GAUDEAMUS IGITUR
Gaudeamus igitur, iuvenesdum sumus. Then let us rejoice while we are young.—Latin commercium song
Inspired by Mario Lanza’s hearty version of Gaudeamus Igitur, I launched into our new Latin song with more than usual gusto and resonance.
I’d forgotten we had young friends visiting. I did not wake the baby, but I may have startled her older brother with my sudden masculine throatiness. {My sisters and I can give a fair impression of the Three Tenors, and do so every Christmas.} According to Pippin, however, the little boy began quietly singing along as he pushed cars back and forth on the coffee table.
I’ve already taught him how to roar like ‘lions and tigers,’ which I’m sure his parents very much appreciate. I don’t need to send him home singing college drinking songs!—even bowlderized versions in Latin.
Last year Marcus and I completed Latina Christiana I, the introductory Latin course by Memoria Press. I am grateful for the gentle momentum it provided my brother and me, because we are now waist-deep in the vocabulary and grammar of Latin Form I.
We do enjoy having new vocabulary for our drills and sentence-making. Finally, after much creative agony, we have reached a lesson teaching us how to use direct objects. They aren’t the straight-up D.O.’s for which we’ve been pining, but even complementary infinitives should enliven our sentence structure! Equi ambulare amant. I think I have that right... but errare humanum est!
Speaking of vocabulary and grammar, I used to think vocabulary was the principal mainstream reason to study Latin, but am now inclined to believe that grammar is its greatest gift to us.
I listened recently to a lecture which gave me personal clarity regarding the debate between grammar-based Latin learning, and those immersion programs that approach Latin as one would a living language. Is one of Latin’s academic benefits the very fact that it is ‘dead’?—and ushers us into more abstract powers of language? {This would be similar to sentence diagrams that, in essence, treat English as a dead language.}
There’s a lot to think about. Unmoved is my conviction that study of Latin develops powers of logic!—and I do think that is couched in its grammar.
• detail from The Daphnephoria by Lord Frederic Leighton •
May 13, 2014