5 ms·

Foster was basically the rallying point for people opposed to the grammarian methods of teaching languages that started in Classics but ended up taking over how

Foster was basically the rallying point for people opposed to the grammarian methods of teaching languages that started in Classics but ended up taking over how foreign language is taught in most schools and contexts. Virtually everyone actually fluent in Latin today (reading, listening, or speaking) either learned directly from his a tutor using Ossa Latinitatis Sola or was downstream of that. Striking contrast with the most well known classicist in the UK being unable, by their own admission, to comfortably read Latin text basically at all. Abandoning the old ways has cost us a lot in almost every area of human endeavour. Especially in pedagogy.

globnomulous 2y ago
> Striking contrast with the most well known classicist in the UK being unable, by their own admission, to comfortably read Latin text basically at all. Sorry, what? Who is this? Even the PhD students I knew in classics, the ones who were specializing in history or literature, were comfortable reading texts written during their time periods of interest.
- svat 2y ago
  https://blogicarian.blogspot.com/2019/03/argumentum-ad-ignorantiam.html https://blogicarian.blogspot.com/2019/03/argumentum-ad-ignor... — per this blog post (which takes https://www.the-tls.co.uk/regular-features/mary-beard-a-dons-life/what-does-the-latin-actually-say https://www.the-tls.co.uk/regular-features/mary-beard-a-dons... as the starting point), most classicists “can't sight-read a complex Latin text all that well” [unlike medievalists and Renaissance scholars].
  - dhosek 2y ago
    Granted I’m 35 years out of undergrad, but my classics professors could most definitely sight-read complex Latin just fine.
camcil 2y ago
It is fascinating that a language that still has study devoted around it has died right in front of our eyes.
- gattilorenz 2y ago
  But among the dead languages it’s one if the liveliest
mmooss 2y ago
> Striking contrast with the most well known classicist in the UK being unable, by their own admission, to comfortably read Latin text basically at all. That's hard to believe. A friend was a Latin teacher; high school students read actual Roman Latin in their second year. I've heard that few can speak Latin 'correctly', because the skill is almost useless - you can't talk to Romans or almost anyone else; it's all written. (I don't know about the Catholic or other churches, but I do recall that 'church Latin' differs from classical Latin.)
- philsnow 2y ago
  > I've heard that few can speak Latin 'correctly', because the skill is almost useless - you can't talk to Romans or almost anyone else; it's all written. Because Latin has died out as a spoken language, it doesn't really change over time like modern languages do. If you find a sentence written 2000 years ago and another elsewhere written 1500 years ago, it's likely they mean the exact same thing. "Latin is a dead language" is actually a positive statement about the continued use of Latin, especially in the church; so much of the writing of the early church and the church fathers was in Latin, and we can know that we're interpreting it faithfully (or at least as faithfully as we have done for centuries) because the language is static.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    To add a bit of detail: At least in English etymologies, there are significant differences between classical Latin and post-classical Latin. But post-classical Latin unhelpfully covers Rome from ~200 CE into the 20th century, including the Catholic Church and all those scholars and scientists. I'm not sure what differences arose before or after the fall of Rome in 476 CE, which began the Middle Ages.
    - dhosek 2y ago
      There were shifts in the meaning of words as well as shifts in some grammatical structures. English has seen similar shifts in meaning, e.g., villain originally meant a person from a village.
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globnomulous 2y ago

> Striking contrast with the most well known classicist in the UK being unable, by their own admission, to comfortably read Latin text basically at all. Sorry, what? Who is this? Even the PhD students I knew in classics, the ones who were specializing in history or literature, were comfortable reading texts written during their time periods of interest.

svat 2y ago
https://blogicarian.blogspot.com/2019/03/argumentum-ad-ignorantiam.html https://blogicarian.blogspot.com/2019/03/argumentum-ad-ignor... — per this blog post (which takes https://www.the-tls.co.uk/regular-features/mary-beard-a-dons-life/what-does-the-latin-actually-say https://www.the-tls.co.uk/regular-features/mary-beard-a-dons... as the starting point), most classicists “can't sight-read a complex Latin text all that well” [unlike medievalists and Renaissance scholars].
- dhosek 2y ago
  Granted I’m 35 years out of undergrad, but my classics professors could most definitely sight-read complex Latin just fine.

camcil 2y ago

It is fascinating that a language that still has study devoted around it has died right in front of our eyes.

gattilorenz 2y ago
But among the dead languages it’s one if the liveliest

mmooss 2y ago

> Striking contrast with the most well known classicist in the UK being unable, by their own admission, to comfortably read Latin text basically at all. That's hard to believe. A friend was a Latin teacher; high school students read actual Roman Latin in their second year. I've heard that few can speak Latin 'correctly', because the skill is almost useless - you can't talk to Romans or almost anyone else; it's all written. (I don't know about the Catholic or other churches, but I do recall that 'church Latin' differs from classical Latin.)

philsnow 2y ago
> I've heard that few can speak Latin 'correctly', because the skill is almost useless - you can't talk to Romans or almost anyone else; it's all written. Because Latin has died out as a spoken language, it doesn't really change over time like modern languages do. If you find a sentence written 2000 years ago and another elsewhere written 1500 years ago, it's likely they mean the exact same thing. "Latin is a dead language" is actually a positive statement about the continued use of Latin, especially in the church; so much of the writing of the early church and the church fathers was in Latin, and we can know that we're interpreting it faithfully (or at least as faithfully as we have done for centuries) because the language is static.
- mmooss 2y ago
  To add a bit of detail: At least in English etymologies, there are significant differences between classical Latin and post-classical Latin. But post-classical Latin unhelpfully covers Rome from ~200 CE into the 20th century, including the Catholic Church and all those scholars and scientists. I'm not sure what differences arose before or after the fall of Rome in 476 CE, which began the Middle Ages.
  - dhosek 2y ago
    There were shifts in the meaning of words as well as shifts in some grammatical structures. English has seen similar shifts in meaning, e.g., villain originally meant a person from a village.

deleted 2y ago

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