Latin grammar

“ This is better English than the nearer version, "Living correctly is necessary for me;" and the exact imitation, "Living is to me correctly," is nonsense. Nor does the Latin gerund often govern the genitive like a noun, or ever stand as the direct object of a transitive verb, except in some few doubtful instances about which the grammarians dispute. For, in fact, to explain this species of words, has puzzled the Latin grammarians about as much as the English; though the former do not appear to have fallen into those palpable self-contradictions which embarrass the instructions of the latter. ”

“ It appears to us at least as well adapted to its purposes as any Latin Grammar within our knowledge. In some respects it has merits to be met with in no other. It is free from every species of empiricism, and, following the good old track as far as that track can be judiciously followed, admits of no royal road to the acquisition of Latin. ”

“ To them it seemed that the Latin grammar was an ingenious instrument for stultifying youthful intelligence, destroying intellectual development, and checking political progress. Ingenious speculations about the possible organisation of the working classes and grandiose views of the future of humanity are so much more interesting and agreeable than the rules of Latin syntax and the Greek irregular verbs! ”

“ Very little introductory matter would probably be sufficient to place the rising generation on terms of the most perfect familiarity with a “Comic Latin Grammar.” To the elder and middle-aged portion of the community, however, the very notion of such a work may seem in the highest degree preposterous ”

“ He who understands Latin will not only learn French, and English, and Spanish, and Italian, and Portuguese much more easily, but also much better. I can say of myself that I have in fact studied only the Latin grammar quite thoroughly, but that this knowledge has divested my grammatical studies in modern Latin and Germanic languages of all wearisome difficulty. ”

“ To make matters worse, the Latin grammar is written in Latin. How should we adults like it, if, in the study of Arabic, we had a grammar written in the Arabic first put into our hands?
3. The third evil in the study of language is the practice of compelling children to make impossible leaps instead of carrying them forward step by step. We introduce them from the grammar into Virgil and Cicero. The sublimity of poetic style is beyond the conception of boys, and the subject-matter of Cicero’s epistles not easy for grown men. ”

“ In brief, some of the chief influences upon the writing of Latin in the Middle Ages were: the classical genius dead, leaving only its works for imitation; the school education in Latin grammar and rhetoric; endeavour to follow classic models and write correctly; inability to do so from lack of capacity and knowledge; conscious disregard of classicism; the spirit of the Teutonic tongues clogging Latinity, and that of the Romance tongues deflecting it from classical constructions ”

“ This process of grammatical vivisection may be painful in the eyes of classical scholars, yet even they must see how great a difference there is in the quality of knowledge imparted by our Greek and Latin grammars, and by comparative grammar. I do not deny that at first children must learn Greek and Latin mechanically, but it is not right that they should remain satisfied with mere paradigms and technical terms, without knowing the real nature and origin of so-called infinitives, gerunds, and supines. ”

“ OBS. 7.—In no part of grammar is usage more unsettled and variable than in that which relates to the figure of words. It is a point of which modern writers have taken but very little notice. Lily, and other ancient Latin grammarians, reckoned both species and figure among the grammatical accidents of nearly all the different parts of speech; and accordingly noticed them, in their Etymology, as things worthy to be thus made distinct topics, like numbers, genders, cases, moods, tenses, &c. But the manner of compounding words in Latin, and also in Greek, is always by consolidation. ”

“ If it be meant, that the Latin language is formed in more strict accordance with the general principles of grammar than the English, that is to say, that the relations which words bear to each other are more strictly analogous to the relations between the ideas which they represent in Latin than in English, we venture to doubt the fact. ”

“ The reason of this singular contradiction between the actions of men alike animated by a strong and disinterested desire to promote the welfare of their fellows is easily discovered. At that time, in fact, if any one desired knowledge beyond such as could be obtained by his own observation, or by common conversation, his first necessity was to learn the Latin language, inasmuch as all the higher knowledge of the Western world was contained in works written in that language. Hence Latin grammar, with logic and rhetoric, studied through Latin, were the fundamentals of education. ”

“ The modern languages of this western part of the world answer better to the Latin, than according to their original Gothic plans, on this account; inasmuch as not only great numbers of words are adopted by all of them from the Latin, but also because the reading Latin authors, and learning the Latin grammar, have disposed learned men and writers to mould their own languages in some measure after the Latin. ”

“ Ultimately every strong teacher must develop his own method, and the stronger he is the less he will feel bound to follow the methods recommended by others.
ENGLISH GRAMMAR AND LATIN GRAMMAR
1. As a rule pupils beginning Latin are not well prepared in English grammar. To meet this defect it has been customary to devote some pages to a review of English grammar before the Latin grammar is begun. It has seemed a wiser plan to combine the review of the former with progress in the latter. ”

“ But a change from je suis to tu es is inexplicable by the light of French grammar; it must have been a part of some language antecedent to any of the Romance dialects; it is, in fact, the verb to be in Latin, which solves this difficulty; each of the six paradigms is but a metamorphosis of the Latin. ”

“ It must, however, be confessed, that an acquaintance with ancient and foreign literature is absolutely necessary for him who would become a thorough philologist or an accomplished scholar; and that the Latin language, the source of several of the modern tongues of Europe, being remarkably regular in its inflections and systematic in its construction, is in itself the most complete exemplar of the structure of speech, and the best foundation for the study of grammar in general. ”

“ But the effect of the year’s study of Latin increases the youth’s power of apperception in very many directions by reason of the fact that so much of the English vocabulary used in technical vocabularies, like those of geography, grammar, history, and literature, is from a Latin source, and besides there are so many traces in the form and substance of human learning of the hundreds of years when Latin was the only tongue in which observation and reflection could be expressed. ”

“ A memoir upon the eminent grammarians of Rome? Not at all, but a memoir upon the distinguished literati of Rome. Grammatica does certainly mean sometimes grammar; but it is also the best Latin word for literature. A grammaticus is what the French express by the word litterateur. We unfortunately have no corresponding term in English: a man of letters is our awkward periphrasis in the singular, (too apt, as our jest books remind us, to suggest the postman;) whilst in the plural we resort to the Latin word literati. ”

“ Commonly an ingenious mind may invent some better expression, and yet avoid any syntactical anomaly. In Latin, when nouns are connected by the conjunctions which correspond to or or nor, the pronoun or verb is so often made plural, that no such principle as that of the foregoing Rule, or of Rule 17th, is taught by the common grammars of that language. ”

“ The old argument that "mental gymnastics" are best supplied by Latin is sound to the extent that Latin really does furnish a perpetual series of small problems that have to be solved by the aid of grammar and dictionary, but which do involve real mental effort, since mere mechanical looking out of words does not suffice for their elucidation. But for various reasons, such as the remoteness of the ancient world in time, place, modes of thought, etc., Latin tends to be too hard and not interesting enough for the average boy. ”

“ But let us not (as we often are) be told that it is necessary to study the Latin or the Greek Accidence for the sake of learning grammar in general. The self-deception that in taking up Latin and Greek we are studying a Grammar, instead of beginning a Literature, is too often the excuse for concluding our studies just where they might advantageously begin, and for looking with complacency upon limited acquirements just where limited acquirements are pre-eminently of little use. ”

“ It is not our intention, therefore, to gainsay in the least the good influence which the study of Latin and Greek grammar also exercises on the sharpening of the judgment. In so far as the study of words as such must greatly promote lucidity and accuracy of expression, in so far as Latin and Greek are not yet wholly indispensable to many branches of knowledge, we willingly concede to them a place in our schools, but would demand that the disproportionate amount of time allotted to them, wrongly withdrawn from other useful studies, should be considerably curtailed. ”

“ This use is very common in Plautus and Terence, less common in Cicero and Caesar. It is found not infrequently in Sallust and particularly in Livy; sporadically in the Augustan poets. In late prose it is almost confined to archaistic writing. In classical Latin, purpose is more commonly expressed by the subjunctive with ut or a relative pronoun, or by a gerundive or gerund with ad or causā. ”

“ I think experience will prove, that the labor of acquisition, if not easier, will at any rate be more attractive and remunerative, with the method here proposed, which makes the student assist as it were in the production of his Latin, instead of forcing him to lay up barren lists of words or unproductive rules.
I have in conclusion to add, however, that the course here pointed out does not by any means pretend to be the ultimate goal of the journey to be pursued. No method in the shape of grammar, or manual of any kind, can teach completely any language, ancient or modern. ”

“ The experience of foreign educators in recent years has tended to restrict the size of school-grammars of Latin, and has demanded an incorporation of the main principles of the language in compact manuals of 250 pages. ”

“ But all these foreign elements bear a very small proportion to the element of Latin; and as Latin furnished the greater part of the vocabulary and the grammar, so did it also furnish the principal models and helps to literary composition. The earliest French versification is evidently inherited from that of the Latin hymns of the church, and for a certain time Latin originals were followed in the choice of literary forms. ”

“ Young men intended for the learned professions, after acquiring the Latin on this plan, would find the study of the grammar incomparably easier than on the existing system, and probably make more progress in it, in one year, when its extreme irksomeness would be done away, than on the present system in two or three. ”

“ In this respect I have rendered what I think is found in no other Grammar of the Latin, and am persuaded that this system, without which we can scarcely conceive of a correct pronunciation, will commend itself to the approbation of all competent to judge upon the subject.
As many of the exercises relate to the familiar talk of daily inters course, it has sometimes become necessary to designate objects either entirely unknown to the Ancients, or known under a different form. ”

“ The former is the principle of versification, the latter the indispensable condition of a correct pronunciation and the very soul of living discourse. Of the Parts of Speech. J. The words of the Latin language, arranged according to the signification, may be reduced to nine classes, usually called parts of speech, of which five are inflected, and four invariable. The declinable parts of speech are: Substantives or Nouns, Adjectives, Pronouns, Verbs, and Participles. The indeclinable are: Adverbs, Prepositions, Conjunctions, and Interjections. ”

“ The two first feet may be dactyls, spondees, or both; the two last are always dactyls, as
Rēs ēst īnfēlīx, plēnăquĕ frāudĭs ămōr:
Love is an unlucky affair, and full of humbug.
We feel compelled, notwithstanding what has been before said, to make a few additions to what is contained in the Eton Grammar with respect to verses.
The rhythm of Latin verses may be easily learned by practising (out of school) , exercises on the principle of the examples following—
Dūm dĭdlĕ, dī dūm, dūm dūm, dēedlĕdy, dēēdlĕ dĕ, dūm dum ”

“ Latin Poetry was essentially different in character from English. In our own language, poetry is based upon accent, and poetical form consists essentially in a certain succession of accented and unaccented syllables. Latin poetry, on the other hand, was based not upon accent, but upon quantity, so that with the Romans poetical form consisted in a certain succession of long and short syllables, i.e. ”

“ In these cases the pronunciation herein recommended for the ae is that favored by Roby, Munro, and Ellis, and adopted by the Cambridge Philological Society; for the v, or u consonant, that advocated by Corssen, A. J. Ellis, and Robinson Ellis.
1 THE ROMAN PRONUNCIATION OF LATIN.
PART I.
WHY WE USE IT.
In general, the greater part of our knowledge of the pronunciation of Latin comes from the Latin grammarians, whose authority varies greatly in value; or through incidental statements and expressions of the classic writers themselves; or from monumental inscriptions. ”