An assignment I actually wrote on the board this week:
In groups, write 2 sentences (in Latin) using only the
vocabulary in your textbook. Make sure to include:
1 irregular verb
1 imperfect verb
5 cases
BEES?
I’ll elaborate in a minute, but I need to stop laughing
first.
So I’d originally planned on a 20-minute grammar lesson,
followed by a handout to be finished in pairs, but I’d made the mistake of telling
this class about Latin Day in April and how we were encouraging them to come to
school in costume. All they wanted to do was talk about costume opportunities
(and since I would like to keep my job, I had to explain why staging Caesar’s assassination
in the middle of the lunchroom would be a Bad Idea), so I shifted gears and decided
to channel that creative/social energy into a different assignment.
After lugging them through a condensed version of the
grammar lesson on irregular verbs in the imperfect tense, I split them into
groups and pulled an assignment out of the air.
The requirements:
Write two sentences in Latin
Use ONLY vocabulary from the textbook
Include at least ONE irregular verb
Include at least ONE verb in the imperfect tense
Include 5 (out of 6, including the vocative)
cases
The goal:
To write them on the board for their ‘rival’
groups to translate
They are a competitive bunch, so I knew this would be enough
to encourage them to go All Out. But then one student raised her hand.
“Can our sentences be about bees?” she asked.
Bees. I swear this class has a thing with Bees. I hesitated.
“There are no bees in your textbook.”
“Yes, but you taught us that word.”
I had, back when this same student had asked me how to say “the
bees are suffering” for a kahoot she was writing. Granted, this same student is
planning on coming in on Latin Day dressed as Caligula’s horse, so none of this
surprises me.
I opened it up to the other ‘groups’. “What do you think?” I
asked. “Should we let them write about bees?”
“No,” said one student with a heavy sort of solemnity, looking
me dead in the eye. “We should all be required
to write about bees.”
As the rest of the class eagerly cheered and nodded in
agreement, three things occurred to me.
The word for bee, “apis”, is a 3rd-declension
i-stem noun, which they could use more practice on.
They’re going to want to describe the bees,
which means they will likely also be practicing noun-adjective agreement with a
3rd-declension i-stem noun, which they could also use more practice
on.
This could be flipping hilarious.
And so I added “BEES?” to the list.
The results:
1. apes ingentes Hannibalis ad Romam ibant. Moenia vincunt et Romanis miserum dant.
“The giant bees of Hannibal
were going to Rome. They conquer the walls and give misery to the Romans.” In hindsight the noun miseriam would have been better, but still solid. Mentions bees AND misery. Implies an AU where Hannibal brought giant bees
across the Alps instead of elephants. Carthage wins the Punic Wars. 10/10
2. Argus ignem sui amoris dare volebat ieiunis, ieiunis apibus. “Arge!” apes dicunt. “Nolumus accipere ignem tui amoris.” Argus desperat et se in mare conicit.
“Argus was wishing to give
the fire of his love to the hungry, hungry bees. ‘Argus!’ the bees say. ‘We do
not want to accept the fire of your love.’ Argus despairs and hurls himself
into the sea.” Descriptive. Tragic. Mentions fire. Has something for
everyone. Also 10/10
3. regis magna apis volabat, et volebat occidere regi. “Beeyonce,” inquit, “uxor es. Ama me.”
“The great bee of the king
was flying, and he was wishing to kill for the king. ‘Beeyonce,’ he said. ‘You
are my wife. Love me.’ ” 100/10 for Beeyonce.
My favorite is people who send me unsolicited dick pics and then they’re like, “uh, hi? Are you ignoring me?”
It’s just so funny to me. Like one minute I’m designing bioreactors and getting published for heat dissipation in polymers and then I open this godforsaken app to dudes hanging brain who can’t even pronounce “saponification” calling me a slut because I won’t give attention to their limp excuses for existence.
3 billion years of evolution and the greatest form of communication you can conjure up in your fermented omelet of a conscience is submitting your wrinkly ball sac to a stranger on the Internet to substitute the attention your parents never gave their mistake of an offspring.
Legolas pretty quickly gets in the habit of venting about his travelling companions in Elvish, so long as Gandalf & Aragorn aren’t in earshot they’ll never know right?
Then about a week into their journey like
Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying
Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst
Legolas:
~*~earlier~*~
Legolas: ugh fucking hobbits
Merry: Frodo what’d he say
Frodo: I’m not sure he speaks a weird dialect but I think he’s insulting us. I should tell him I can understand Elvish
i mean, honestly it’s amazing the Elves had as many languages and dialects as they did, considering Galadriel (for example) is over seven thousand years old.
english would probably have changed less since Chaucer’s time, if a lot of our cultural leaders from the thirteenth century were still alive and running things.
they’ve had like. seven generations since the sun happened, max.
frodo’s books are old to him, but outside any very old poetry copied down exactly, the dialect represented in them isn’t likely to be older than the Second Age, wherein Aragorn’s foster-father Elrond started out as a very young adult and grew into himself, and Legolas’ father was born.
so like, three to six thousand years old, maybe, which is probably a drop in the bucket of Elvish history judging by all the ethnic differentiation that had time to develop before Ungoliant came along, even if we can’t really tell because there weren’t years to count, before the Trees were destroyed.
plus a lot of Bilbo’s materials were probably directly from Elrond, whose library dates largely from the Third Age, probably, because he didn’t establish Imladris until after the Last Alliance. and Elrond isn’t the type to intentionally help Bilbo learn the wrong dialect and sound sillier than can be helped, even if everyone was humoring him more than a little.
so Frodo might sound hilariously formal for conversational use (though considering how most Elves use Westron he’s probably safe there) and kind of old-fashioned, but he’s not in any danger of being incomprehensible, because elves live on such a ridiculous timescale.
to over-analyse this awesome and hilarious post even more, legolas’ grandfather
was from linguistically stubborn Doriath and their family is actually from a
somewhat different, higher-status ethnic background than their subjects.
so depending on how much of a role Thranduil took in his
upbringing (and Oropher in his), Legolas may have some weird stilted old-fashioned speaking tics in his
Sindarin that reflect a more purely Doriathrin dialect rather than the Doriathrin-influenced Western Sindarin that became the most widely spoken Sindarin long before he was born, or he might have a School Voice
from having been taught how to Speak Proper and then lapse into really
obscure colloquial Avari dialect when he’s being casual. or both!
considering legolas’ moderately complicated political position, i expect he can code-switch.
…it’s
also fairly likely considering the linguistic politics involved that Legolas is reasonably articulate in Sindarin, though
with some level of accent, but knows approximately zero Quenya outside of loanwords into Sindarin, and even those he mostly didn’t learn as a kid.
which would be extra hilarious when he and gimli fetch up in Valinor in his little homemade skiff, if the first elves he meets have never been to Middle Earth and they’re just standing there on the beach reduced to miming about what is the short beard person, and who are you, and why.
this is elvish dialects and tolkien, okay. there’s a lot of canon material! he actually initially developed the history of middle-earth specifically to ground the linguistic development of the various Elvish languages!
Legolas: Alas, verily would I have dispatched thine enemy posthaste, but y’all’d’ve pitched a feckin’ fit.
Aragorn: *eyelid twitching*
Frodo: *frantically scribbling* Hang on which language are you even speaking right now
Pippin, confused: Is he not speaking Elvish?
Frodo, sarcastically: I dunno, are you speaking Hobbit?
Boromir, who has been lowkey pissed-off at the Hobbits’ weird dialect this whole time: That’s what it sounds like to me.
Merry, who actually knows some shit about Hobbit background: We are actually speaking multiple variants of the Shire dialect of Westron, you ignorant fuck.
Sam, a mere working-class country boy: Honestly y’all could be talkin Dwarvish half the time for all I know.
Pippin, entering Gondor and speaking to the castle steward: hey yo my man
my favorite thing i’ve learned in college is that way back in ancient china there was this poet/philosopher guy who wrote this whole pretentious poem about how enlightened he was that was like “the eight winds cannot move me” blahblahblah and he was really proud of it so he sent it to his friend who lived across the lake and then his friend sends it back and just writes “FART” (or the ancient Chinese equivalent) on it and he was SO MAD he travels across the lake to chew his friend out and when he gets there his friend says “wow. the eight winds cannot move you, but one fart sends you across the lake”
i googled this bc i desperately wanted this to be real, and guess what…it is.
the dude’s name was su dongpo (also known as su shi). his original poem went like this:
稽首天中天，
毫光照大千，
八風吹不動，
端坐紫金蓮
(Humbly bowed my head below all skies Minutest lights shine through my deepest bounds Immovable by strong winds from eight sides Upon purplish gold lotus I seated straightly by the low mound) (x)
on which his friend wrote “放屁” (fart, literally), and you know the rest.
teach a man to fish and he’ll forget who you are and then he’ll see you in a bar a month later and he’ll try to seduce you by telling you things he assumes you don’t know about fishing
oh my gd
Please check out the tags from the person I reblogged this from, omw
I love them so much because they’re about as sharp as a baseball and their anatomy is ridiculous to the point of them literally being classified as plankton for years because they just sort of get blown around by the ocean and look confused, but because they lay more eggs than ANY OTHER VERTEBRATE IN EXISTENCE, evolution can’t stop them
Why is no big predator coming and gnawing on them?
Their biggest defense is that they’re massive and have super tough skin, but they do get hunted by sharks or sea lions sometimes and they just sort of float there like ‘oh bother’ as it happens
Even funnier, because they eat nothing but jellyfish they’re really low in nutritional value anyway, so they basically survive by being not worth eating because they’re like a big floating rice cracker wrapped in leather.
So basically the only reason natural selection hasn’t taken care if them is because they are the most useless fish
yes, they’ve perfected uselessness to the point of being unstoppable
Steel Phoenix Studios 