Maureen Moloney was cleaning out her classroom (Graham See's old classroom) and found this Cole's Notes primer on Latin. It obviously belonged to the school because someone took the trouble to inscribe the school's name on it. The copyright on the book is 1959 but that doesn't mean anything because some of the prose in the book was originally copyrighted in 59 AD. My guess is that it belonged to a Latin teacher who had to teach it but was a little rusty. So far, the Coles Notes for pig Latin is still missing.I took Latin in high school. Does the school even teach Latin now? It's been a dead language for thousands of years, and it isn't very handy to know Latin any more. Before, you would know the etymology of words, but now it doesn't help you with words like LOL. It was useful back in the day though. A daily reminder was "ablutionis retro articularis" -- wash behind our ears.
Here are some handy Latin phrases:
Semper ubi sub ubi ~ Always wear underwear.
Caesar adsum iam tuit. Cicero adarat. ~ Caesar had some jam to eat. Cicero had a rat.
And we all know: illegitimi non carborundum
I took Latin at Oshawa Catholic. It was handy if you were pursuing studies in English language and literature, but not useful today in the twenty first century.
ReplyDelete"illegitimi non carborundum" means.....'bad carbs'???? Did I get it right?
ReplyDeleteEtymology: Car no run dumb transliterated to carborundum ~ Latin for I drive a Japanese piece of junk. Illegitimi is close to sushimi in Japanese.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this blog. It brings a lot of memories. I too took Latin at OCHS but unfortunately have forgotten most of it. I cannot recall the name of my teacher, a very tall Sister and skinny, who I admired for her knowlegde of Latin - I swore she even dreamt in that language.
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