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quarta-feira, 6 de julho de 2011

CONFESSIONS OF A LATIN TEACHER PART II





WILLIAM’S WORDS



Language level: Upper Intermediate
Speaker: Justin Ratcliffe
Standard: British accent

CONFESSIONS OF A LATIN TEACHER By William Sutton

The UK government has ignored demands to offer Latin in all schools. But the ancient world still holds our imaginations, from law and politics through to films like Clash of the Titans and Percy Jackson and he Lighting Thief.

CODGITO ERGO SUM

Politically, Roman laws passed through two houses. The UK copied this arrangement. The US went further, placing the Senate and House of Representative on Capitol Hill. Money stamped with our leaders’ faces is inspired by Roman coins. The Romans gave us public and civil law. Trial by jury and the principle “innocent till proven guilty. Today’s politicians are still influenced by Cicero’s oratory. We take rhetorical devices from the classics simile metaphor metonymy. Although we may prefer films to poetry, we use their literary genres: tragedy and comedy, epic and satire.

Even since Freud psychology has used classical words and concepts. We are aware of our ego, id and superego. We recognize narcissism, mania and the Oedipus complex. Philosophy is built upon Plato and Aristotle, giving us arguments a priori and a posteriori, syllogisms and reductio ad absurdum. Everybody knows Descartes’ phrase. “Cogito ergo sum.”

SCIENCE AND SPORT

Science is full of Latin from geometry’s humble oval to paleontology’s mighty Tyrannosaurus rex in meteorology, we have cumulo-numbus clouds, in physics, the quantum. We named the planets after roman gods. Neighbours Venous and Mars reflect the mythical enlargement of love and war.  The Pluto was dismissed to the underworld, in 2006, his planet was deplaneted’.

In sport, Romans took Greek pursuits and turned them into big business, with stadiums and gambling. Watch today’s racing, horses of Formula One, and you can’t help thinking of chariot racing in the Circus Maximus. The celebrities and hysteria in boxing, wrestling, rugby and football recall Rome’s gladiators.

LATIN ADVOCATES

Oxford classics professors recently urged the British government to give Latin the same status in schools as modern languages. The Department for Education replied: “Latin is an important subject, valuable for learning of modern languages and a useful basis for many disciplines. It is, however not classified in the curriculum as at modern language as pupils cannot interact with native Latin speakers or visit parts of the world where Latin is spoken as a native language.” A diplomatic response!

Even if few British schools teach Latin, nobody denies its influence on modern life. The little of a recent book says it all Vote for Caesar: How the Ancient Greeks and Romans Solved the Problems of Today. Next month we’ll investigate whether that’s really true. but there’s no doubt classical culture is  with us every day. Whatever the Education Secretary says. QED (Quod Erat Demostrandum). And, to prove our point, here are some Latin words and expressions used in everyday English.

LATIN WORDS

Virus
Antenna
Doctor
Facsimile
Via
Modus operandi
Per diem
Sine qua non
RIP (Resquiescat in Pace)
QED (Quod Erat)
Demonstrandum
Vice-versa
Alter ego
Alumnus
Alma mater
Post mortem
Bona fide
Tedium
Museum
Simulacrum
Agenda
De facto
Ex cathedra
Status quo
Quid pro quo
Sic
Ad hoc 

sábado, 8 de janeiro de 2011

Go

Source: Speak Up
Standard: British and American accent
Language level: Basic


Go words!

GO! GO! GO!

The English Language loves to take a simple Word and give it multiple meanings. Take go, for example, which doesn’t only mean to leave or travel from  A to B.

We meet a man in the street who complains his car won’t go! That means he can’t start the engine. The man is very angry; in fact, he goes bananas, that is, he becomes crazy. That’s just the beginning: a bomb goes off, or explodes, and yet fires go out, or stop burning. Food goes off, too, but that means it’s rotten. A young man can ask a girl to go out with him (be his girlfriend). They then go steady (have a long term relationship). Unfortunately, things go wrong. The girl goes off with another man (leaves him). So the boyfriend goes to pieces (has a mental breakdown). Yet life goes on (continues), even though it’s touch and go (an uncertain situation) for a while.

BURN, BABY, BURN!

Burn is another example: you burn wood or coal on a fire. The fire burns out when there’s no more wood or coal. Life is very stressful today and many people suffer from burnout: they are so exhausted, they don’t have the energy to go on.

Record companies are also stressed out: they’re losing money because so many people are illegally downloading music from the internet and burning their own CDs.

Finally, a piece of advice: if you are thinking of making big changes in your life, don’t burn your bridges – that is, don’t eliminate the possibility of a return.