The Classics Society Mk II

We're "special" people lol.

I'm even more special in that now I feel a peer pressure to only read certain coloured texts

But my TV time comes before this, if and when it ever loads.

I've done hardly anything all summer. The reality of Ancient Greek Epic/Lyric is about to hit me massively in the face with a fascia.....I'm also wielding Latin less deftly now. Ah well at least I had a great time wasting around doing nothing worrying about not studying.

Same I would have understood your sig a few months ago

Plus my modern history modules make me want to pee my pants they scare me so much. :headhurts:

Kind of true, unless I'm traveling/getting free OCT's and Tuebners.

Few quick language questions, specifically to Latin but I'd be interested to see if it's the same for Greek.
Verb 2nd person conjugations: is there an increased formality in second person plural, like the French "vous", or is it just a singular/plural distinction?
Is there a term for things like dative, vocative etc.? I was speaking to a Greek specialist who called them "case endings", but she was German and I know teaching style is slightly different there (she made a point of saying German classicists use Greek accent markers much more than English ones) so I don't know if it's the same. Also, are there only five? (Acc, Voc, Nom, Gen, Dat)

The book I'm working through, Lingua Latina by Hans Orberg, makes a point of having no non-Latin words, so some of the technical details are slightly hard to understand.
Thanks!

There can be an increased formality, e.g. Cicero will often speak write of himself as nos (just as we have the "Royal we" in English), but the distinction is generally just one of plurality.

Case, or inflectional, endings sounds like a good way to describe them to me.

In Greek there are only five and only six in Latin (you can often think of the Greek genitive as taking on many of the roles of the Latin ablative though, e.g. genitive/ablative of comparison, genitive/ablative absolute etc.). Although Latin has vestiges of a locative case (used with the names of cities and small islands) too.

There can be an increased formality, e.g. Cicero will often speak write of himself as nos (just as we have the "Royal we" in English), but the distinction is generally just one of plurality.

Case, or inflectional, endings sounds like a good way to describe them to me.

In Greek there are only five and only six in Latin (you can often think of the Greek genitive as taking on many of the roles of the Latin ablative though, e.g. genitive/ablative of comparison, genitive/ablative absolute etc.). Although Latin has vestiges of a locative case (used with the names of cities and small islands) too.

Apparently sanscrit has a locative absolute. This sounds terrifically exciting.

Haha. It also has an instrumental case, eight in all. Hittite has another still (the allative).

I'm not sure what the record is for the most number of cases in a language (probably Hittite to be fair), although I doubt that it'll have made it into the Guinness book.

I was of the understanding that Finnish more or less used cases instead of prepositions and had something like 15. But I could be wrong I don't actually know any Finnish.

EDIT: Yep, 15

Ah, I see. Japanese has lots of particles that act like cases (e.g. accusative, thematic, constrastive, locative, instrumental etc.) too. There are lots of interesting languages out there.

Just going to jump in here.

So, does anyone know how to just grab a piece of Latin or Ancient Greek Literature and read it fluently, i.e. comfortably quickly and technically accurately? Is anyone here at that level?

I myself am a long way off that standard for either of the two languages, though I can usually translate pretty much any Literature text at a rate of about two minutes for 10 lines with technical perfection (because my knowledge of vocab and grammar and ability to work out word order is pretty complete, but I haven't reached that final step of being able to work out the sentences quickly and fluently). I am, however, able to read Sanskrit fluently (including any Literature).

So, does anyone have any tips which might help me go from being able to work my way through Latin literature (albeit perfectly accurate, not too literal and reasonably fast as far as working one's way through goes) to being able to kick up the speed and comfort to the level where I can peruse the texts? Like I said, I'm not too far behind.

Hi, guys, i would like to study Classical Civilisation, possibly more indepth Sparta or Athens mainly!
But am doing the wrong A levels, i', doing chem, maths, econ and classical civ. Is it still possible? i just did my first essay on the odyssey, my teachers had to give me different work because i'm already ahead of everyone!

Hello strangers...

I haven't been on TSR in forever because I thought that the Soc had died when the old thread died. I just found this thread this evening.