Gratius animus est una virtus non solum maxima, sed etiam mater virtutum omnium reliquaram. - Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) (Oratio pro Cnaeo Plancio, 23)
(A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the mother of all other virtues.)
The Latin is grammatically or morphologically flawed in two respects ("gratius" and "reliquaram" - perhaps these are just spelling errors), the line or paragraph number is wrong, and the quotation itself is not exactly what Cicero wrote (or said).
That in turn seems to have been transcribed inattentively from something like this:
Gratus animus est una virtus non solum maxima, sed etiam mater virtutum omnium reliquarum. A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all the other virtues. Cicero—Oratio Pro Cnæo Plancio. XXXIII.
What Cicero actually wrote, in chapter XXXIII, section 80, goes like this (from the Latin Library):
etenim, iudices, cum omnibus virtutibus me adfectum esse cupio, tum
nihil est quod malim quam me et esse gratum et videri. haec enim est una
virtus non solum maxima sed etiam mater virtutum omnium reliquarum. quid est pietas nisi voluntas grata in parentes? qui sunt boni cives,
qui belli, qui domi de patria bene merentes, nisi qui patriae beneficia
meminerunt? qui sancti, qui religionum colentes, nisi qui meritam dis immortalibus
gratiam iustis honoribus et memori mente persolvunt? quae potest esse
vitae iucunditas sublatis amicitiis? quae porro amicitia potest esse
inter ingratos?
The "gratus animus" seems to have been a distillation of the initial sentence to a noun phrase representing the quality to which it refers, and that was then substituted for the pronoun "haec" in the second, an operation performed presumably by some 19th century compiler of notable, memorable, and therefore quotable expressions. The resultant statement is not really Cicero's, but would qualify as a fair representation of his idea about gratitude, at least as that was conceived in the first century B.C.
It's not easy for me to comment about a phenomenon like the appearance of this quotation in a modern blog. On the one hand, one could say that it's nice to see Latin in current use. On the other, one could also say that it's a bit disappointing to see mangled Latin in current use. On the whole, I suppose it reflects rather poorly on current ideas of high quality education and high quality writing that a writer doesn't really understand the Latin he or she cites and is unable or unwilling to run a quotation noted in some sort of compilation down to its source so as to verify such things as its accuracy, legitimacy, context and aptness for the contemplated use.
Globus is the performance off-shoot of a successful producer of epic "trailer" music, i.e., music designed to be played during the display of short promotional films for movies many of which can loosely be described as epics (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I, Avatar, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Angels & Demons, Terminator Salvation, Spiderman 2, Spiderman 3, Astroboy). Apparently the fandom of the work of Immediate Music grew to such an extent that its chief creative person, Yoav Goren, put together a band or ensemble for live performance and the making of albums. There was a performance at Wembley in the UK in 2006 accompanying the release of the first CD, Epicon, which did not come out in the USA until 2008. You can check out a review of the album here and have a look at the official Globus website. In 2011 a second album was released, Break From This World.
The music is grand and sweeping, often with full orchestral instrumentation, frequently accompanied by big chorales singing big full chords moving from one to another in big beautiful ways. Those elements are fused with the apparatus of rock groups (electric guitars, synthesizers, drums) and soaring tenor and soprano leads so as to make what the reviewer called "cinematic rock." I forget how I got tipped off to it, but I liked it right away, got both albums from iTunes, and listen to them a lot while biking.
Some of the lyrics seemed to be Latin, so it occurred to me it might be worth the effort to find transcriptions of them and see exactly what these poems were saying. That was a big disappointment.
There are two songs with lyrics entirely (or almost) in Latin on the first album, Preliator and Diem ex Dei. They are complete gibberish. Take a look at this video of Diem ex Dei from (I think) the performance at Wembley:
Then take a look at this poor guy's attempt at translating - evidently it was a student project:
As even those of you who are Latinless may readily see, the Latin is entirely junk. Preliator is somewhat worse. I reproduce the words in full here:
Hossana Meus
Fortuna Deus
Aeterna Teus
Mystrie, Morte, Sancte, Prior
Fortuna, Hossana meus
Legionus ab comae
Fortuna, fortuna equis
Ad pugnatoris, in veritae
Protego causa in sanctus
Aeternus praetor, firmitas semper
Coryphaeus, rex Regis univers
Prosay solis hossana
Protego Sanctus causa
Padre illuminata
Gloria in resurrectum
Gloria in unum Diem
Terra tenebrae, telluris malus
Quiseri pere curiatus
Genitor edo, in ex domino
Patris illuminata, rex Premis univers
Lacrimosa, lacrimosa, in ex dominum
Somebody at a website called "Latin Discussion" has illustrated rather well the utter absence of sense with this literal translation, in a thread responding to some poor fellow's request for an English translation:
Hossana My Man
Fortune God
Eternal Lady Yoru Mna
MYSTRIE, By Death, O Previous Saint
Fortune, Hossana my man
Legionyish Man from hair
Fortune, fortune by means of horses
To the fighter's, in of she who revered
I shelter for the reason that in, holy man
Eternal chief executive, always firmness
Chorus leader, king of a King univer
PROSAY of the sun hossana
I, a Saint, shelter for the reason
PADRE illuminated girl
Glory into a thing risen again
Glory into one Day
The land the darkness, the apple tree of the earth
Whichlatemen PERE passed by the assembly of wards
Creator I eat, in out of the lord
Of the father illuminated girl, king You Squeeze univer
Crying lady, crying lady, in out of s the lord.
Why would anybody compose such rubbish? And more pointedly, why would anybody make recordings of such rubbishand sell them? Is the psychology behind this similar to that which underlies this scene from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?
So he went to marching up and down, thinking, and
frowning horrible every now and then; then he would hoist up his
eyebrows; next he would squeeze his hand on his forehead and stagger
back and kind of moan; next he would sigh, and next he'd let on to drop a
tear. It was beautiful to see him. By and by he got it. He told us to
give attention. Then he strikes a most noble attitude, with one leg
shoved forwards, and his arms stretched away up, and his head tilted
back, looking up at the sky; and then he begins to rip and rave and grit
his teeth; and after that, all through his speech, he howled, and
spread around, and swelled up his chest, and just knocked the spots out
of any acting ever I see before. This is the speech—I learned it, easy
enough, while he was learning it to the king:
To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane,
But that the fear of something after death
Murders the innocent sleep,
Great nature's second course,
And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune
Than fly to others that we know not of.
There's the respect must give us pause:
Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The law's delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take,
In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn
In customary suits of solemn black,
But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns,
Breathes forth contagion on the world,
And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i' the adage,
Is sicklied o'er with care,
And all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery—go!
In other words, is this some kind of scam perpetrated by poorly educated frauds who know their target audience is even more poorly educated than they? That seems a bit harsh. From a gentler perspective it may be akin to the use J. K. Rowling has made of Latin in the Harry Potter series by writing most of the spells in pseudo-latin. As the wikipedia article on these spells kindly phrases it: "most spoken phrases resemble Latin words of appropriate meaning but are not proper Latin themselves." In other words, maybe it's just kind of a fun thing, making use of the symbolic authority of Latin and its nexus with the mystique of antiquity. After all, 99.9% (or more) of the population neither knows nor cares about proper Latinity. The other tenth of a percent (or less) can either tut-tut in a sort of grotesque futility all they want or relax and enjoy it for what it is: some sort of private language created out of Latin for a limited purpose (for Rowling, helping to make Harry Potter a best-seller; for Globus, helping to sell albums). Of course this preys upon two characteristics of that 99.9%: its indolent ignorance and its desire to partake effortlessly of that which is uncommon and difficult. That sort of depredation (by the more clever of the less) has been going on for millenia; indeed, it seems to be inherent in civilization. I suppose the sane, common sense reaction is simply to note that the range of "more clever" folk now includes those who have no ability to write Latin intelligibly, but who possess the chutzpah to purport to have it, and, having made that observation, simply to relax and enjoy the music.
The second album has one song partly in Latin, Doomsday, and its Latin is just as awful as the Latin lyrics on the first album, so awful that there is really no point in even reproducing those lines here; however, there is a track on this one, In Memoriam, significantly different from these. This song has one of those simple, smooth, pleasant melodies you can't get out of your head for hours after you've heard it. It also has less than a dozen goofs in terms of spelling or grammar and only one serious pronunciation flaw [audax, if you're wondering]. Check out this video [okay, I know: I've picked one where the author is the sort of person who doesn't know how to spell "remembrance" but at least this version will give the Latinless reader a leg up figuring out what's going on here]:
What has happened? In the five years between releases did someone at Globus/Immediate Music learn Latin? I suspect not. It looks to me like somebody just seems to have got the bright idea of finding – probably via internet, though possibly in books, maybe both – a bunch of Latin clichés and proverbs and snatches of poetry all loosely organized around real fuzzy ideas about things like valor, death, the brevity of life, and the diachronic koinonia effectuated by tradition (i.e., memory), and just stringing them together. For the fun of it, I've gone and looked up where all this stuff has come from. [Yes, you're right: way too much time on my hands]
Fortes et liber [correctly: Fortis et liber]
"Strong and free"
on the coat of arms of the province
of Alberta
This would appear to be a Latin
translation of a line in "O Canada" – "The True North strong
and free" – i.e., a relatively recent cliché.
In infinitum
"into infinity (forever)"
very popular on the internet, and
in the past with mathematicians and philosophers, e.g., Fermat's Last Theorem: Cubum autem in duos
cubos, aut quadratoquadratum in duos quadratoquadratos, et generaliter nullam
in infinitum ultra
quadratum potestatem in duos eiusdem nominis fas est dividere cuius rei
demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet.
a modified version of Psalms 18.2caeli enarrant gloriam Dei [The
heavens shew forth the glory of God]
Inter spem et metum
"between hope and fear"
This is another one plastered all
over the internet, but already probably a cliche in antiquity, and often with
some form of fluctuari. From Livy: (Ab Urbe Condita, 42, 59, 8) fluctuante rege inter spem metumque tantae
rei conandae; from Suetonius (Claudius, 4) ne semper inter spem et metum fluctuemur
In vinculis, etiam audax
"courageous even in
bondage" [note that I am reading etiam
as sort of a transferred epithet; it could also be "in bondage, still
bold"]
I can't find an ancient source for
this anywhere (Perseus, OLD, L&S). There are however a couple hundred
repetitions of it on the internet.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
"It is a sweet and fitting
thing to die for one's native land."
from Book 3 of the De Re Militari
of Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus (ca. 4th or 5th
century A.D.). The immediate context
is thus: Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum; qui
victoriam cupit, milites inbuat diligenter; qui secundos optat eventus,
dimicet arte, non casu. Nemo prouocare, nemo audet offendere quem intellegit
superiorem esse, si pugnet. The Latin Library has a copy. Of course this shows up on the internet a
bit more frequently paraphrased as Si
vis pacem, para bellum. E.g., Niall Ferguson quoted that version in an
article in Newsweek (the Daily Beast) in November.
Wiki article here.
Homo vitae, commodatus non donatus
est
"Man is lent, not given, to
life."
One of Publilius Syrus' nuggets. Odd
little thing, since you'd think it'd be the other way around: vita homini commodata non donata est. See Personal and Literary Letters of
Robert, First Earl of Lytton, p. 225:
"I have purchased a cheap edition of Publius [sic] Syrus and am now
reading him for the first time. Some
of his sentences are excellent. This
amongst others (the wisdom of which I am now – having left behind me all I
love best out of my migratory home – in a mood to appreciate): 'Homo vitae
commodatus non donatus est' (man is lent not given to life). Is not this finer and truer than the common
way of putting it from our pulpits, that "life is lent not given to
man"? Text of
Publilius is at the Latin Library.
Esto perpetua
"Let it be everlasting"
Motto of the state of Idaho:
"Let her. . ." might be
more grammatically correct, since perpetua
(with the singular esto) can
only be feminine, but the neuter pronoun would not necessarily be wrong in
English assuming the nominal reference is to an entity feminine in Latin but
neuter in English.
Honor virutis preamium [correctly:
honor virtutis praemium – though it is interesting
that the orthographically damaged version turns up fifty thousand hits or so
in a quoted search string on Google]
"Honor is the reward of
virtue"
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book
8, Chapter 14, section
2 ("At
all events it seems that each party is justified in his claim, and that each
should get more out of the friendship than the other -- not more of the same
thing, however, but the superior more honour and the inferior more gain; for honour is the prize of virtue and of
beneficence, while gain is the assistance required by inferiority.")
Discussed by St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologiae, prima pars secundae
partis quaestio II, articulus II (Sed
honor maxime videtur esse id quod est virtutis praemium, ut philosophus
dicit in IV Ethic. Ergo in honore maxime consistit beatitudo.) Caveat: a
reading of articulus II in full is
necessary to an appreciation of the theologian's entire thinking about the
maxim.
Nil homini certum est
"There is no such thing as certainty
for humankind." Ovid, Tristia,
5.5.27:
Nil homini certum est.
Fieri quis posse putaret,
ut facerem in mediis haec ego sacra Getis?
Eram quod es, eris quod sum
"I was what you are; you will
be what I am." Believed to be a common funerary inscription and probably
was. The Latin Library page on Epitaphs has a couple
similar:
B
799
Vos
qui transitis, nostri memores rogo sitis: q[uo]d sumus, h[o]c eritis, fuimus quandoque q[uo]d estis.
CIL 11.6243
Viator,
viator! Quod tu es, ego fui; quod nunc sum, et tu eris
The thought shows up in a poem in elegiac couplets quoted by Petrus
Alfonsus in his Disciplina
Clericalis, under the heading XXXII. Exemplum de philosopho per
cimiterium transeunte, from which I excerpt the first four lines:
Tu
prope qui transis nec dicis: aveto! resiste,
Auribus et cordis haec mea dicta tene: Sum quod eris; quod es, ipse fui,
derisor amarae
Mortis, dum licuit pace iuvante frui.
According to Google the authors of
some 20,000 webpages attribute the form used in the song to Horace. It is
not, however, in any of his extant writings.
Memoria in aeterna
"in everlasting remembrance"
– pretty obvious really. Jerome used
it in Liber Psalmorum Iuxta LXX, Psalmus
111.7: In
memoria aeterna
erit iustus, ab auditione mala non timebit. In the Iuxta Hebraeos version he used
sempiterna instead of aeterna.
Damna
tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae:
nos ubi decidimus
quo pater Aeneas, quo diues Tullus et Ancus,
puluis et umbra sumus.
redivivus
this is just "reborn" –
in classical times it applied mostly to using materials over again. For later usage see Prudentius, Cathemerina
3, 201-5:
spes
eadem
mea
membra
manet,
quae
redolentia
funereo
iussa
quiescere
sarcophago,
dux
parili
redivivus
humo
ignea
Christus
ad
astra
vocat.
Note that if it is to agree with
the subject of sumus it should be redivivi
Incedium [correctly incendium]
this is just "fire" i.e.,
"passion"
ex amino [correctly: ex animo]
simply "from the heart/soul/spirit"
– so common as to be in Merriam-Webster.
Curiously it was adopted as a name in 2000 by some Ukrainian heavy metal
or Goth kind of band
finis coronat noster opus
"Our end crowns the work."
Where the noster came from is anybody's guess [fortuitously it can agree in
case, number and gender with finis,
so grammatically this is okay, even though one suspects the author's
intention was agreement with opus, in
which case the form would need to be nostrum]
but this expression has been around a long time. There is a lovely little exegesis in
something called "Notes
& Queries" [4th S. IX March 9, '72]: "I suspect
that we have the earliest trace of this idea in Ovid (Heroid. ii. 85), though
the words are not the same. Ovid says,
'Exitus acta probat.' I can go to a somewhat earlier date than Lehman (1630),
whom Mr. Tiedeman quotes, and of whose work in two volumes I possess the
second edition 1640, published at Frankfort.
In "Thesaurus Proverbialium Sententiarum uberrimus, etc. per
Joannem Buchlerum à Gladbach, Scholae Wicradinae Moderatorem, edition tertia,
Coloniae, apud Bernardum Gualtheri, 1613, " I find this proverbial
expression; but Buchler does not, any more than Lehman, tell us where he
found it. He says, however in his
preface, that when he did not find a Latin proverb suitable to translate a
modern proverb, he did his best to present it in a Latin dress. . . His work
is full of Latin proverbs, which he occasionally refers to some classical
source; but opposite to many of them he uses the word "vulgo," by
which I imagine that he intends us to understand that it is of modern date,
though in a Latin form, which he has himself given to it. Opposite to 'Finis coronat opus – Res indicabit –
Non statim finis apparet,' we have 'vulgo.'. . ."
In memoriam
"in
memory of" - also so common
as to be in Merriam-Webster
in excelsius [correctly in excelsis]
"in the highest"
part of the first set of phrases in
the Greater
Doxology: Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax
hominibus bonae voluntatis, from Luke 2.14 (where
Jerome has translated the Greek ὑψίστοις as altissimis,
which is of course roughly synonymous with excelsis) – it is noteworthy in kind of a depressing way that the
misspelling in excelsius has been
put on tens of thousands of webpages
pax vobiscum
"peace be with you"
now a standard liturgical formula
with scriptural provenance: Luke
24.36: Dum haec autem loquuntur, ipse stetit
in medio eorum et dicit eis: “Pax
vobis!” This expression of course makes use
of the dative case instead of the ablative with cum. For both expressions one
supplies an implied optative or hortatory subjunctive sit.
Pax et bonnum [correctly bonum]
"Peace and goodness"
in addition to being a traditional Franciscan salutation and
valediction, it is also a rentable
house at Duck on the Outer Banks in North Carolina.
Is this poetry, at least in the basic sense of having rhythm or meter? You can detect a loose mix of trochees and iambs, particularly if you ignore or know nothing about Latin quantitative meters or the rules governing the placement of the normal stress accent. Is it any kind of literature? Well, there's nothing original about it, and there doesn't seem to be much structure to the way the various bits are assembled, but maybe it can be likened to what Guy Davenport has termed "resonant quotation" in his discussion of the tendencies of some modernist writers to copy things [see his essay Style as Protagonist in Donald Barthelme in The Hunter Gracchus, (Counterpoint, 1997), p. 109: "resonant quotation belongs to modernism as one of its major devices" and compare this passage in The Waste Land (ll. 196-202):
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the Spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole.
in which Eliot has borrowed lines from Andrew Marvel, John Day, Thurland Chattaway, a bawdy Australian ballad, and Paul Verlaine [see Davenport, op. cit. p. 79], and we are left wondering (at least I am) what the coy mistress has to do with Actaeon, and how he turned into Sweeney, and why Sweeney/Actaeon is looking for a prostitute and how the chaste Diana could turn into one of those, and how she could have a daughter, and when was soda water invented, and what Parsifal and his holy grail, for whom presumably the children's choir is singing, have to do with all this, and where are the hounds.] Actually, now that I've written that, it occurs to me that the structure of In Memoriam, haphazard and amorphous as it is, may make about as much sense as this bit of Eliot's famous poem does. Does In Memoriam say anything important? Not really. Certainly nothing that hasn't been said thousands of times before, except maybe in putting all kinds of incongruous things together in one song. It's kind of clever in a way to have Idaho's state motto and part of the Canadian national anthem right up there next to or near one of Horace's or Ovid's famous lines, but perhaps just a tad theologically confusing to be told pulvis et umbra sumus redivivus as if we're not quite sure whether we're pagans or Christians (let alone whether we are singular or plural).
Anyway, when the ear buds are in, and the rhythms and chords and melodic lines are roiling around together like celestial surf in my head while I'm pedaling my TCR-1 along quiet country roads, I like this music, whether or not the lyrics are lousy Latin or lame poetry.
This bit of modern American cinematic fluff was released in 2007 to relatively poor critical reception and low box office numbers. I got it as soon as I found out about it, hoping it might be good for my Latin classes. It's not. Basically it's just a silly little tale about a young princeling getting on with his royal destiny, interspersed with a few battle scenes and bloodshed, a slight romance between an exotic foreign beauty kung fu fighter babe (Aishwarya Rai) and a Britishish leading man type guy (Colin Firth), one wizard (Ben Kingsley) and a magic hero sword (CAI. IVL. CAES. ENSIS CALIBURNUS). It may qualify as historical fiction, but it's very, very, very fictional.
I pass over all the disappointments of plot, acting, tone, style, historicity, etc. My concern here is with the Latin (and the English) in the inscription accompanying the magic hero sword. Here it is:
This is immediately translated by the royal boy: "One edge to defeat, one to defend. In Britannia was I forged to fit the hand of he who is destined to rule."
Actually, the Latin (and the gist of the translation) is not all that bad. I've seen much worse in movies. We've even got gerunds with ad to express purpose, though the quoque is a tad awkward. There are only two fairly obvious errors. In no way does Britannia qualify as a small island within the rule governing the use of the locative case for cities, towns and small islands. The largest island I can find in any grammar book is Cyprus: Hale and Buck, §449, which offers an example from the Bellum Civile, 3, 106,1: Cyprī vīsum. It is deucedly difficult to find any express statement in any of my grammar books (which include, besides H & B, Gildersleeve & Lodge, Allen & Greenough, Lane, Woodcock, Bennett) offering a touchstone for determining which islands are small and which are large, but it is pretty obvious that Britain can't be a small one. Note that the authors of the wikipedia article (as of 5/12/12) on the locative seem to have overlooked Hale and Buck in categorizing Cyprus as too large to take that case.
The second flaw is "incussus" - the past participle of incutio, incutere, incussi, incussus - to strike upon or against; to strike or dash against; to throw, cast, hurl; to strike into,to inspire with, inflict, excite; to shake, cause to tremble (Lewis & Short). The intended word would seem to be "incusus" - the past participle of incudo, incudere, incudi, incusus - to forge with the hammer, to fabricate (Lewis & Short).
The other point worth discussing - not really a flaw, more of a stylistic thing - is the last line: dative (presumably of reference or purpose) of ille, relative pronoun qui in the masculine nominative singular, future active participle regnaturus (in agreement with the relative) of regnare, and an understood est. One might have rather expected to see something like ad usum regis, possibly ad usum regis futuri. That the sword names itself the ensis Caliburnus of Gaius Julius Caesar sets up the irony which a more overt reference to rex would have driven home, since one line of traditional thinking has it that Caesar's monarchical aspirations, or at least the perception among certain patricians that he had monarchical aspirations, got him killed. On the other hand, this level of irony is probably way beyond the film's creators.
As for the English - which is really rather more offensive than the Latin - some quoting (unfortunately somewhat extensively) from the 1927 Fowler, p. 68, will elucidate the issue for those who don't already grasp it:
3. Specimens of case mistakes.
A. Three years of dining are a preliminary for he who would defend his fellows. / Should not a Christian community receive with open arms he who comes out into the world with clean hands & a clean heart? / They came to fight in order to pick up the challenge of he who had said 'Our future lies on the water.' / But it is the whimsical perplexity of Americans contemplating the appearance of London that provides he who guides with most amusement.
* * *
First in frequency & deadliness comes the personal pronoun in a place requiring the objective case followed by a relative that must be subjective, when there is a temptation to regard he-who or they-who as a single word that surely cannot need to have the question of case settled twice over for it; & hazy notions of something one has heard of in classical grammar called relative attraction perhaps induce a comfortable feeling that one will be safe whether one writes he or him. That is a delusion; neither relative attraction nor inverse attraction (the right term here) is a name to conjure with in modern English grammar, though the textbooks can muster a Shaksperian & Miltonic example or two; in modern grammar they are only polite names for elementary blunders. All the A examples should have him instead of he.
I.e., "of he who is destined to rule" should be "of him who is destined to rule." Were it just the boy uttering this "elementary blunder" one could perchance chalk it up to the declining standards of English instruction in American schools. But Colin Firth repeats it. Even the villain repeats it. I think others repeat it. Accordingly it must have been in the script and not a flubbed line by a normally - that is to say inadequately - educated American middle-school aged youth.
It makes me want to throw stuff at the screen, shouting "of him! him! HIM! you idiot!" And then I right away I feel bad for calling King George VI and Jack Worthing and Mr. Darcy an idiot, and I reprove myself for being such a snoot. I show the movie very seldom, partly just to avoid the ambivalence this particular gaucherie creates for me. But even after I've calmed down, I still can't help wondering how someone who has learned reams of material from Wilde and Austen can keep from gagging when he has to say a line with such a stupid mistake in it.
This little gem of academic English (in the sub-genre educational methodology) appears in my "LAST complimentary issue of The Language Educator" a publication of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages under the heading "YOUR RESOURCE FOR RESEARCH: Don't Miss the Spring Issue of Foreign Language Annals" and I guess it is a digest of one of the articles. The heading for this particular digest is "Learning Complex Grammar in the Virtual Classroom: A Comparison of Processing Instruction, Structured Input, Computerized Visual Input Enhancement, and Traditional Instruction"
This study investigated the effects of processing instruction and structured input on the acquisition of the subjunctive in adjectival clauses by 92 second semester distance learners of Spanish. Computerized visual input enhancement was combined with processing instruction and structured input in an attempt to increase the salience of the targeted grammatical form for Web-based delivery. Visual input enhancement was operationalized as word animation of subjunctive forms. Four experimental groups were compared with traditional instruction.
I found this description almost completely incomprehensible, and was reminded of the observations of David Foster Wallace in his essay "Authority and American Usage" in the collection of essays Consider the Lobster (Back Bay Books, 2007): "The truth is that most US academic prose is appalling – pompous, abstruse, claustral, inflated, euphuistic, pleonastic, solecistic, sesquipidelian, Heliogabaline, occluded, obscure, jargon-ridden, empty: resplendently dead." (p. 81, fn. 25)
I wondered a few things. First, would it be possible to use Mr. Wallace's string of adjectives as sort of a checklist students in English (or other) classes could use to pick apart examples of this sort of writing, identifying words or phrases or clauses or whole sentences which could fairly be described with one or more of these adjectives? Obviously students would need to ascertain the meaning of the adjectives first, which might provide a nice vocabulary expansion activity. Mr. Wallace writes in kind of a high register. Second, is his list, while pretty impressive, completely comprehensive? I.e., could we add things like omphalocentric, solipsistic, turgid (perhaps already there in pompous and inflated), or would extending the list be another fruitful task for students? Third, why does Mr. Wallace deviate from the conventional spelling of "sesquipedalian?"
[hiatus of a couple months]
On further consideration, I am inclined to be more charitable. After all, in any academic or professional discipline a certain amount of jargon is inevitable, maybe even healthy. The theory is that a shared terminology facilitates the exchange of ideas. Complex or complicated concepts are abbreviated to a few words and participants can kick them around without elaborate explanations every other sentence: processing instruction, structured input, visual input enhancement, and so forth. Even so, that penultimate sentence is a doozy: Visual input enhancement was operationalized as word animation of subjunctive forms. Is this word animation thing like dancing verbs, or what? Do they sing too?
[hiatus of a couple more months]
Oh why bother whacking away at this puffed up hooey? Bill Watterson put it better two decades ago than I can now:
Magis utile nil est / artibus his quae nil utilitatis habent. (Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto, Liber I, V (Cottae Maximo) ll. 53-4)
Last year I put together a few observations and thoughts about Latin and the SAT. After I noticed the 2011 Total Group Report was out some months ago, I got to looking at it and noticed that things seemed to be about the same as the year before. This time I thought I'd see what was going on with the Subject Test data, and that led me to looking at the correlation between years of study and various subject areas. Eventually that got me into wondering where the three (four if you count a distance learning course offering) languages at my school fit with the national data. You can download copies and check the data at the CollegeBoard Data & Reports page. For earlier years look under Archived SAT Data & Reports.
Caveats: The SAT report says that the data in it is for high school graduates in the year 2011. It claims a total number of test-takers of 1,647,123. What percentage of all high school graduates this represents I don't know. The 2011 ACT report claims "About 49% of all 2011 high school graduates in the United States took the ACT during high school, or about 1.62 million graduates." Were there then about 3.3 million high school graduate? There must be some percentage of graduates who took neither test, those heading for the military, into technical/vocational training programs, or directly into the workforce. Presumably there are some stats on this, but I don't know where they are. The ACT report does not mention foreign languages.
Subject tests have been going on for what seems like forever. I think I took them in English and French back in 1966 or 1967. At least I picked up 6 credits at Penn State for them. In 2011 there were some 312,000 subject test takers. This is up from about 279,000 in 2006. Of these about 3,000 have taken the subject test in Latin. That one percent of the subject test taking population does better on the three aspects of the general SAT than any other group, and of course rather considerably better than the norm for all students (which has been totaling about 1500 the last five years - see below). Note that I have just added up the three scores for Critical Reading, Mathematics and Writing.
year
total of the mean scores of Latin students (about 1% of the total number of test takers)
mean of the total mean scores for other students
next highest set of mean scores to Latin
subject of the test with the next highest mean scores
lowest set of mean scores
subject of the test with the lowest mean scores
2006
2011
1833.8
1922
German
1698
Spanish listening
2007
2020
1831
1907
German
1676
Spanish listening
2008
2026
1827
1912
German
1665
Spanish listening
2009
2019
1833
1929
German
1675
Spanish listening
2010
2028
1838.25
1927
Physics
1685
Spanish listening
2011
2026
1838.05
1917
Chemistry
1674
Spanish listening
As I did last year, I wonder why the fact that these Latin students have done about ten percent better than the average subject test taker, and about 35 percent better than the average SAT taker doesn't lead to larger numbers of Latin students. One minor curiosity is that these Latin subject test takers score better (by an average of 15 points) than those who take the Math 2 subject test on the math part of the general SAT, where they score about the same as Chemistry students and only some 35 points, on average, below Physics students who do the best on that part of the SAT. I suppose these Latin subject test takers were mostly among the students who took two or three subject tests. A large majority of subject test takers took two or more tests. Whatever that may mean, there seems to be something about Latin itself, or about the sort of student who takes Latin seriously enough to do a Subject Test in it, or both, that sets this small group of subject test takers distinctly apart from all the rest.
Each annual report breaks down subject areas into six major groups: English, mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences & history, foreign languages, and arts & music (which also includes computer related courses). I thought I'd see how foreign language students in general compared to others over the last six years in the total of their scores for Critical Reading, Mathematics and Writing per number of years of study in any particular one of these subject areas. That led to the production of these six charts, including one for students taking AP or Honors courses. In these charts the subject areas are sorted in descending order by the mean of the scores for the six years.
One year of study:
Subject
Total mean scores
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
mean
Arts and Music
1495
1503
1502
1494
1505
1504
1500.5
Social Science & History
1386
1371
1379
1356
1378
1412
1380.33
Natural Sciences
1395
1380
1373
1349
1354
1379
1371.67
English
1365
1343
1310
1307
1353
1454
1355.33
Mathematics
1358
1334
1286
1266
1326
1421
1331.83
Foreign Languages
1322
1321
1314
1318
1321
1328
1320.67
Two years of study:
Subject
Total mean scores
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
mean
Arts and Music
1503
1509
1507
1495
1519
1522
1509.17
Social Science & History
1429
1429
1435
1423
1432
1439
1431.17
English
1426
1411
1438
1402
1423
1454
1425.67
Foreign Languages
1407
1412
1414
1413
1420
1424
1415
Natural Sciences
1409
1404
1402
1390
1400
1410
1402.5
Mathematics
1382
1365
1368
1346
1372
1397
1371.67
Three years of study:
Subject
Total mean scores
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
mean
Foreign Languages
1540
1545
1544
1536
1548
1548
1543.5
Arts and Music
1509
1519
1516
1509
1533
1531
1519.5
Social Science & History
1465
1474
1473
1463
1475
1477
1471.17
Natural Sciences
1433
1440
1442
1438
1451
1454
1443
English
1396
1400
1403
1401
1408
1397
1400.83
Mathematics
1385
1386
1390
1391
1400
1396
1391.33
Four years of study:
Subject
Total mean scores
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
mean
Foreign Languages
1657
1673
1669
1654
1681
1681
1669.17
Arts and Music
1588
1603
1596
1586
1612
1616
1600.17
Natural Sciences
1555
1577
1564
1561
1580
1586
1570.5
Social Science & History
1541
1553
1548
1538
1554
1557
1548.5
Mathematics
1521
1543
1540
1533
1550
1554
1540.17
English
1528
1539
1535
1523
1541
1545
1535.17
Five or more years of study:
Subject
Total mean scores
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
mean
Foreign Languages
1681
1681
1704
1681
1706
1699
1692
Natural Sciences
1644
1652
1683
1653
1671
1665
1661.33
Mathematics
1638
1643
1669
1640
1657
1652
1649.83
Social Science & History
1607
1605
1640
1609
1621
1609
1615.17
Arts and Music
1592
1585
1597
1584
1600
1595
1592.17
English
1585
1570
1607
1580
1587
1566
1582.5
Students who reported taking an AP or Honors course in these subject areas:
Subject
Total mean scores
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
mean
Foreign Languages
1721
1731
1733
1714
1738
1736
1728.83
Mathematics
1704
1713
1715
1704
1729
1731
1716
Natural Sciences
1705
1714
1715
1702
1723
1724
1713.83
Arts and Music
1695
1704
1711
1689
1710
1707
1702.67
Social Science & History
1676
1687
1690
1677
1698
1701
1688.17
English
1663
1674
1678
1665
1686
1687
1675.5
Foreign language students start off at the bottom of the barrel in year one. By the third year, they have taken the lead and stay in it solidly the rest of the way. The numbers clearly indicate that the long-term, serious pursuit of a foreign language is associated with significantly higher critical reading, math and writing scores on the SAT to a greater extent than the long-term, serious pursuit of any of the other five subject areas. The fact that this information has been out there for years, needing only to be looked at and put together, makes a person wonder about either the bona fides or the intelligence of those who are behind such things as NCLB, CCSS, STEM, and other schemes for what passes for school reform and improvement in this day and age, all of which mention foreign language instruction either not at all or only as a kind of amusing hobby draining energy and time from important subjects like English. It is indeed curious that if one were to be limited to five choices of subject areas to teach or to study, this particular set of data logically would dictate the elimination of English.
Probably the distinction between required and elective courses and the prevailing policies of most schools have much to do with these results. Most schools probably require things like mathematics and English for all four high school years, natural sciences and the social sciences for maybe three or four, while foreign languages and the arts are either pure electives or something in between (e.g., perhaps two years are required for kids intending to go to college; or maybe everybody has to take a semester or two of music or art or technology or human development or something of that sort). English and math have been the focus of the high-stakes testing program in Pennsylvania known as the PSSA so they tend to get an awful lot of attention from the education department, school administrators and teachers. Foreign languages don't get a lot of attention. And that is a good thing, given the tendency of the officious know-it-alls in PDE, PSEA and colleges of education to pump out enormous quantities of obfuscatory balderdash on whatever half-baked fad their beady little brains happen to have become focused on. In other words foreign language teachers have the advantage of not being impeded by the burden of figuring out how to deal with a confusing array of such things as "assessment anchors" (with their reporting categories, references, descriptors, cross-walking, eligible content, sample items, etc., etc.) unlike English teachers who have to deal with that whole mess and somehow either use it or pretend to use it in order to teach in such a way as to reduce the odds of the sort of student failure on the PSSA tests that could result in unpleasant consequences for the teacher. Perhaps if good English teachers had more time to actually teach English, students who have to take English for four years might do a bit better on the SAT. Another big factor behind these results is probably the self-selection thing. Naturally subjects which all students are constrained to take will have a higher concentration of the unwilling and unmotivated type of student who doesn't read, think or learn very well. Non-mandatory subjects will tend to have more students characterized by willingness and personal motivation who have some confidence in their ability to do well because they have acquired some reading, thinking and learning skills, or in the case of the arts and music because they have more than ordinary artistic and musical talent. A third part of the probable explanation for these kind of results is simply that there is something about the study of foreign languages that tends to improve a person's mind to a greater extent and in more ways than the study of any other subject.
The next logical question for me then was to work out which language is associated with the probability of scoring above average on the three SAT tests. Here I've limited my inquiry to the languages offered at my school, one of which (German) is only offered by distance learning, and may in fact have fallen by the wayside by now. [Just as a side note: Chinese and Hebrew students tend to do about as well and sometimes a bit better than Latin students: the Chinese students tend to be really good on the math part of the test, while the Hebrew students, like Latin students, tend to do about the same on all three segments of the test]. A few years ago, one of my better Latin students took this course and did well; he majored in German in college and is currently doing post-graduate work somewhere in Germany. Here are two charts showing first the sets of critical reading, mathematics and writing scores for the past six years for Latin, German, French and Spanish, with the basic national average added so as to make it obvious where each stacks up relative to it, and second the enrollment trends for each of these four languages as measured by the number of students who reported taking at least some quantity of coursework in each language.
Subject
Total mean scores
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
mean
Latin
1655
1667
1670
1657
1678
1668
1665.83
German
1583
1595
1599
1594
1600
1596
1594.5
French
1557
1569
1571
1562
1582
1575
1569.33
National average
1500
1509
1509
1511
1511
1518
1509.67
Spanish
1496
1503
1505
1494
1510
1507
1502.5
Subject
total number of students in thousands
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
mean
Latin
76
77
77
72
86
87
79.17
German
53
53
54
52
61
64
56.17
French
220
214
214
205
236
247
222.67
total test takers
1647
1547
1530
1518
1494
1465
1533.5
Spanish
905
890
882
820
870
852
869.83
There is perhaps some irony in the circumstance that the number of Latin students (who routinely score about ten percent better than the national average) has decreased by about 11,000, and the number of Spanish students (who routinely score a little under the national average) has increased by about 53,000. Pretty obviously something besides a familiarity with this data and an appreciation for the value of high SAT scores has been driving curriculum, staffing and enrollment decisions.
In my school (with a total student population in four grades of about 600), the enrollment in Latin IV is -0-, in Latin III -3-, in Latin II -6-, in Latin I -11-, in French IV -0-, in French III -0-, in French II -10- and in French I -25-, in Spanish IV -6-, in Spanish III -16-, in Spanish II, -60-, in Spanish I -90-. We have no AP or Honors courses in foreign languages. Half, or slightly more (at least last year), of our senior class goes to college. With the rather low enrollment in the third and fourth years it appears that some of our students are not making the most of their opportunities.
