Tag: Exercitia Latinitas viva slack

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Exercitium Grammaticum Alterum

[Exerciti Responsum; notae]

 

NOTA BENE: The text below is an English translation of an actual letter. Any attempt to find the original violates the honor code, tempting though it may be! 

[To the writer’s wife]

You write that you are affected not moderately by my absence and you have one consolation when you don’t have me: that is,  that you hold my books and frequently even place them in my impression beside you.  I am happy to know that you miss me and happy too that you can erase the pain with this sort of medication.  I for my part read and reread your letters and return to them again and again as if they had just arrived. But this only fans the flames of my longing for you: if there is such pleasure in reading what you write, think what joy it is to talk with you! Do write as often as you can, even though it will torture me as much as it delights me. Farewell.

 

Feeling: use adficio, adficere, adfeci, adfectum

“when you don’t have me” = pro me

place: collocare

impression: vestigium

miss: requiro, requirere

ease the pain: adquiescere

medicine: fomentum

read and reread: use the frequentative lectitare (i.e.you don’t need to repeat it)

again and again: identidem

i.e. as if (quasi) new

‘fan the flames’ accendere (look it up, and you don’t need flames)

pleasure…joy: suavitas, -tatis (f)…dulcedo, -inis (f)

even though: licet + subjunctive

as much as: ita….ut…

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Personal Qualities

I started working on the list that Davidson gives for its peer review page. My best advice is to look carefully at the letters we read this term. Some of the qualities valued on the peer review page don’t translate easily or well. They will be almost always better expressed by verbal phrasing than just a list of nouns and adjectives.

Character and Personality
The following ratings will be used to compare this student with other very capable students.  Please make them as realistic as you can in comparison with outstanding students applying to other leading institutions.

Leadership: I think this is getting at the respect accrued to someone because they seem to know what they are doing–not really just someone who pushes to the front to take charge, but someone whom others don’t mind taking charge. 

  • consilium capere posse Latinitium
  • gratia: favor one finds with others (a word that is important and has a lot of senses)

Self-confidence: “a feeling of trust in one’s abilities, qualities, and judgment”; syn:  morale, confidence, self-assurance, assurance, assertiveness, self-reliance, self-possession, composure.

  • to have c., fīdo, confīdo, fīsus sum, 3 intransitive
  • fiducia sui, self-confidence, boldness, courage PHI
  • bonum animum habere (courage)
  • praesenti animo uti –to possess presence of mind. 

Independence: not depending on another; capable of thinking and acting for oneself; 

  • legally: sui iuris esse; liber, libera, liberum 
  • personally:  suo consilio uti;  suo iudicio uti– to go one’s own way, proceed independently
  • suo more vivere (this seems not really a compliment)

Character and Integrity

  • note: integritas, integritatisdoes not mean “integrity” in our sense but rather wholeness “the undiminished or unimpaired condition of a thing.” I think integrity here means “honesty, respectablity” 
  • honestus, a,um : respectable 
  • opinionem virtutis habere – to have the reputation of virtue.
  • mores
  • poetic: integer vitae scelerisque purus (Horace)

Reaction to criticism: this has to be done with a verb phrase

  • how you take something: ferre + adverb

Concern for others

  • bene merens (merens, merentis) or bene meritus/ merita de + ablative of person 
  • benevolens, benevolentis 
  • consulere
  • cura; curare
  • humanitas; humanus, a, um
  • benignus

Respect accorded by classmates: this one is easy (but don’t use “habere”! use fruor, frui, fructum or utor, uti usum or something –both take ablative)

  • honor
  • dignitas
  • optima fides et fama
  • honestus, a,um: regarded with honor 
  • dignus, a, um (+ablative of respect)
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Tentative Slack Composition Topics

  1. Greetings and valedictions; wishes for health (Week 1-2)
  2. Paratactic sentences: tenses; indicative except for set phrases (cura ut valeas) (Week 3)
    a. Activities
    b. Health
  3. Relative clauses (Week 4)
  4. Paraphrase a proverb: (Week 5)
    a. To another student in the class
  5. Subjunctive: final and consecutive clauses (Week 6)
  6. Conditions: all types (Week 7)
  7. Oratio Obliqua: turn simple letter into indirect discourse (Week 8)
  8. Letter to another student
    a. Modeled on Cicero ad Terentiam?
  9. Horace Letter exemplum
    a. Write a very simple letter based on the premise of Horace’s ethical principle
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