Linguistics
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The Flow
It’s not difficult to argue that the biggest initial hurdle that native speakers of English have to overcome when learning Latin or Greek is the case system. In my experience, the most common problem-areas are: (1) English, of course, does not (99.999% of the time) use case, so the concept is entirely unfamiliar; (2) formal…
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Pronunciation
Teaching Pronunciation It is important that we teach our students the “correct” classical pronunciation of Greek and Latin. I say “correct” because the way we learn to pronounce Greek and Latin isn’t in fact correct (e.g. we don’t nasalize Latin con- or -am/-um/-em; native English speakers normally can’t distinguish between aspirated and un-aspirated voiceless dental…
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Macrons
Why Macrons Matter There are some obvious places where macrons matter, e.g. the ablative singular of the 1st declension (Rōma versus Rōmā), infinitives in –ere versus –ēre, the future perfect –eris versus the perfect subjunctive –erīs, and so forth. Sometimes they help distinguish similar looking words, like peritus versus perītus, os versus ōs, and cecidī…
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Correct Mistakes
A “correct mistake” is an error that occurs when predicting morphology, correctly using the rules of that language, yet producing a form that happens not to be the preferred form in the target dialect—or the textbook used. For instance, forms of κακώτερος appear six time in Homer, though according to your textbook this is not…
Classics Teaching 