<p>^^another point in favor of "seize" being the wrong word for "carpe" is its original context. As I recall, Horace is advising a woman (whose name I can't remember) to forget about her obsession with soothsayers and fortelling the future and live in the here and now. The modern context is usually a vigorous "live life to the fullest" or "go for the gusto"-type meaning. But that was not quite Horace's point. He was saying live your life now and don't worry about tomorrow.</p>
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<p>There are, as one would guess, whole books about the pronunciation of ancient Latin and of ancient Greek. I don't recall what opinion was expressed by the learned author of </p>
<p>on the pronunciation of the letter 'v,' but I do recall he amassed an amazing amount of evidence from surviving classical literature for each opinion he expressed.</p>
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<p>I began learning Latin at the same time as I began learning English, in the French equivalent of 6th grade and continued through 11th grade. I added ancient Greek in 8th grade. That was the normal path for classics track in pre-1968 lyc</p>
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<p>All I can say is, ooooooo marite, I was born in the wrong country. I am so jealous. Your education sounds perfect. What were we doing with our spare hours?</p>
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<p>well, we did not have to worry about ECs!</p>
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<p>Still, I would love to have all that knowledge of language and literatures. My favorite course freshman year of college was an upper level French course (what give me the nerve?) in which we read classic French texts, including Racine, and learned the French method of explication de texte. (Sorry can't figure on Italics on Mac.) </p>
<p>Has served me very well.</p>
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<p>Racine's Phedre was probably my favorite among the books I had to read in 12th grade. I just adored it, and wound up essentially reading all of Racine over the course of the next few years. One of my most vivid memories of the beginning of college was lining up with all the other AP French kids to be interviewed by the French Department DUS for permission to skip language courses and register for upper-level literature courses, and at one point seven or eight of us did a group recitation of Phedre's death monologue: " . . . Et ma morte, a mes yeux derobant la clarite / Rend au jour, qu'ils souillaient, toute sa purete." (Sorry for not including the accents.)</p>
<p>Anyway, I thought I had died and gone to Heaven.</p>
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<p>I took Ancient Greek in college, with the idea of becoming an archaeologist. It was disastrous for me, partially because the assumption was that one had already had Latin--I hadn't--and was familiar with an inflected language (I wasn't, having studied only French). The other part of the equation was that I just wasn't prepared to spend as much time in sheer memorization as Greek required.</p>
<p>I would suggest keeping on with Latin if he isn't particularly into languages and has no particular reason to want to be able to read original texts in Greek.</p>
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<p>My daughter took Latin in HS and from the first day, she knew that it was what she wanted to study in college. Once there, she studied Attic Greek as well, and she said it was the hardest thing she ever studied. It took a very long timeto read and to do translations and a very long time to become even semi -proficient. </p>
<p>She majored in both languages at an Ivy. She is in business school now.</p>
<p>I think what helped her in Latin and Greek was her analytical ability and math/ science ability (Bio, Chem Physics APs--all 5s --CalcBC--5 as well) </p>
<p>People look at her funny when she tells them. Don't even ask about what my husband thinks.</p>
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<p>Can I just ask one thing to go back to the OPs question? The boy in question is not a "languages" guy...can it really be that he finds Latin easier than Spanish, or even French?</p>
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<p>Any particular learner might find any particular language "easier" for reasons that are individual to that learner. I find Chinese "easier" than Russian, even though Russian is cognate with English, being an Indo-European language. The boy asked about in the original post, as I recall, has an interest in history. Maybe just choosing his language with that interest in mind may be helpful. Or maybe one teacher clicks with him better than another--I've had a variety of teachers in a variety of languages, and some connected with me better than others. Some people like dead languages that allow one to punt issues of pronunciation, and some people like languages with lots of dialect variation and lots of sounds that don't occur in their native languages.</p>
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<p>My S definitely did. He won many Latin awards on the National level and fared well, but not brilliantly when he added Spanish. Obviously, Latin does not require mastery of a spoken language. Listening exercises are often the most difficult part of language learning for students. I know that when D's teacher had to take an extended leave for health-related reasons, the students in her French class had a very difficult time listening to another speaker. Our district is so small they had the same French teacher from seventh through twelfth grades and could only understand her French, and even that, with difficulty. (She was of Italian descent and D complained that she spoke French with an Italian accent.)</p>
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<p>S did not like Spanish, but did very well in Latin. He was a mathy kid who enjoyed the logical structure of Latin and did not want to be bothered with practicing a correct accent. Also, he did not have to hold conversations in Latin
(I gave up trying to teach him French when he was 4 because I could not stand his heavy American accent :()</p>
<p>Mythmom: S1 had a French teacher who was of Italian descent and also spoke with an accent. I wonder if that is common? I discovered her command of feminine and masculine was shaky. Unfortunately, it was too late by the time I realized it.</p>
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<p>Oh, marite. It's such a shame. I was taught French by a war bride, or so she called herself, who was a Parisian. She spoke so beautifully that I adored French and have proudly spoken on my three trips to Paris and was never once taken for an American! Guess what! They think I'm Italian or Portuguese. Not my accent, which has been complimented, my dark, dark hair. (Haha, not anymore. Fashionably a bit lighter and highlighted.)</p>
<p>My only complaint with French, which I adore, is that everyone speaks so fast. Sigh. I will never be fluent. I actually can completely understand Italian movies after briefly studying for PhD, but French, which I have prostrated myself to forever, eludes me in movies. I can catch some of it, but not all. Sigh.</p>
<p>JHS: You strike me as a very romantic lot. I would have been in love.</p>
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