I have been studying Latin for a long time, about 11 years now and there are few things that still get me in Latin. A few things being some of the grammar, passive voice and reading Latin. When studying Latin back in grade school and high school I was not exposed to much of ancient Latin texts. Most of our readings came from a textbook and had only the vocabulary and grammar we had covered thus far. When I started taking Latin college I got to work with more texts written by Roman authors and I was surprised by how challenging some of them could be. In the 2 years that I have been doing Independent Study in Latin I would say the Aesops Fables were some of the hardest texts to translate and read. I think the reason being the random vocabulary that would show up in the stories that were not used in any other writings. This problem is nothing new with students of Latin, if you don’t know your vocabulary then your going to have a hard time reading through a text and gleaning any understanding from it, let alone comprehension of the story as a whole. Another factor with the vocab would be the writing styles, poets have a little more freedom in writing poetry because of meter, words lose some letters or combine with another word. Reading poetry like Aesops, the meanings could change based on spelling and how the words are positioned. Instead of singularly reading line by line and trying to translate that way doesn’t work. Sometimes you would have to read through a few lines to get the whole idea. As a Latin reader I understand the frustrations students could have when reading through a text.
Like me, my students will probably face problems with the vocabulary. To remedy this I would give my students a vocab list pertaining to the text, pointing out special words that are rarely used. I would most likely give them this list in introduction to the unit pertaining to the Latin text, like Virgil’s writings or Ovid’s. I want to make sure my students have an easier time with the readings and are not so blind sided by the texts like I was when I got to college. I hope to prepare my students in their early years of Latin to be able to reach comprehension of large Latin texts in their more advanced years. Possibly even reading modern books that have been translated into Latin.
The other problems that I faced in reading was the style of writing different authors exhibited, especially poetry. I would give my students an introduction to our author but I would also make sure to include some sample phrases that showcase the authors style so they are not confused when reading through the text. There may still be problems but maybe even comparing two authors and their writing against each other could help in pinpointing the different writing styles and how to spot these specific styles.
As a Latin reader I am sure the problems I face will be similar to what my future students will come across, but through these practices I hope to minimize the confusion and frustration that reading Latin can cause.
Ms. Smith 