Sextus was the friend, and Cornelia the daughter, and a quick Google revealed the name of the series.

Ah, yes, that was it!

I am old. We did the "amo amas amat", this is the difference between dative and ablative, here's Virgil, now translate it, method.

We used it in conjunction with Kennedy's Shorter Latin Primer.

Indeed. When I asked Peter's school if he might learn Latin at home and sit the GCSE through the school, they gave me the CLC, plus a book called Essential GCSE Latin, which has all the grammar in it. Why they put it in an extra book I don't know but it is no doubt very profitable for the educational book publishers.
I learnt Latin initially from a wonderful woman who told us stories she made up herself, but I realise not everyone has such fortune.

Yes. I was laughing a lot at that.

(I read some of the Cambridge Latin Course because my brother did it and the books were around, but I've never studied formally.)

I used the CLC informally when I wanted a rough acquaintance with Latin for my research (enough to limp through easy mediaeval passages with a grammar and dictionary to hand). Since then I've done the OU Introductory Latin course, which ends up somewhere between GCSE and A-level in standard; next year I plan to take the OU Intermediate Latin course, which will take me to a little above A-level.

That's how I was taught too, though I only did a couple of years of Latin. But my school often seemed to be at least 30 years behind the outside world...

So did I. And I'd forgotten until you reminded me!

I passed my 3rd year high school exam in Latin in much the same way as muuranker passed her O level. I now remember (completely literally) only about 3 lines of Latin, probably the first 3 we learnt (one was "Caecilius est in via"). Not even what famous phrases often heard in general conversation mean, because we were busy learning about what Caecilius got up to, I imagine.

What was the dog called in those books? It's on the tip of my tongue.

I haven't had much need to know Latin, however, personally, and can look things up if need be, so never mind eh? Personally I think that learning 3 languages for 2 years with few lessons in each did me no good at all, since I can't remember my year of German either. That would have been useful to remember. Only the French, somewhat, which was begun in Primary school, and studied to GCSE.

Nb. I am not knocking classics one bit and think that it's a shame that they are not offered in schools as much now. Just the specificity of my experience ie. the way it was organised in my high school.

Cerberus ;-)

I agree - that is basically the grounds for my ambivalence as expressed in the comment above.