The qui quae quod song

Here is my song to help pupils learn the declension of the relative pronoun in Latin:

qui quae quod, who, which
quem quam quod, whom, which
cu-i-us means whose, cu-i means to whom or which,
quo qua quo, by with from whom or which.

qui quae quae, who, which
quos quas quae, whom, which
quo-rum, quarum quarum whose,
qui-bus means to whom or which,
qui-bus, by with or from whom or which.

The tune in midi format, which should play easily if your computer has a sound card, is here:

http://blog.arlt.co.uk/qui_quae_quod.midi, or, with slightly more lively accompaniment, here:
http://blog.arlt.co.uk/qui_quae_quod2.midi

Professor Paul Cartledge on Greek citizenship

I've just been listening to Paul Cartledge on becoming a citizen in Sparta and Athens. It was the second of two 15 minute talks as part of The Westminster Hour on BBC Radio 4. Since I missed the first talk, and found the second one interesting, I have gone to the BBC website and am now listening to that talk. He is now relating the anecdote about ostracism and Aristides the Just.

If you go to this page and click on Westminster Hour – listen, you might just catch last week's, and will certainly be able to listen to part 2 for the next week.

Update: Rogue Classicism has given a better link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_westminster_hour/4864066.stm
I think the programmes will be available for longer than the one week.

What advertisements for Latin does Google (and similar) select?

I was following up a link in today's Explorator, and found some of those adverts that seem to be automatically selected to match keywords in an article.

The article was one by William Safire in the New York Times that took as its starting point the Horace remark about even Homer nodding. The advertisements were for distance learning of Latin (here, if you are interested), a bookseller (online) offering Latin dictionaries, a free download that claims to help you learn Latin (it's here, and I seem to remember downloading it once and finding that it consisted of lists of vocab – but I may be wrong), and a CD of songs for learning Latin.

It was this last ad. that caught my attention. I clicked on the link and found this blurb:

We have taken the most essential Latin rules, endings, vocabulary, and forms and created 29 songs set to familiar tunes to enable your students to easily memorize declension endings, conjugation rules, and more. More fun than recitation, and easier to remember, the Latin Memory Songs include:

• Latin grammar chart paradigm
• Noun endings for 1st through 5th declensions
• Verb endings and conjugation rules for 1st through 4th conjugations, Present & Perfect Tense
• Irregular verbs Sum and Possum, Present and Perfect tenses
• Preposition cases
• Relative, Possessive, Demonstrative, and Reflexive Pronouns
• 1st, 2nd, & 3rd Person Pronouns
• 3rd Declension noun genders
• Special “ius” adjectives
• Cardinal Numbers

A CD accompanies each Song Book, demonstrating how each song is sung.

I have used songs for teaching declensions myself, so if I were teaching in a classroom I'd be tempted to investigate this disc.
In fact, I think I might put one or more of my songs on line, in case others might find them amusing/useful. I have been thinking of using midi files. We'll see.

The blurb for this CD calls the songs:

So catchy, our four-year-old sings them around the house. So easy to memorize, your student will learn at an amazing pace…and Latin may become the best part of the day!

I happen to have just returned from conducting a performance in church of a Passion musical called 'Jerusalem Joy', with singers from the age of 4 to 70+. The children, their parents and grandparents told me, had been going round the house singing the songs by heart. So I quite believe the blurb.

More from the Classical Association

This time the byline is definitely Philip Howard, and the report is fuller. See Philip's report here.

The subjects he picks out are our friend Emma Stafford (who lectured at the 2005 ARLT Refresher Day) on Greek ideas of male and female beauty, James Robson on Aristophanes' vision of a sexy woman, Katie Bell on representations of Hercules as muscle-man, Sue Blundell on Greek shoes and sex.

Well, he does his best to show Classics as a 'sexy' subject. And his accounts of these papers are not nearly as po-faced as my brief notes.

Two other subject threads mentioned are revolutions and dwarves (the latter might be of interest to Cambridge Latin Course students).