Latin mnemonics

Last updated

A Latin mnemonic verse or mnemonic rhyme is a mnemonic device for teaching and remembering Latin grammar. Such mnemonics have been considered by teachers to be an effective technique for schoolchildren to learn the complex rules of Latin accidence and syntax. One of their earliest uses was in the Doctrinale by Alexander of Villedieu written in 1199 as an entire grammar of the language comprising 2,000 lines of doggerel verse. Various Latin mnemonic verses continued to be used in English schools until the 1950s and 1960s.

Contents

Authors who have borrowed Latin mnemonics from Latin textbooks for their own works include Thomas Middleton and Benjamin Britten. For example, in Britten's opera The Turn of the Screw , he used the words of a Latin mnemonic that he had found in a Latin grammar book belonging to Myfanwy Piper's aunt for Miles' "malo" song.

Jacques Brel wrote a song in 1962 about a Latin mnemonic verse. Some mnemonics have been recited to hymn tunes.

History

Mnemonic rhymes have been considered by teachers to be an effective technique for schoolchildren to learn the complex rules of Latin accidence and syntax. [1]

One of the earliest uses of mnemonic verse to teach Latin was the Doctrinale by Alexander of Villedieu, which was an entire grammar of the language comprising 2,000 lines of doggerel verse produced in 1199. It was used as a standard Latin grammar textbook across Europe for three centuries, and continued to be used in Italy and other places until relatively recently. [note 1] Apart from Terentianus Maurus' De litteris syllabis et metris Horatii, discovered at Bobbio in 1493, all ancient grammatical texts prior to the Doctrinale had been prose works, with the only verse therein being citations from Roman poets; although some, such as those by Petrus Helias and Paolo da Camaldoli, contain mnemonic verses. Critics of Alexander at the time considered it to be "a monstrous idea to squeeze an entire grammar into verses". [2] [3] [4]

The verse form of Doctrinale in fact arose by accident. Alexander had been employed by the bishop of Dol-de-Bretagne to teach Latin to his nephews, using the grammar of Priscian. He had noticed that the boys could not remember Priscian as prose, so he translated its rules into verse form. When Alexander was away one day, the bishop asked his nephews a grammar question, and was surprised when they answered in verse. The bishop persuaded Alexander to compile and to publish an entire book of such verses, which became the Doctrinale. [3]

Many grammarians adopted Alexander's innovation soon afterwards, including John of Garland (incidentally Alexander's harshest critic) who wrote grammatical treatises in verse, Simon di Vercelli ("Maestro Sion") who wrote Novum Doctrinale somewhere between 1244 and 1268 (it only being transcribed by one of his pupils when he died in 1290), and Everard de Béthune who wrote Graecismus in 1212. From that point onwards, it was rare for a grammatical work to not at least contain the principal rules as mnemonic verses.[ citation needed ] Even the new humanistic grammars of the 15th century included mnemonic verses excerpted from Doctrinale or other versified grammars. This method of Latin grammar instruction was used by teachers well into the 20th century, it still being used in English schools in the 1950s and 1960s. [3] [4]

Thomas Sheridan wrote several mnemonic poems, with the intention of helping students to remember various parts of Latin grammar, prosody, and rhetoric, which were published as An Easy Introduction of Grammar in English for the Understanding of the Latin Tongue and A Method to Improve the Fancy. One of the shorter ones is "Of Knowing the Gender of Nouns by Termination": [5]

All nouns in a make Feminine,
If you like "Musa" them decline,
Except they're from a Graecian line,
Or by their sense are Masculine.[ further explanation needed ]

Examples and analysis

In his opera The Turn of the Screw , Benjamin Britten used the words of a Latin mnemonic that he had found in a Latin grammar book belonging to Myfanwy Piper's aunt for Miles' "malo" song: [6]

Mālo: I would rather be
Mālo: In an apple tree
Mălo: Than a naughty boy
Mălo: In adversity

The rhyme explains the Latin near-homonym sentence "malo malo malo malo" [note 2] , where each is a different meaning for one of the two words "mālo" and "mălo." One of its functions is to remind students that the ablative of comparison does not employ a preposition and that the preposition typically employed with the ablative of place where is sometimes omitted (typically in verse). Thus "in an apple tree" can be rendered "malo", instead of the more common "in malo". [6] [7]

Another author who borrowed from Latin grammar textbooks was Thomas Middleton. In his play A Mad World, My Masters the character Follywit addresses a treasure chest that he is about to rob: [8]

Ha! Now, by my faith, a gentlewoman of very good parts: diamond, ruby, sapphire, ’onyx cum prole silexque‘. If I do not wonder how the quean 'scaped tempting, I'm an hermaphrodite!

The Latin phrase is a line taken from William Lily's Latin grammar Brevissima Institutio, from a mnemonic poem entitled "The Third Special Rule", the particular verse of which is entitled "Nouns of the doubtful Gender excepted": [8] [9] [10]

Sunt dubii generis, cardo, margo, cinis, obex,
Forceps, pumex, imbrex, cortex, pulvis, adeps que:
Adde culex, natrix, et onyx cum prole, siléx que;
Quamvis hæc meliùs vult mascula dicier usus.

The literal meaning of the phrase is "onyx with its compounds, and silex". Its use by Middleton is in fact a pun. It has both a surface meaning on the precious metals in the treasure chest and a deeper meaning, given the "doubtful gender" title of the verse, on Follywit's own cross-dressing. [11]

A Latin rhyme for remembering the list of Latin prepositions that take the ablative case is given by William Windham Bradley: [12]

A, ab, absque, coram, de,
palam, clam, cum, ex, et e,
sine, tenus, pro, et prae;
His super, subter, addito,
et in, sub, si fit statio.

John Barrow Allen translated it into English as follows: [13]

A (ab), absque, coram, de,
palam, clam, cum, ex, or e,
sine, tenus, pro, and prae.
And unto these, if rest at be intended,
Let in, sub, super, subter be appended.

Another version, taught in the 1950s, was :-

A (ab), absque, coram, de,
palam, clam, cum, ex, and e,
sine, tenus, pro, and prae.
Add super, subter, sub, and in,
When STATE not MOTION 'tis they mean. [14]

A longer companion verse for the accusative case ended with the line

When MOTION 'tis, not STATE they mean.

A condensed version is SIDSPACE.

Such a mnemonic is a simple collection of words, and the musical rhythm acts as an aid to memory. Thomas Thornely asked "whose heart has not been stirred in early youth by the solemn chant" of this mnemonic, saying that "in this meaningless collocation of syllables we seem to hear the low rumbling of thunder of the Dies Irae and are naturally led to contrast it with the light tripping of the banded prepositions that favour the accusative". A similar example is the rosa mnemonic, used by French schoolchildren, which is simply the first declension: [1]

rosa rosa rosam
rosae rosae rosa
rosae rosae rosas
rosarum rosis rosis

Jacques Brel's 1962 song about this calls it "le plus vieux tango du monde" (the world's oldest tango) which fair-haired youngsters "Ânonnent comme une ronde En apprenant leur latin" (drone like a round whilst learning their Latin). [1]

Mnemonic rhymes have sometimes failed. Jean-Jacques Rousseau once complained of "those Ostrogothic verses that made me sick to my heart and could not get into my ear". Other children regarded the mnemonics more favourably, setting them to familiar tunes. Edward Hornby would recite the following, which he described as "little pearls of poetry", to the tune of the hymn "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling": [1]

Third Nouns Masculine prefer
Endings o, or, os and er,
add to which the ending es,
if its Cases have increase.

Many neuters end in er,
siler, acer, verber, ver,
tuber, uber, and cadaver,
piper, iter, and papaver.

Third Nouns Feminine we class
ending is, x, aus, and as,
s to consonant appended,
es in flexion unextended.

Footnotes

Related Research Articles

In linguistics, declension is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and determiners to indicate number, case, gender, and a number of other grammatical categories. Meanwhile, the inflectional change of verbs is called conjugation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Latin</span> Indo-European language of the Italic branch

Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Classical Latin is considered a dead language as it is no longer used to produce major texts, while Vulgar Latin evolved into the Romance Languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins in Latium, the lower Tiber area around Rome, Italy. Through the expansion of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian Peninsula and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the early 19th century, when regional vernaculars supplanted it in common academic and political usage—including its own descendants, the Romance languages.

Latin declension is the set of patterns according to which Latin words are declined—that is, have their endings altered to show grammatical case, number and gender. Nouns, pronouns, and adjectives are declined, and a given pattern is called a declension. There are five declensions, which are numbered and grouped by ending and grammatical gender. Each noun follows one of the five declensions, but some irregular nouns have exceptions.

A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic effect in the final position of lines within poems or songs. More broadly, a rhyme may also variously refer to other types of similar sounds near the ends of two or more words. Furthermore, the word rhyme has come to be sometimes used as a shorthand term for any brief poem, such as a nursery rhyme or Balliol rhyme.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mnemonic</span> Learning technique that aids remembering

A mnemonic device or memory device is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval in the human memory, often by associating the information with something that is easier to remember.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oscan language</span> Extinct language of southern Italy

Oscan is an extinct Indo-European language of southern Italy. The language is in the Osco-Umbrian or Sabellic branch of the Italic languages. Oscan is therefore a close relative of Umbrian and South Picene.

In linguistics, a gerund is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, it is one that functions as a noun. The name is derived from Late Latin gerundium, meaning "which is to be carried out". In English, the gerund has the properties of both verb and noun, such as being modifiable by an adverb and being able to take a direct object. The term "-ing form" is often used in English to refer to the gerund specifically. Traditional grammar makes a distinction within -ing forms between present participles and gerunds, a distinction that is not observed in such modern grammars as A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language and The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Latin grammar</span> Grammar of the Latin language

Latin is a heavily inflected language with largely free word order. Nouns are inflected for number and case; pronouns and adjectives are inflected for number, case, and gender; and verbs are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect, voice, and mood. The inflections are often changes in the ending of a word, but can be more complicated, especially with verbs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Lily (grammarian)</span> 15th/16th-century English classical grammarian and scholar

William Lily was an English classical grammarian and scholar. He was an author of the most widely used Latin grammar textbook in England and was the first high master of St Paul's School, London.

Adpositions are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations or mark various semantic roles. The most common adpositions are prepositions and postpositions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Latino sine flexione</span> Latin-based international auxiliary language

Latino sine flexione, Interlingua de Academia pro Interlingua or Peano's Interlingua is an international auxiliary language compiled by the Academia pro Interlingua under the chairmanship of the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932) from 1887 until 1914. It is a simplified version of Latin, and retains its vocabulary. Interlingua-IL was published in the journal Revue de Mathématiques in an article of 1903 entitled De Latino Sine Flexione, Lingua Auxiliare Internationale, which explained the reason for its creation. The article argued that other auxiliary languages were unnecessary, since Latin was already established as the world's international language. The article was written in classical Latin, but it gradually dropped its inflections until there were none.

Piphilology comprises the creation and use of mnemonic techniques to remember many digits of the mathematical constant π. The word is a play on the word "pi" itself and of the linguistic field of philology.

Carmen Possum is a popular 80-line macaronic poem written in a mix of Latin and English and dating to the 19th century. Its author is unknown, but the poem's theme and language enable one to surmise that he or she was from the United States of America and was either a teacher or at least a student of Latin.

In linguistics, a grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language. Within each category there are two or more possible values, which are normally mutually exclusive. Frequently encountered grammatical categories include:

<i>The Turn of the Screw</i> (opera) Opera by Benjamin Britten

The Turn of the Screw is a 20th-century English chamber opera composed by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, based on the 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

In linguistics, an inflected preposition is a type of word that occurs in some languages, that corresponds to the combination of a preposition and a personal pronoun. For instance, the Welsh word iddo is an inflected form of the preposition i meaning "to/for him"; it would not be grammatically correct to say *i ef.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English prepositions</span> Prepositions in the English language

English prepositions are words – such as of, in, on, at, from, etc. – that function as the head of a prepositional phrase, and most characteristically license a noun phrase object. Semantically, they most typically denote relations in space and time. Morphologically, they are usually simple and do not inflect. They form a closed lexical category.

In Latin grammar, the ablative case is one of the six cases of nouns. Traditionally, it is the sixth case. It has forms and functions derived from the Proto-Indo-European ablative, instrumental, and locative. It expresses concepts similar to those of the English prepositions from; with, by; and in, at. It is sometimes called the adverbial case, since phrases in the ablative can be translated as adverbs: incrēdibilī celeritāte, 'with incredible speed', or 'very quickly'.

Quenya is a constructed language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, and used in his fictional universe, Middle-earth. Here is presented a resume of the grammar of late Quenya as established from Tolkien's writings c. 1951–1973. It is almost impossible to extrapolate the morphological rules of the Quenya tongue from published data because Quenya is a fictional and irregular language that was heavily influenced by natural languages, such as Finnish and Latin, not an international auxiliary language with a regular morphology.

Latin syntax is the part of Latin grammar that covers such matters as word order, the use of cases, tenses and moods, and the construction of simple and compound sentences, also known as periods.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Francoise Waquet (2003). "A Familiar World". Or the Empire of the Sign (in Latin). Verso. pp. 110–112. ISBN   1-85984-402-2.
  2. ↑ Robert Marzari (2006). Arabic in Chains: Structural Problems and Artificial Barriers. Verlag Hans Schiler. p. 120. ISBN   3-89930-119-6.
  3. 1 2 3 Robert Black (2001). Humanism and Education in Medieval and Renaissance Italy . Cambridge University Press. pp.  75–77. ISBN   0-521-40192-5.
  4. 1 2 3 Charles Garfield Nauert (2006). Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe. Cambridge University Press. pp. 45–46. ISBN   0-521-83909-2.
  5. ↑ Thomas Sheridan (1994). "Preface". In Robert Hogan (ed.). The Poems of Thomas Sheridan. University of Delaware Press. p. 15. ISBN   0-87413-495-1.
  6. 1 2 Claire Seymour (2004). The Operas of Benjamin Britten: Expression and Evasion. Boydell and Brewer Ltd. p. 203. ISBN   1-84383-314-X.
  7. ↑ Metropolitan Opera Guild (1969–1970). Opera News. Vol. 34. Metropolitan Opera Guild.
  8. 1 2 Thomas Middleton (1998). Globe Theatre Staff (ed.). A Mad World, My Masters. Nick Hern Books. pp. 58, 83. ISBN   1-85459-409-5.
  9. ↑ An introduction to the Latin tongue. Eton, England: E. Williams. 1818. pp. 66–67.
  10. ↑ Thomas Middleton (1998). Michael Taylor (ed.). A Mad World, My Masters and Other Plays. Oxford University Press. p. 313. ISBN   0-19-283455-X.
  11. ↑ Helen Ostovich; Mary V. Silcox; Graham Roebuck (1999). "A Puppet Play In Pictures". Other Voices, Other Views: Expanding the Canon in English Renaissance. University of Delaware Press. p. 103. ISBN   0-87413-680-6.
  12. ↑ William Windham Bradley (1855). Latin exercises. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. p. 153.
  13. ↑ John Barrow Allen (1875). A first Latin exercise book. pp.  46.
  14. ↑ A Shorter Latin Primer. ISBN   0-582-36241-5. https://archive.org/details/KennedysShorterLatinPrimer (Page 109) - This is the one I was taught.
  15. ↑ Robert Reid (1864). Old Glasgow and Its Environs: Historical and Topographical. pp.  284.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.