Learning Classics is a bit like putting on a magic pair of 3-D glasses. Once you start delving into the language and the culture, you'll start to see it all around you. This blog is a record of the club's journey through the worlds and language of ancient Rome and Greece... and through modern times, too, searching for the influence of classics all around us. You'll also be able to find vocab, home tasks, links and generally enlightening info here, too.

29 November 2014

Lesson 10 - Me, myself and I


Salve, acolitus sum!

A final push on our language work this week, before the Saturnalia fun starts. 

 The class demonstrated its ninja skills in identifying verb forms by grammatically analysing* song lyrics: third person plurals from Bastille ("and the walls came tumbling down..."), imperative plural from Band Aid ("throw your arms around the world..."), and imperative singular from Rihanna ("baby... shut up and drive"). We spotted an infinitive in Pharrell's 'Happy', which then led us on to a new verb form: 'I', or the first person singular. 


Klaudiusz' translations
Nailaa's Latin 
We then had a go at translating first person singular verbs from Latin to English and English to Latin, taking the infinitive, finding the verb 'stem' and then adding 'o'.
 And then the countdown to Saturnalia began. Gizem read us some facts about Saturnalia, the Roman winter festive holiday (which you can see here in more detail. Home task for this week is to find modern equivalents of Saturnalian traditions (on the handout), perhaps persuading you that Christmas has some roots in cultures much older than Christianity.

 Don't forget it's our Great Roman Bake Off week next week. See you in the Food Tech room ten minutes earlier than usual!
* and singing, of course!