Review of The Scottish Classics Group, The Latin Language: A Handbook for Students
Review of The Scottish
Classics Group, The Latin Language: A
Handbook for Students (Oliver and Boyd: Harlow, 1989). ISBN: 0 05 004287 4
Introductory
Having completed Gavin
Bett's Teach Yourself Latin (see my
review of 2014), I was looking for a challenging text that would follow
logically and add to the fairly comprehensive knowledge of Latin that that text
conferred. Betts' greatest drawback was its seeming endlessness and I was
looking for a text that might consolidate my upper-intermediate level of
grammar, challenge me, but not bore me to tears. This handbook, bought several
years ago but hardly used, seemed a very possible contender, particularly as it
contained a fairly-standardized exercise regimen. A quick read through
confirmed this. All that was needed was to number the exercises (two of which
were usually provided for each unit) and work through them. In fact, this
student's approach had me work through the book twice. But more of that anon.
Organisation of the
text
This text initially seems
chaotic, but with a little organisation from the user, can be usefully turned
into a grammar revision course without much difficulty. There are 28
subsections in the "syntax" portion of the text and 19 more in the "translation"
subsection. There is a third very short portion on Medieval Latin. Each section
contains a series of pointers on grammar with illustrative sentences followed
by one, two, or three exercises in ascending order of difficulty. Since
familiarity with Latin is most key to ability in the language, a rational
approach for the learner would be to work through the text section by section
doing only the low-level exercises, and once familiarity has been achieved that
way, to go through the text once more, now doing the intermediate-level
exercises. This turned out to be an excellent approach.
One must emphasize that
this is just a suggested approach. The book is not officially intended to be
used as a graded grammar course, but, as we can see, can easily be used as such.
Level of the Text
It must be noted that
this is not an introduction to Latin. Anyone attempting the book should already
have highly competent ability in the language and should not be fazed by
typical Latin constructions like the Ablative Absolute, deponent verbs, or the
subjunctive in all its forms, which appear from the beginning.
Using the Book
The advantage for users
of this book is that each exercise is a fairly standard length (more or less):
about ten sentences of one or two clauses. Most of the sections are about the
same length too (a page or two), meaning that students can budget about the
same amount of time for each unit.
While obviously intended
as a grammar manual, this book can clearly be put to pedagogical use because of
the exercises. A student may choose to keep it on the shelf as a reference text
(and perhaps attempt the occasional exercise) or work through it as a grammar
refresher course. A teacher, seeing a student making the same error frequently,
might direct them to the relevant section and exercises in this text.
This student needs his
hand held as he studies grammar, and keenly felt the absence of translations
for the sample sentences in the exercises. Fortunately, the sentences and their
vocabulary are very carefully chosen to reflect the principles and vocabulary
of the foregoing explanations, and an attentive student should be able to
puzzle them out without much serious difficulty.
It should be noted that
the authors expect basic standards of their students. Note, for instance, that
they use the verb "meminor"
on p.8 in an illustrative sentence, but do not provide a reference for it in
the index. This is a disappointment, as the verb is fairly tricky, and the
future form used by the text (meminero)
is fairly unusual. That is to say, full use fo the text cannot be made without
a dictionary by one's side. While every effort has been made to provide a
comprehensive glossary, much material slips by. This is probably no great
surprise, given that nine scholars collaborated to produce this book.
The vocabulary load is
not excessive. Each unit presents the competent intermediate student with
perhaps ten items that are new or need revision.
Since the book is not
actually intended as a course per se,
one shouldn't overcriticise for lack of uniformity in things, like unit length.
The first unit on the nominative, vocative, and accusative cases is a short 1.5
pages and can be covered in twenty minutes. The third unit, on the dative case,
is a fairly dense 2.5 pages long and is heavy in new vocabulary, mostly
compound verbs that take the dative. This difficulty is lifted slightly if one
remembers that the text is best approached by doing a basic run through with
the simple exercises but following it with a more advanced run through with the
intermediate exercises.
I am sceptical of the
usefulness of lists. The unit on the Predicative Dative is pretty much just a
list of 25 nouns in the dative combined with the verb esse. Is the user of this book intended to memorize the list, whose
contents are provided without example sentences? There is a similar problem
with the paragraph on the ablative - a longish list of examples is followed by
exercises, and that's that. Some of the phrases used in the exercise sentences
are not found in the subject matter itself, meaning that a reader must hope he
can figure out the meaning or find a dictionary to do so for him.
The reference section at
the end of the book is thorough, and useful for looking up every aspect of the
language from noun declensions to deponent verb conjugations and everything in
between. It is unfortunately laid out chaotically. Irregular verbs are
presented over four pages of rows and columns that do not match up from page to
page. For reasons that are not made clear, they are further broken down into
four-, six-, and eight-field tables, confusing the reader. In the final two
pages this row-and-column system is abandoned in favour of discrete multi-field
boxes that do not line up with the other boxes around them.
Whether by accident or
design the vocabulary does build from one exercise to the next. Arcessere, a not central item of
vocabulary, appears in use on p.42, and is then found in an exercise on p. 48.
I certainly don't fault
the authors for their very vague introduction to conditional sentences (54), as
I have yet to find any text that can do so well. But to explain the subjunctive
by how it is translated into English is folly, since the English subjunctive is
so defective, and the modal alternatives so ambiguous. In truth the Latin
subjunctive can only be learned through experience and practice.
The reference section at
the back of the book is useful, but badly in need of standardization. Tables
spill over from one page to the next, and while the verp portion is provided in
normal, portrait-style presentation, the other paradigms (nouns, adjectives,
etc.) are provided in landscape orientation (that is, on their side).
It seems likely that the
two sections, Syntax and Translation, were prepared by different individuals or
teams, as the exercises are markedly different in presentation and uniformity.
While the syntax section contains exercises of about twelve sentences each to
translate, the translation section often provides lists of words to translate,
or passages from well-known Latin authors. This non-standard approach means
that students cannot budget time for them very effectively.
By about exercise 40
(p.102) the glossary ceases to be of much help. It seems that the writer of
this section did not pass on this vocabulary to the editors. Most of the
sentences can be made out, however, and this problem is more irksome than
impedimentary.
The subjunctive-based
section on fearing is good, but is a little too dependent on English
translation forms, as when we are told what English tenses to translate Latin
subjunctives into. But this needs examples, as does the perfect participle
review, which is explained without examples.
Because the subjunctive
is tricky, and so central to Latin, more exercises should be provided in the
section covering it. The text's usual method is to provide a page (or so) of
excursus followed by two exercises in increasing order of difficulty, but in this
case there are six pages of excursus before the section's single exercise. In
fairness, however, the text does explain that most of the subjunctive's uses
are explained elsewhere.
There's a definite
suggestion from the section on the subjunctive in the final quarter of the book
to the end that the authors have come to the end of their usual material and
are slotting in units that don't fit elsewhere. Gone is the usual structure of
"1.5 pages + two exercises" and instead there are long discourses on
particular features of Latin that are followed by one exercise ("se and
suus") or four ("overview"). This is a shame, as it throws away
the standardised structure of the rest of the book and throws off the student
who is taking a standardised approach. It the end, however, it is no great
hardship.
One of this book's
strengths is its support for the subjunctive, which is the key to Latin. One
may balk at the 20 sentences to translate in 19a, but in truth they are mostly permutations
of the same sentence, cumulatively designed to drill readers in the subtleties
of the subjunctive's use.
The translation exercises
from real texts that become part of the exercises towards the end of the book
are difficult, but bearable. The real challenge lies in the extracts being
without context. The final major section of the book involves applying a
translation technique called "overview" by the authors. This is an
excellent section, giving the student encouraging hands-on experience with real
texts. The four exercises that accompany it, however, are a bit of a slog, and
might be better presented.
The editors generously
share their reading and translation tips in the "overview""
section, but I am sceptical of its efficacy. Long sentences are long sentences,
and only long experience makes them understandable. Yes, the only possible
subject for incumbunt is angues (126), but only if you recognize
that gemmi is an adjective!
It must be recognized
that this is a manual, not a course (although one wonders what the exercises
are for, if that's the case), but it's nevertheless irksome, if understandable,
when one does the unit on relative clauses (26) only to find that a substantial
portion of the use of the relative clauses remains unexplained, because it deals
with the subjunctive, which is dealt with in other unites, which are listed
there. This cross-referencing can be seen as a boon and a curse. On one hand,
we can find the information but on the other hand one fears that one will be
led on a never-ending cross-referential journey through the manual. It would be
better to provide one or two illustrative sentences with a cross-reference
saying "more details in chapter X".
Roman numbers are
notoriously difficult, and it is disappointing therefore not to find any unit
in this book dealing with them, particularly when knowledge of them (and
particularly ordinals) in expected by the unit on dates. On the other hand,
they are thoroughly explained in an appendix, although no exercise is provided.
The exercises following
the explanation of sentence analysis and overview is probably intended to
reassure students that they can now successfully work with long sentences in
real Latin, but only partially works. It consists of three exercises, one after
another, containing large gobbets of text from famous study texts such as
Catullus, Virgil, and Caesar's Gallic wars. Some of these texts are translatable
cold, but for others (the Aeneid, for instance), this student needed extensive
cribs. On the other hand, it must be remembered that typical users of this book
would probably already be familiar with these texts, and have a wider
vocabulary. Even so, the format does not gel with the rest of the book, and one
wonders how the exercises might be used in an instructional setting. It took
this student, no duffer in Latin, several weeks to work through.
The different approaches
reflect different teaching styles. The usual approach is to explain a rule and
then to provide it in example sentences in two exercises that reflect an increasing
order of difficulty. Certainly seeing the Latin in use is a great help to
students. Some exercises, however, such as those for the units on prefixes and
suffixes, work at an unhelpfully abstract level. Two hundred compound words are
provided, without context, and the student is told to break up the word and
work out the meaning. Of course, many of these words have extended, figurative
meaning, and can only be understood by consulting a dictionary. Assuming thirty
seconds per word and several breaks, this is two hours of hard, boring slog
with no payoff for the student.
The text is normally good
with vocabulary, but I note that from exercise 39b on, the editors forget to
put certain crucial words in the glossary (decipio,
vehiculum, conducere), making the exercise somewhat more difficult than it
needs to be.
The section on the
subjunctive (107-110) is useful and vital. It is therefore no small oversight
that exercises are not provided for it, as they are for virtually every other
unit of the book. The subjunctive is tricky, but absolutely central to Latin,
and the several uses of it explained in this section should have been
accompanied by sample illustratory sentences for translation.
Conclusory
With a little preparation
and planning, this handbook (which might otherwise gather dust on the shelf)
can be put to use as an excellent grammar course.
Labels: 0050042874, grammar, ISBN, Latin, Oliver and Boyd, Scottish Classics Group
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