Latin Roll Call

Earlier today my colleague emailed me with a sighting of Latin in a new animated film of the stop-action variety called "Fantastic Mr. Fox." I know almost nothing about this film, but I decided to look for the Latin Roll Call and found it. Mr. Fox decides to call all the animals hiding out in his home by their binomial nomenclature, their Latin genus and species names. I love these two anglicized Latin words, because knowing the Latin words makes so clear how the two-named system works. The genus (Latin for "kind, sort, race") is the general kind of animal (or plant), and the species (Latin for "appearance") is the specific sort, usually based on its appearance. Among the animals listed in the roll call are the mole (talpa europea), rabbit (oryctolagus cuniculus), weasel (mustela nivalis), beaver (castor fiber), and badger (meles meles). Of course, looking into what each of these Latin words means will take you to many interesting insights into our furry friends. In the meantime just hearing the words is a lot of fun.

Arms and a woman

I read in the 11/2/2009 edition of The Weekly Standard about a letter written to New Criterion magazine by Sarah Ruden, whose translation of the Aeneid I am using in my AP Vergil class this year. So I decided to see if I could locate the letter at the magazine's website, and I was astonished and delighted to learn that the blog of New Criterion is called Arma virumque, arms and the man, the opening words of Vergil's Aeneid, and a clear explanation for the title is given in the sidebar at the link above.

Image of God

I went back to my high school alma mater this weekend for a Board of Trustees meeting. While there I attended a reception in the school’s art gallery where I viewed the delightful sculptures of an alumna I know from the class of ’74. Hoping to send her a message, I picked up her business card and was amused to notice that the words imago Dei "image of God" were part of her email address. I smiled to recognize that she as a sculptor was mindful of the ultimate sculptor of us all, and I also immediately recalled one of my recent favorite songs, heard on a recording by New York State dulcimer player and extraordinary musician/singer Susan Trump. The song is called “Fashioned in the Clay,” written by Elmer Beal. You can read the lyrics and a little about the songwriter here.

Good, Better, Best

My students are usually amused when I recite the following rhyme about a positive-comparative-superlative adjective in English:

Good, better, best

Never let it rest

'Til the good is better

And the better best.

My Latin 2 class is memorizing tonight five irregularly compared adjectives, and I think English derivatives are most helpful in learning the Latin words. But I also like mottoes that contain the irregular forms. The motto of Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut is Monitī meliora sequāmur, a quotation from Book 3 of Vergil's Aeneid, rendered by me literally as having been warned/advised, let us follow better things. You may already know that meliora is the Latin word meaning better things, because we've mentioned the English word ameliorate, to improve, make better, elsewhere. But did you know that meliorate, meliorable, meliorative, and meliorism are also English words? Meliorism, according to my dictionary, is the belief that the world naturally tends to get better--what a happy thought!

TINY PRINT

This past Sunday I was reading through the New York Times Magazine section, and I noticed an ad for Northeastern University, which was graced by a small rendering of the university's seal next to the name at the bottom of the page. Clearly legible on a tiny scroll in the seal were the words LUX VERITAS VIRTUS, and on a ribbon below the scroll, harder to see, were the words FOUNDED A.D. 1898. The Latin word lūx, lūcis f. means light; the Latin word vēritās, vēritātis f. means truth; and the Latin word virtūs, virtūtis f. ranges in meaning from manliness to courage to moral excellence. I had discussed the mottoes of Harvard (VERITAS) and Yale (LUX ET VERITAS) in my classes last week, and I was interested to learn Northeastern's motto and to see the addition of the powerful word virtūs. I also found this article about the evolution of the current seal interesting.

Great Caesar's Ghostly Name

Yesterday when I checked on the progress of SV Concordia's current voyage, I glanced at the map of Spain, and one town name caught my eye, Zaragoza. If you do not know, the name Zaragoza (also spelled in English Saragossa) is derived from the name of Caesar Augustus. Those of you who may be teaching the AP Vergil curriculum right now may also be interested in some of the helpful links found here about the great first Roman emperor.

SEEKING HARMONY

I'm still going through the cache of summer photos, and here is one of SV Concordia, which features the Latin motto CONCORDIAM SECTEMUR, which itself features a frequentative verb form, sector (1) I keep on following, chase, hunt from the more familiar sequor (3) I follow, the source of many English words containing the letters sequen or secut, as in sequence, sequential, consequent, consecutive, executive, and prosecute. The motto can be translated LET US KEEP FOLLOWING HARMONY, CONCORD, FRIENDSHIP; the verb, a deponent, is present subjunctive, hortatory, hence "let us." SV Concordia is the home of West Island College Class Afloat based at Lunenburg Academy in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada. You can read about the current voyage here.