Latin Class
Hey ... don't fall asleep yet! Maybe the name isn't so catchy ... but wait until I tell you a little story about my Foreign Latin teacher Quinto (please excuse me for misspelling your last name) Vargieu(?) Pronounced VAR-joo, anyway. I was a year behind in my foreign languages. No ... I didn't stay behind a year in school, I just opted out of foreign languages in my freshman year. When my sophmore year came around, I discovered the errors of my ways and instead of taking French or Spanish ... my grandmother spoke fluent French so that didn't seem exotic enough to me and back when I went to school, Spanish didn't seem to be a worthy enough option for reasons unspecified ... silly me ...I opted instead for the mother of all languages ... Latin. Some of that is French and Spanish. Brilliant! Okay ... not really. As the only sophmore in a freshman class, I was looked up to in a way by my peers almost regally. Too bad I was also the class clown in all of my other classes that I attended with my fellow sophmorites who were well educated in my wily ways of class disruption.
Quinto was a one year wonder who came all the way from Sicily just to attempt to teach me Latin. Well ... not really, but he did come from Sicily and had a thick, European accent. He was a small framed man who had married a woman from the United States and they had decided for reasons unknown to both teach in their fields at our high school in my home town for that season. Whether I ever knew the reason why, I cannot remember. In spite of my classroom antics, I respected Quinto and he knew this and we became fast friends.
I remember a day that Quinto had taken the class into a closed room environment ... you see, we were in the new high school which was experimenting with new wave open concept classrooms ... however, this was particularly difficult if the teacher wanted to show the class educational movies or the likes. In that event, there were a few classrooms in the school that offered doors that could be closed with light switches that could be turned off so the class could watch the old scratchy 8 mm films that always seemed to have that same boring narrator that knew just how to put kids to sleep. Happily on this event, Quinto had made some slides of his home in Sicily which after a few months stateside seemed a little more than eager to return to. A simple slide show instead of Latin translations was a nice change of pace for us so nobody protested. On one of his first few slides, he proudly showed us his beautiful Sicilian house in all its European splendor and architecture. Very impressive even to us American kids. For some reason, I stood up and walked to the screen that Quinto had set up prior to the slideshow which was now displaying the picture of his house and front yard.
"Jo," as he always called me and even that seemed to carry a thick accent. "What are you doin' Jo?"
Instintively peering behind the slide screen I simply answered, "Just checking out your back yard, Quinto." Of course, the class erupted in laughter and Quinto failed immediately to see the humor of the situation. He smiled, nonetheless, rolled his eyes, and after the class had settled back down he said, "Come sit down, Jo!"
Fun times, yes. But nothing was ever so funny when in one class back in our open concept classroom, where we were vulnerable for other nearby classes to peek in on us ... when a language barrier that Quinto suffered from was about to expose itself full front. Don't get me wrong. Quinto spoke very good English although heavily accented as already stated. However, as most foreigners are, he lacked the savvy of our slang. And the lord knows us Americans have plenty of slang we like to sling around.
Now if anyone has ever taken Latin and please forgive me if the would-be reader has and I mutilate the description of process of translation ... it's been way too many years without practice ... but there are ways that Latin conjugated verbs by attaching roots to the same prefix and place the same in first, second, and third, thus giving the word a whole new tense or gender or whatever. Let me give you an example.
Latin; English
Video= I see
Vides= You see
Videt= He/she/it sees
These are set up in singular person and I'll explain that in a second. Then in plural you have ...
Videmus= We see
Videtis= You see (in the plural sense)
Vident= They see
In summary;
singular=
1st person -o = I
2nd person -s = you (singular)
3rd person -t = he, she, it
plural=
1st person -mus = we
2nd person -tis = you (plural)
3rd person -nt = they
This same formula is applies to any verb and ends with the root applied with intent for tense or gender in singular or plural form. Hey ... wake up! I'm not done here!
Now there were also masculine and feminine applications to apply to verbs to tell if the person conducting the action was a guy or a girl, but I'll spare you the details ... since for the most part, I found Latin to be abhorrently boring and really didn't excel too well in class. So even though I can't remember what the hell it means, I remember that bo (prounounced phonetically) bis (beese) bit (beet) bimus (beemoose) bitis (beeteese) bunt (boont) written on the chalkboard in Quinto's European scribble all the time. The art of translating Latin is to apply this rule over and over again to verbs and nouns to see what in the name of hades the translation is trying to tell you. As admitted, I was terrible at Latin. I found it utterly boring and could not maintain my short spanned focus on such dreadful things that seemingly would carry absolutely no impact in my development as a human being.
So for one second, sit with me ... back in my classroom ... back in whatever ... 1978-1979, I guess. Envision these root suffixes perpetually slated on the green colored chalk board
Bo
Bis
Bit
Bimus
Bitis
Bunt
Now practice what I helped you make them sound like in parenthesis up above and instill that in your mind. Never mind the fact that I'm wearing boot flare corduroys with a plaid flannel shirt and white Puma sneakers that probably doesn't match for a bowl worth of beans. Come to my classroom!
Quinto had a new lesson for us. Again, I do not remember that actual meaning of the prefix, so bear with me. He translates and applies the age old, day one lesson of translation with co instead of bo. And he begins to write this on the chalk board in a top to bottom format like I did up above. Now ... jump to the word Bunt and imagine what he is about to write on the chalk board with a "co" prefix. Of course ... it's pronounced (koont) but by the Latin gods, it ain't spelled that way. I leaped up from my chair immediately after he wrote Citis and was starting to write the last word on the board for his classroom.
"Quinto!" I screamed while scrubbing the start of the word from the chalk board with the sleeve of my plaid flannel shirt. "You can't write that!"
"Jo," he looked at me astonished and of course ... imagine everyone in the class almost peeing their pants. "What are you doin' Jo? Why cannot I write this word?"
I looked at the classroom from Quinto's perspective and everyone started laughing harder. I smiled at them. "You just can't, Quinto. I'll tell you later! I promise."
"What is this (koont) Jo? Tell me," he begged.
"Don't worry buddy," I promised, "I will. I will."
And I did and he seemed to understand, but perhaps it was still something about us Americans that seemed to irk Quinto. He went back to Sicily the following year. I took Latin II and failed the class miserably. But that's because we had an American teacher who could only show us how truly boring Latin translations can really be when you do not get the entertainment of a slight language barrier between foreigners and American slang. After all ... for the entire year, I never once saw the Latin II teacher translate co on the chalk board.
Jody L. Campbell
6-20-07
Posted at: 06:15 AM | Add Comment
