BMCR 2022.03.23

Augury is for the birds: Mārcus dē avibus discit and Aves

Emma Vanderpool, Robert Patrick, Augury is for the birds: Mārcus dē avibus discit. Encounter Latin. Wauconda: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2020. Pp. xii, 57. ISBN 9780865168756. $15.00.

Emma Vanderpool, Avēs. Explore Latin. Wauconda: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2020. Pp. vii, 72. ISBN 9780865168749.

Review by

John Godwin. adfamiliares2019@gmail.com

You are never too young to start learning Latin. Bolchazy-Carducci have recently published books in Latin for children as young as four, and it can only be a good idea to familiarise children with Latin and make it part of their introduction to the world of books. Aves is a glossy and highly attractive book: it is full of excellent pictures of such key birds as the eagle, owl, vulture, crow, raven, peacock, goose and chicken, and aspects of their appearance and importance are described on the adjoining pages in the simplest possible Latin. There is a glossary of all the Latin words used at the end of the book and the introduction suggests ways in which this text might be used a starting point for wider discussion of the Roman use of these beautiful creatures.

When I was at school back in the 1970s an enterprising French teacher got hold of a short and simplified version of Dumas’ Le Comte de Monte-Cristo for us to read and I discovered how quickly I could pick up speed and fluency in reading a foreign language if the material chosen is at the correct level of difficulty and is also interesting enough to keep the pages turning. Augury is for the Birds is one of the ‘Encounter Latin’ novella series which aims ‘to engage and delight novice and intermediate Latin learners with comprehensible stories written entirely in Latin’ and which applies the same principle to Latin as my teacher used in French. The series is aimed firmly at children (rather than mature students) and tells of a Roman boy (Marcus) whose soldier father wants him to become an augur. The boy however finds the prospect unappealing and insists that he wishes to follow in his father’s footsteps and join the army. Marcus feigns stupidity when the augur Lucius tries to teach him, hoping in this way to put his father off the idea, and this makes for some humorous moments. It takes most of the short book before his father twigs what the boy is up to and starts to sell the importance of augurs in running the state to his (not-so-gormless) son. The story is told over 40 pages of generously spaced text, interspersed with many pages of neat and attractive illustrations. All the Latin words in the text are glossed in a full vocabulary at the end of the book and footnotes also help readers keep going when the grammatical gradient suddenly goes up. There is a short list of further reading directing students to other Latin texts by Cicero and Pliny, and there are also a few pages of ‘Grammatica’ explaining some of the trickier language used in the text. Nine pages of introduction (by Robert Patrick) explain the methodology behind the publication and make helpful suggestions for using this book in a teaching environment.

These books are both excellent examples of an exciting venture in Latin teaching, making use of findings in early-years teaching in other subjects, tapping into the natural curiosity of children about the world around them, and utilising to the full their sponge-like ability (at a young age) to absorb words in foreign languages. Books such as this will be sure to prepare and stimulate them towards further and more advanced study as they get older.

Comments

4 thoughts on “Augury is for the birds: Mārcus dē avibus discit and Aves”

(I have only read the review of the books, not the books themselves.)
If the pedagogical methodology behind these two books is, as it appears to be, what is called ‘Comprehensible Input’ (CI), associated in particular with Robert Patrick, and the books are specimens of the input materials, are the readers of the books then supposed to acquire Latin as a first language is acquired, and to read the books as if they were reading them in their own language, rather than to translate them as they would texts in a second language? CI claims to enable learners to do the former and it eschews the latter (see the articles cited at the end of these comments). But the fact is that Latin is a second/foreign language, for both teacher and learner, and that there is no getting away from the difficulties this creates for those who wish to present Latin as a first language, or as if it were a first language. Formal, ‘standard’ Latin (‘Classical’ Latin if you like), the variety of Latin used by the books (there being no other available variety), was not acquired as a first language by native Latin speakers; it was learned as if it were a second language. It wasn’t actually a second language for native speakers of Latin, and it was based on the form of the first language of the highly educated, which no doubt made it easier to learn formal Latin. The fact too that it was/is a ‘fixed’ language made it more difficult to learn for native speakers of Latin after the period in which it became fixed and increasingly different from the contemporary form of their first language.

‘There is a glossary … ‘ Is this a list of translations or of meanings? Apparently of the former. But a reader of one’s own language has no need of the former. CI dispenses with one’s own language, using Latin only. Latin is to be acquired as if it were a first language, not learned as a second language is. Evidently some compromises have been made to the stated methodology. The use of macrons too is a compromise. The pronunciation of the language should be acquired in the same way as the other features of a first language are acquired, in this case by listening. Also, speakers of a first language are no longer provided with grammar books of the language. And if they are to be provided for CI learners they should be in Latin, as should all instruction in the language, written and spoken.
‘The series is aimed firmly at children.’ These children are directed to further reading of texts by Cicero and Pliny. Highly adapted texts presumably. What texts by these authors would you put into the hands of a child?
Do we know how Roman children of the same age for whom Latin was a first language, learned to read Latin texts of a comparable degree of difficulty? What kind of Latin was it? Was it a written form of their first language, whatever this was like, or a form of more formal Latin that was learned as if it were a second language? Was it made up Latin (but all Latin was made up) or was it what we call ‘adapted’ Latin (adapted from what?). The Latin of CI learning materials is made up for the most part. I do not know that there is any evidence that the learners are enabled to read, as opposed to translate, original Latin texts written in formal Latin. Can they read, as they read their own language, Horace or Persius, Tacitus or Apuleius? Robert Patrick says they can’t (in the article referred to below) and that it is beyond them just as much as it is for students who learn Latin by more traditional methods in order to translate, not to read, them.

These books are similar to those of Hans Ørberg’s Latin-only monolingual learning materials, variations of the ‘Direct Method’ of teaching and learning, and the ‘Immersive ‘Latin’ approach. I do not know that any of them has enabled learners to read, or translate, Latin authors with any more facility than the traditional ‘grammar-translation’ method.

The publishers blurb says of the Augury book that it uses ‘fewer than 150 unique Latin words’. What is a ‘unique Latin word’ ? It also says that within this small compass it explores ‘a multifaceted father-son relationship’. Both statements cannot be true surely.

On Robert Patrick and CI see ‘Comprehensible Input and Krashen’s Theory’, The Journal of Classics Teaching 20 (39), 37-44

On the limitations of CI, see my article ‘Comprehending Comprehensible Input (CI): Some Obervations, Journal of Classics Teaching 0, 1-2
(I went to the same school as the reviewer. I must have had a different French teacher. Mine was Father (‘Ego’) Riley, a lovely man whom the reviewer may recall.)

“…to read the books as if they were reading them in their own language, rather than to translate them as they would texts in a second language? CI claims to enable learners to do the former and it eschews the latter (see the articles cited at the end of these comments).”

False, CI theory does not claim to avoid use of one’s native language. This is a misinterpretation of the one article you cited. Perhaps you were thinking of an immersion framework to language teaching. The part of Robert Patrick’s article you’re thinking of is this:

“They [students] will require Latin to read that they can understand without having to translate it into English (translation and reading are not the same thing and constitute separate skills).”

What is meant here is that when students read level-appropriate texts, they don’t have to translate. However, they *can* translate what they already understand as part of some activity or skill, not translate *in order to* understand. There is no “eschewing” of English (native/L1) in the learning process in a comprehension-based teaching approach (under a CI framework). This is what’s referred to by others as “judicious use of English/native/L1. In fact, Patrick briefly describes this practice elsewhere in the article:

“How might an acquisition approach look on day one? The Latin teacher has written these words with their English equivalents on the board: sella, surge, i, ad, conside.”

A few notes worth making.
1. Comprehensible Input is a framework for teaching languages and it is not singularly associated with me (Robert Patrick). I have been a proponent and teacher of this framework, but I did not originate it, nor am I the most skilled user of the framework.

2. It is erroneous and simplistic to equate using a CI framework simply with learning Latin as a first language or eschewing any other practice with learning languages. I do not promote either in my cited article, although I draw notice to some similarities between the acquisition of any language, first or otherwise. I am not alone in this observation.

3. I don’t know that any particular pedagogy can be claimed to be “behind” a novella. Pedagogy involves how a teacher chooses to help students make use of a book. These books in this series would not only be welcome to use in a classroom with a CI framework, but in many others as well.

I defer to the superior knowledge of both of you re. CI.

I was under the impression when I first encountered it that it would lead to an easier and more effective reading of original Latin texts than the traditional grammar-translation method. Patrick disabused me of that in his article that I cite (see his remarks towards the end of the article).

It seems to me that no method of teaching and learning the Latin of the canonical texts, as opposed to the input materials of CI, will enable one to read them, rather than translate them with ancillary aids.

I have always supposed that an ability to ‘read’ original Latin texts was the ultimate goal of learning Latin, if not attainable by all or most learners. I do not deny, of course, that made-up and adapted Latin have a necessary part to play, and that learners who do not progress beyond this point have not gained a valuable and one hopes rewarding experience.