Latin Poetry & Conversation: using Virgil to become better Latin speakers, Living Latin in NYC 2023

thanks everyone come on in uh great to see all of you so I want to tell you a little bit about my passion especially for Latin poetry a lot of this can apply to ancient Greek but I'll kind of focus it on on Latin for now and uh I think I must have been reading some chapter of donot when I thought of the subtitle here it's a little bit on the long side but what what I want to talk about I want to talk about the connection of how when we speak Latin how that can actually make us better readers of poetry and vice versa When I Was preparing this I thought of one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek the Next Generation now in this episode Captain bcard is stuck on this alien planet with this alien now he can't communicate with him every Starfleet officer has a communication badge though which is also a universal translator but and it's working it's translating things he's saying but peard can't understand the the alien is translating words like and and at but otherwise these place names are people dhok and gelot tanagra the alien keeps saying as well as a number of other things that he just Picard just doesn't understand what do these things what do these things mean and the reason the universal translator can't work is because all the things that the alien is saying are taken directly as metaphor from the alien society's literature and mythology and poetry and so this is in the classic sense the non-modern sense meme this is a meme the imitation like Juliet on her balcony what's that an image of Love Could Be Love passion desire and that's how this alien species communicates and peard eventually you know he struggles doesn't quite understand but uh eventually he does figure it out and look how happy it is and he's like and then he says dhak Andel tag the's like ah you get it it's so because the alien can't also can't communicate um in that more kind of fundamental or simpler way that beard has to communicate in and it's this amazing example uh in science fiction of exactly what we preach a lot of us as teachers which is input the input method learning through listening and hearing because he's stranded on this planet he doesn't speak the language he can't communicate in it but by the end of the episode he's able to communicate to all the aliens when the rest of his crew on the ship are completely baffled he comes at talks to them using all the metaphors that we also as the audience got to learn it's very interesting so it's a really cool uh language learning experience now speaking of meme we have a modern sense for that which is this imitation and reference and it's a really important part of modern culture as it always has been and it's so interesting to see how uh the idea that dhic and galad at tagra almost like making them a kind of a band and which is also interesting because in my opinion Star Trek the Next Generation that's good literature A lot of it is really well written especially that episode and it is worth remembering for that reason and worth imitating worth having as a part of our daily uh communication so like if you meet a Star Trek fan and you say something like dharmic Andel tanagra they'll be like ah you know you're in now what is uh what is our what is our equivalent to that well one of them might be good old Lefty sky sky and uh as you you may know the the story one of the most famous ones in the legendary history mythology of ancient Rome he goes and he uh he tries to uh assault the at truscan King he fails and so they take him and and they're going to probably kill him but they're like hey what the heck you doing you're this only guy this one guy trying to infiltrate our camp and you killed the wrong guy like a total idiot and he and he puts his right hand in the fire and it burns away as he says um many famous lines one of which is romanum w I always imagine it's like Sylvester Stallone's voice in my head when he says that it's a guy and it's like you can't hurt me you know and uh that's his name guos muus and then he gets of course the uh cognomen the nickname skyila Lefty because he do have the right hand anymore and that's our kind of uh our kind of meme right where we take these lines uh from from literature because that's useful the way Livy writes this there's no reason we can't use that in certain situations for ourselves it could be conversational or it could recall this exact scene and sound like kind of like a tough guy thing Roman now when it comes to actually using conversational Latin that's something that a lot of us uh have been doing today or we strive to do we want to do what kind of examples should we actually imitate now there are some really beautiful and I'd say tempting things that we might be careful of and this is one of them which is the so-called her or interpreta meaning translations dual translations of Greek and Latin basically a phrase book from 3r Century 4th Century ad and it's really interesting and I have learned a lot of useful vocabulary from it but at the same time and that I discussed this too with uh Dr tunberg who's here of course at at um paa uh this weekend uh and some years ago and he said that's it is really interesting and it shows us a lot about how the language Works especially in like later Imperial times but what we're after the reason we speak Latin it could be for some people it could just be like a really cool hobby but for most of us it's about getting inside the literature about being able to access it more like it's our native language or for example I'm not a native Italian speaker but I speak it well enough to appreciate the literature because speaking Italian is something that I I do every day now and so when I read literature I can appreciate certain nuances that are the the higher literary stuff that's what's meant to be appreciated by native speakers more easily than if I were coming at Italian entirely from grammar translation so the uh the issue then with with this is it's not exactly the right Di or idiom we want more classical idiom now what we can do it's something I really like to do and recommend is looking at poetry and I'll show you why and I'm going to take a few lines from Virgil's Eck logs so for example this one so what should I do that's pretty useful it actually happens in two eock so it happens twice which tells me that this is probably a pretty useful conversational thing now there are certainly poetical uh usages that happen in po poetry that might not be exactly totally you know qudian Pros speech but I personally have no nothing against the usage of poetry that we take from classical literature and we use in our daily speech because this is the idiom that we want we want to be able to read The Poetry even if if there are elements of artificiality In classical Latin whether in the Poetry or the idiom that's the idiom we want and it ends up being our teacher for this classical Latin thing that we've been cultivating basically for two millennia now the thing about this uh which is uh which is great it's very useful phrase quid fadm is that since it's in meter poetry ends up being a guidebook to correct pronunciation now uh when it comes a pronunciation we just use whatever convention we we want and I am completely fine with that however there is a utility in being able to follow the most important aspect in my opinion of Latin pronunciation which is the phic vowel length and phic syllable length and why because if we recite Pros that way if we recite if we try to speak that way as best we can then when we pick up a poem we just read it the way we'd read a poem in English if we're English speakers and we get the Rhythm you know um shall I compare the to a summer's day I can hit the the stresses right because I'm a native English speaker even though my accent is different from that of Shakespeare's which would have sound something like a uh compar to Su or something like that the more Shakespearean pronunciation of the 1600s uh that's okay uh because this the fundamental characteristic of Shakespeare's language of his English and mine is that we have the accents we have language where the stress accent is still important because that's not true of every language take a the a Frenchman for example French doesn't naturally have stress accent in its words so a Frenchman yeah he can absolutely read uh that same line from Shakespeare but it'll come out something more like um should I compare the you know and they and and I'm just know using a a caricature of an accent but ultimately since French native speakers do not have stress accent in the words there's no lexical stress accent it's a phrasal accent they aren't able to appreciate English literature or other literature that uses STX accent in his poetry without certain training so this is why I I uh think this is so important in Latin so uh with quid FM and we could use ecclesiastical pronunciation quid FM same thing I do I do think this is important in any version of um of Latin uh recitation but we could all do it now we can be having think of a conversation where we're telling somebody oh we're in we we were there couldn't find parking anywhere on Fifth Avenue qu fak your and now your turnak fantastic quak and that's that's and there's the uh the stress pattern and another line of course here we see this uh often called elision or cifi is a more technical term the merging of two syllables together so and in everyone try that beautiful so altogether Magis this m Magis is just like uh you know not en I'm just astonished I'm just surprised I really love the M Magis and I've used that myself and conversation and that and I really like it miror Magis everyone try miror Magis beautiful and it's that long long short short and or short long depending it's it's ANS and um what could you do maybe you're in a similar situation as uh melo's or melas is in that uh first ech log and you might actually throw this in to conversation and but you could alter the words if you just wanted to keep the meter to play with it and say or something like that now you don't have to do that but just it's the kind of fun thing you can do to help internalize and make these lines of poetry that you like a part of you part of your idct um and uh here's another one so Pao so this is the beginning of the fourth eogs uh EOG one of my favorit and it's instead of talking about all this pastoral things let's talk about this this uh this amazing prediction or this this prophecy that that I'm going to talk about so let's talk about things that are May let's try that repeat after me beautiful wonderful so we could also insert that into conversation I challenge you if you have the situation today which means all jokes aside all kidding aside maybe ask somebody how your friend how he's doing how she's doing and uh they say uh oh they said oh well you know the they might make up some some uh crazy crazy story uh or something like that and you you joke and you say things but like no but seriously you want to really know how the person is doing but you know it's it's one way you might be able to actually insert something like this into your into your conversation so the idea is that if we follow this this pattern of long and short syllables which is inherent in the in the Poetry then the more that we read poetry we'll recognize similar lines similar patterns and it'll become more natural it's so Latin is alien for a number of reasons obviously the vocabulary and and other things but this whole structure of how the words work is not English doesn't work that way Italian doesn't work that way German doesn't work that way Finnish does Czech does Japanese does but unless you know a language which has this phic vow length thing really well um it's something that we have to it's not easy it's not easy it's not easy for me it's something that but I think it's super valuable here's one we could definitely find a way use today hes Cades try with Meades beautiful H Cades absolutely and uh as far as if this is something that's interesting to you and something you want to do what I would regard as being um the incorrect way to scan this to give you an idea of what I'm what I'm saying it would be something like hes um I you I would expect us for example in Italian to say it like that normally and would say hes uh because they're not thinking of the length of the hook and normally stressed uh vowels and open syllables in uh especially two syllable words like this usually get lengthened in Italian so so hes and I would regard that I mean it's fine for communicating in Latin and that's and it's it's great but this other level that I'm proposing uh being of value is that if we do it in the scansion we get this guide book to then further apply to pros and then to how we speak so think of someone you're like uh you you'll see them at the coffee hour and you're like and try so whoes beautiful it's fantastic and uh this one's I think pretty useful too where the heck is he off to now so um I'll try it and repeat after me very good so yeah now obviously I'm also being quite measured how I'm reciting these now I'm trying to give the same like long or same like amount of seconds if you will or fractions of a second for long and short syllables but what this means this long and short thing is not like it's always some like specific like one second then half second it's just relative um but it's a good way to to start out if this is something that that you're not familiar with so you may know this what does it mean love con what does it mean to you like literal translation yeah what does that mean how would you use that uh I don't know I guess anyone else what does it mean to you really need to eat that piece of cake because you as you love right yeah kind of uh yeah and and any other ways you might might use it yeah go ahead maybe you're having like an argument with your partner or something like that and then you're you see Cel from a friend and your friend says you know don't worry you know love all outstanding great we have a very positive sense with it and there's no nothing wrong with that that's our meme uh however that not how it's used in the 10th EOG if you're familiar familiar with it uh it's actually used almost ironically and in absolute defeat poor galus he's been uh he's been highly wronged by his ex who has gone off over the Alps to follow some Soldier and at the end of it he says that the god Cupid screws over everybody that's sort of that's more like the meaning that's a bit more of what I get out of it and maybe I'm exaggerating the opposite direction a bit much but we could still use it so let's so you could C and you should if you like it and it means this positive thing do you do use it that way beautiful and uh yeah so it's it's it's interesting so uh oh and this is another oh they didn't fix the line there I will skip the next one because I I want to do do uh this one Speaking of this uh this x who went over the Alps he says to it's this is the line you know if I were to cite in this kind of and you know and uh what do I would in a more regular sort of way you know just kind of singing through it this is Gus and he's he's really upset at her he's going off and he's saying uh to her you know literally oh May the cold not hurt you but it's not you know so it's not like with his liil like oh the C not hurt you you know it's like that's i' let not how I hear it on my head I hear it like this yo I hope you don't catch a cold you know he's upset he's really angry at it you know I I think of like Bill Burr or I don't know Joe pesi who's like H don't let the door hit you on the way out sistera you know that's that's sort of what this which is great it's visceral it's something we could use ourself maybe for joking hopefully you don't actually want to say this uh in a real situation but you can still use it for a joke right so uh scanning it yeah he's not happy and then it gets even better he then he says this later uh you know uh yo I hope the ice don't cut the Dy bottoms of your feet you know he's upset he is very angry at her and uh so let's try this one it's a little bit longer but maybe we can do it together uh oh no oh wait no oh you're doing so well but let me but I making me nervous let me go first then then you can okay um beautiful speaking of Star Trek that sounds like the Borg that's very cool that's very cool um and uh that's great so what what is this uh method to kind of summarize what I think is I love the EOG so I like using those phrases and a bunch of others but whatever you like you like catalus you like chorus you like platus you like appus there you go especially if it's if it's uh if it's poetry though in verse then you can actually use this so then if you you learn the scansion of the line you may have also heard of uh or even used a method where you move the accent in order to figure out where the uh beginning of the foot is that's an artificial thing that when I'm trying to think when that came up it was some hundreds of years ago and uh it's it's a way to help us who if we speak natively Italian or German or English a way to understand where the beginning of the metrical foot is but it really doesn't have anything to do with how the Poetry was recited um and uh also it can obscure a lot of the beauty in in the Rhythm because a lot more interesting things that happen if we use these long and uh and short syllables which again not easy for us but I think highly worthwhile in doing so learning uh learning the right scansion of it then memorizing it like who Cades you probably remember that one now H Cades that one's good and then find Opportunities if you can to use it maybe today hey look we're at a convention where we can speak Latin to each other or Greek for for Greek speakers too and then you're probably going to have this effect if you do this regularly if you then incorporate this into your Pros reading that you'll be able to uh actually notice similar patterns of scansion that exist in uh in in other poems that you'll read so here are the lines again I don't know if you if you want to use any of these you can take a picture you're welcome to um uh if want to try to use these today better examples too these are just ones that I happen to to like myself and uh and see if you can use them at some point at some point today because I think they're they're pretty valuable but um moving on if you didn't get a picture I I'll I can show this again to you later but so again what are the benefits of this whole thing well we get to internalize the good classical idiom the thing that years ago Dr tunberg taught me that it's not necessarily that her that um that you know phrase book from the third or for Century that we want to imitate for our conversational Latin but this literary pros this dialect that we're cultivating and trying to internalize and read better maybe it's not the only Latin that we're interested in but it's still probably for most of us the goal then we get this personal connection with them we get to internalize them we get to think of uh um jokes or situations that they're originally in and then use them for ourselves and the great thing too is that if we consider the long and short syllables to be our guide book for pronunciation then we we get I think the most important part like ecclesiastical classical or the uh germanos Slavic pronunciation of line all them are are beautiful and they work really well I I think that for the literature though which is the thing that we're most after it could be uh really valuable to to follow that uh that metrical pattern that's in all the language in both the pros uh and the poetry and uh when become better readers of poetry and uh then you start to see that like something like hul Cades it's very colloquial there's a lot of colloquial stuff that's in the literature so that's the reciprocal relationship that uh I see in this and I'm making some more audio books pedagogical audiobooks that that will be uh teaching this in uh in the future but um I think that if you take this idea and put it in practice it might be of use so thank you very much any questions sir uh thank you that was great um I'm curious I have heard that Australian English observes vowel yeah and I'm curious if anyone else has ever heard that and if you think that practicing a really good Australian I know a few outstanding speakers of Latin and in Greek or Australian actually which is there's a lot of great classes that's coming out of there um uh this instead we actually even in British English for example the uh like saying uh C instead of cast for example or um even our father that fa that is usually long in American English longer we do have these a little bit more in British English and definitely in Australian English in different situations the and it is phic in the sense that it's like the difference between ah and ah is something that is important that just doesn't sound right to that at least in those uh those dialects i' I've heard that for instance in in Australian there are several um words that are the same so like a fairy that takes you across the riv how is it that flies through the air and maybe fery and and faery I don't know yeah one's longer maybe the the flying a are distinguished by of the that's that's awesome and those exist too in English the problem I'd say with using any English even German which has this too as a model is because it's relatively frequent and we can definitely use it to show our students if this is something we're we're passionate about as teachers to show them hey this is something that um this is something that exists hey hey in our language too the problem is that you don't get it in the uh a lot of the unaccented syllables like and there's so many Longs and shorts and in Latin and stress syllables and unstressed syllables so many times a stress syllable is short an unstress syllable is long and uh if you're looking for models that are very much like that Finnish Japanese check uh do that thank you for the question quickly comment on oh yeah yeah I I because I I had actually corrected it and I uh I did it uh that one this is why why I I skipped it but this didn't update to my the the more recent PowerPoint um yeah or I would make the a long uh which is what I wanted to correct what did you want to say about it just in terms of the the context where this appears oh it's the the two great great poets in their natural habitat if you will and it reminded me of uh of of this exact thing because the dhak and galad tanagra basically it's talking about two companions who were forced to stay together in the in the episode so this idea just sort of this it's more generic like or I can imagine poet friends of mine if they're you know in their element just making beautiful poetry I think ah or and that's sort of the the image that I have for that that's what I I would use that for sure I think we're out of [Applause] [Music] time [Applause] [Music]

Channel: polýMATHY

Views: 43,195

Keywords: polýMATHY, luke amadeus ranieri, luke amadeus, luke ranieri, polymath, polymathy, conversational latin, virgil's eclogues, vergil's eclogues, conversational latin in poetry, latin poetry to learn meter, latin meter and verse

Id: eCxE54dz3Bs

Length: 26min 35sec (1595 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 10 2024