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I play with code to understand comprehension as I have no way to comprehend code.

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Teach Something Podcast

Podcast 3: What I Found Challenging and Easy About Latin

Loosely based script:

So a little disclaimer: what I found easy and what I found difficult may differ depending on who you are.  

 

I guess we’ll start with the difficult and end on a positive note. What I found the most difficult was how Latin didn’t always translate easily into English. It forced me to think in different ways and really sit down and think about how English is word for word. We don’t decline nouns in English so that was quite new and challenging. There are 6 noun cases, but only 5 were commonly used so I just learned the 5. The ablative case was the most difficult for me because it’s the most difficult to translate. English lumps a lot of nouns together into one category, but Latin breaks them down quite a bit more. I tried learning the pronunciation at first since that’s what my textbook started with, but I decided it wasn’t worth the struggle. The memorization bit wasn’t difficult, but it was the process of memorization. Sitting down and studying these cases was a bit difficult, but once I learned them, I knew them pretty well. Since I already have a focusing problem, this Coronavirus chaos hasn’t helped at all and I had an even more difficult time sitting down to try and memorize them.

 

 

The easiest/most fun parts for me were the vocabulary and the verb conjugations. I just the learned present, imperfect, and perfect tenses. If I didn’t know Spanish, the verb conjugations would have also been quite the accomplishment. Since Spanish is a Romance language, a lot of the verb conjugations were similar with an e or an i added here and there.  The vocabulary was so fun because I got to see all the patterns and similarities Latin has with English despite English not being considered a Romance language.

 

This was a fun little challenge for me that at times was frustrating, but I came out the other end with more knowledge than I had before so I’d consider it mission accomplished.  

Podcast 2: Would I Recommend Learning Latin?

Loosely based script:

So... would I recommend learning Latin? I would say it depends on who you are. There are some benefits, but for me they weren’t the actual language itself. If you do want to learn Latin to learn the language, by all means go ahead, but I think the majority of the benefits don’t have to deal with the language itself. Along with the benefits that are mentioned in the TedTalk I linked earlier like cultural appreciation and a deeper understanding of English, it kinda just feels cool to “know” the basics.

Also, since I’m a history major, I’ve been able to connect more dots in the readings for my Western Civ class which has also been kinda dope. I plan to be a teacher so I don’t expect to need to know Latin down to a tee, but it’s nice to have that foundation of linguistics under my belt. If you’re a fan of history or the English language or maybe you’re just bored, I think it’d be pretty cool to learn Latin.

However, if you couldn’t care less about learning a new language or history, then this probably isn’t the right thing for you since Latin is known for being quite difficult to pick up. The non-Latin benefits I spoke about earlier could also come from just studying linguistics and history, but Latin is sort of that cool package deal. It’s not for everyone, but if it is, you should definitely take a swing at it.

The Great Escape (PODCAST #3)

The Elemental Kingdoms (PODCAST #2)

Podcast # 3

Podcast #2

Podcast 1

Latin Podcast

This is the "script" that I based my podcast on:

My goal has been to learn the basics of Latin and so far, it’s a little tougher than I thought it would be. The fact that both nouns and verbs change based on how they’re being used is something I’m not familiar with. I have, however, learned quite a bit about the English language through this experience. This also happened when I took Spanish during middle school and high school, but now I’m learning a bit more in depth about the roles of nouns and the different types of nouns. For example, if a noun is the subject of the sentence, it will be spelled one way, but if it’s the direct object, it will look another way.

 

Even though it’s more difficult than most Romance languages, in terms of grammar, I do think it’d be cool to know. I’m a history major so I especially find linguistics to be fascinating. I’ve noticed how similar a lot of the vocabulary is similar to a lot of words in English. Words like “violence”, “to hear”, and “to see” are “violentiam”, “audire”, and “videre”. Audio and video mean I hear, and I see in Latin. The way many cultures are connected through linguistics is all the more reason to learn Latin because even Latin borrows from Ancient Greek and Phoenician.

 

I’ve been looking at English words a bit closer now and have been able to sort of mentally sort whether a word or grammar rule has been derived from its Germanic or Latin roots which is pretty cool to me.  

My Poetry Podcast: Stolen Year

Sometimes reality seeps
Into peripheral vision
A
Sense of mission when
Wishing brings no
Answers. Just unasked
Questions seeking
Anchors
Impossible realities, barnacles
Growing on rusted prints
Dripping in stolen yesteryear