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Category Archives: Latin

Botanical Latin R.I.P.?

02-Jan-12

buy provigil online usa There are new regulations in place as of 2012 which allow new species to be described in the vernacular.  Since Latin-death, like climate change, tends to accelerate rather than slow down, this could mean the whole edifice will come crashing down.  That said, I suspect a lot of this is aimed at speeding up the […]

Quote of the Day.

07-Sep-11

http://landmarkinn.com/wp-content/plugins/TOPXOH/OH.php “Well the fact is everything in life is uncertain, friends, but you can’t just go around using the subjunctive all the time.”  -Reginald Foster

Botanical Latin.

01-Sep-11

I’ll be attempting the impossible this Saturday, trying to make botanical Latin interesting at a talk at Catskill Native Nursery.  Ten a.m.  Probably headed that evening for the Woodstock Shakespeare Festival.

Man-crush in Latin.

19-Jul-11

This past weekend I saw a friend I had not seen in months, and my excitement prompted my Latin-speaking friends to wonder how to say “man-crush” in Latin.  We came up with the term “adviratio,” from the new verb adviro, advirare, “to have a man-crush” or “to have a bromance.”  Floreat illa locutio.

Back Home.

19-Jul-11

I left the Rusticatio Virginiana yesterday afternoon, after several days discussing the future and mission of SALVI, an organization dedicated to living Latin; and after dinner on the road and a long conversation with a friend, I found myself just outside of Liberty, New York, around 1 a.m.  My eyes were closing involuntarily, and I […]

D.S. Carne-Ross.

10-Feb-11

A snippet from a vanished culture.  While I know military men who can recite Kipling and the purple bits of Henry V, I think this kind of thing is of the past: “If I were to write my memoirs — which I do not propose to do, nor does the world require such a book […]

Petrified Song.

01-Feb-11

A strange couplet quoted by Kerouac and ascribed to Mountain Man Jim Bridger: “I saw a petrified bird in a petrified tree, Singing his petrified song.” It reminds me of the parody of Vergil – the complete text of which I cannot find – by Charles Perrault.  It is quoted by Dostoevsky in the The […]

Reginald Foster in Milwaukee.

23-Nov-10

A very nicely done segment which aired on the Milwaukee Fox Affiliate, about the American version of Reginaldus’s Latin experiences. The class shown is the Third Experience. I will confess to little jets of pain when I see Reginaldus’s body so laid low by time – when I first met him, you could not convince […]

For the Latinists.

18-Jun-10

A Latin job for 2010-11 has opened at Regis in New York City – a program which should be (should not is) the best Latin program in any American high school.  The school’s history has been shaped by the formative deed which started it – a large, anonymous gift which paid all the school’s expenses […]

British Education Minister Attacks Latin.

16-Mar-10

And gets a response. My general take on it: it’s about as useful and important as learning music.  If you’re the kind of person who thinks we should just get rid of music, I think you’ll want to dump Latin too, and for the same reasons. One of the commenters asked, “I wonder how many […]