January 23, 2011

Dies diei discipulus

Recording also available at iPadio using this link.
Today's saying is Dies diei discipulus. In English: "One day is the student of another."

This is a great little proverb about "lifelong learning" - or what you might call "day by day learning." There are a lot of different metaphors packed into this tiny saying. Here is how I understand it: Each day faces new challenges and has things to learn, but the day does not have to figure things out on its own; one day is the student of another day, of yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. So, let each day learn what it can, so that it can help to teach the days to come!

In terms of proverb style, you can see the wonderful effect of alliteration here. I'm not sure how to even try to render that in English.

For those of you who are fans of macrons, here is the Latin written with macrons:

Diēs diēī discipulus.




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January 22, 2011

Doce ut discas

Recording also available at iPadio using this link.
Today's saying is Doce ut discas. In English: "Teach in order to learn."

This is a saying whose truth comes home to me every single day in my job as a teacher. By teaching, I keep improving my knowledge, strengthening and reinforcing it. Sometimes, in fact, I feel guilty because it seems that I might be learning more than my students. I'll look something up to answer a student's question, and the answer stays with me, even if the student might soon forget that they even asked me that question. Of course, students can be teachers, too, and one of the best things students can do is to teach something to someone else - to another student in the class, to their friends or a roommate, or to their own children. Lots of the students in my classes are parents with young children at home, and I'm always hopeful that they will use some of the stories they read in class to entertain their own children. I'm sure that telling the story to their children is a far better way to reinforce their knowledge than any quiz or class assignment I could come up with. So, if there is something you want to learn, find a way to teach it to someone else, too. Teaching is a powerful way to learn!

In terms of proverb style, this saying benefits from the alliteration between the verbs docere and discere in Latin. In English, the verbs teach and learn don't have this built-in verbal echo, alas.

For those of you who are fans of macrons, here is the Latin written with macrons:

Docē ut discās.




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January 21, 2011

Exercitatio optimus est magister

Recording also available at iPadio using this link.
Today's saying is Exercitatio optimus est magister. In English: "Practice is the best teacher."

This is a saying that is very much at the heart of my own philosophy of teaching and learning. It seems to me that people really teach themselves by practicing whatever it is that they want to learn - and the more they practice, the more they will learn. You don't really even need a teacher to learn something, after all. What you need is practice, and lots of it, so that you can become your own teacher. We all know that practice is important for musicians, say, and for athletes. Yet it seems to me we underestimate the importance of practice when it comes to academic learning. In my opinion, we put way too much emphasis on tests and grading, and far too little emphasis on practice itself, for its own sake. You might know the traditional English saying, "Practice makes perfect." Of course, I don't want to fall into the trap of being a perfectionist. So, instead of the saying "Practice makes perfect," I prefer today's Latin saying instead: Exercitatio optimus est magister, "Practice is the best teacher."

In terms of Latin grammar, the trick here is recognizing the distinction between the subject - exercitatio - and the predicate, optimus est magister. That is typical Latin word order, but it is definitely a bit unusual for English speakers. The verb est, whose appearance in the sentence is purely optional, has been sandwiched neatly in-between the predicate noun, magister, and its adjective, optimus. As you hear the proverb in Latin, you get a clue about what is going on because the adjective optimus obviously cannot be modifying the noun exercitatio, as the noun is feminine and the adjective is not!

For those of you who are fans of macrons, here is the Latin written with macrons:

Exercitātiō optimus est magister.




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Blog Redux

A blog reborn! I've been working a lot of Latin animal proverbs which you can see at the Latin Via Proverbs blog... but along the way I keep running into proverbs that I like so much that I've decided to revive this blog after a very long sleep!

What I've decided to do is to choose a theme to explore each year. This year the theme will be learning and school, hoping to accumulate some words of wisdom for teachers and students alike. :-)
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August 29, 2010

Mille Fabulae et Una: 1001 Aesop's Fables in Latin

This blog is not currently active but you can find lots of new materials at the blog for the new Mille Fabulae book: MilleFabulae.blogspot.com.

Download a free copy of Mille Fabulae et Una.
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October 31, 2009

Lupus pilum mutat, non mentem

In English: A wolf can change his coat but not his character.

In that last post, the wolf was the hero of the story, but that is not always the case, as you can see in today's saying, which warns us instead to beware of the wolf! It may not always look like a wolf, but it will certainly act like a wolf, which could put us in serious danger.

In a literal sense, the wolf might try to change his coat by replacing it with that of a sheep, as in the proverbial "wolf in sheep's clothing," as we saw earlier with the saying that warned us: Pelle sub agnina latitat mens saepe lupina, "Beneath the lamb's skin often lurks a wolf's mind."

The wolf is also famous for trying to change in other ways, such as deciding to become a monk, or deciding to become a vegetarian, or offering to be a midwife to the sow, or making an alliance with the sheep, or even pretending to be a shepherd himself. In all of these situations, the wolf may not look like the typical wolf, but we should always watch out, as these outward changes do not mean that there is any change in the inward wolf, as you can see in Odo of Cheriton's story about the wolf here called Isengrimus here, his name in the medieval beast epic tradition:
Contigit quod quidam Paterfamilias habuit XII Oues. Voluit peregrinari et commendavit Oves suas Ysemgrino, id est Lupo, compatri suo. Et compater iuravit quod bene conservaret eas. Profectus est statim. Ysemgrinus interim cogitavit de Ovibus et uno die comedit de una, altera die de alia, ita quod vix tres invenit Paterfamilias, quando reversus est. Quaerebat a compatre quid factum fuerit de aliis Ovibus. Respondit Ysemgrimus quod mors ex temperalitate venit super eas. Et dixit Paterfamilias: Da mihi pelles; et inventa sunt vestigia dentium Lupi. Et ait Paterfamilias: Reus es mortis; et fecit Lupum suspendi.

It happened that a certain man had twelve sheep. He wanted to go on a journey, and he entrusted the sheep to Isengrimus, that is, to the wolf, his associate. And his associate swore that he would take good care of them. The man departed immediately. Isengrimus meanwhile got to thinking about the sheep and one day he ate one sheep, and the next day he ate another sheep, and so on until the man found scarcely three sheep when he returned home. He asked his associate what had happened to the other sheep. Isengrimus answered that death had come upon them unseasonably. And the man said: Give me their skins, and the traces of the Wolf's teeth could be seen there. And the man said: You are guilty of a capital crime, and he had the wolf hanged.
So, the wolf pays the price in the end for his misdeeds, but it is the man who is the biggest loser: he foolishly trusted his sheep to the care of the wolf and lost his flock as result, when he really should have known better. If only he had paid attention to today's saying!

So, hoping you have managed to avoid all wolves, real and metaphorical, in your vicinity, here is today's proverb read out loud:

Lupus pilum mutat, non mentem.
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For more Latin proverbs, fables and commentary, visit the Bestiaria Latina blog, or you can sign up to receive the latest posts by email.
Aesop's Fables in Latin now available at Amazon.com.
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Infra tuam pelliculam te contine

In English: Keep yourself within your own skin.

I thought that since yesterday's saying was about a diminutive (edentulus), I would choose another saying with a diminutive today: pellicula, which means "skin" or "hide," which is a diminutive form of the noun pellis.

Using the metaphor of skin, the proverb advises you to stick to your limits, to be yourself, to not overreach yourself. Of course, when it comes to your skin, this is easy: there is nothing you can do that will take you out of your own skin; literally speaking, going beyond your own skin is a physical impossibility. Metaphorically, of course, we are tempted to go beyond our own skin all the time - living beyond our means, pretending to be something we are not, striving for some goal which is far beyond our reach. This proverb instead urges us to be content with our limits, and stick to who we are.

You can find this saying stated in two different ways: intra tuam pelliculuam, and infra tuam pelliculam. The word intra means "within, inside" while the word infra means "underneath, on the under side." Of course, they both convey the same idea, albeit from different metaphorical vantage points, and you can also find the preposition in used also, as in this similar proverb: p. In propria pelle quiesce, "Be at peace in your own skin." Ovid has an interesting variant where he replaces the word "skin" with "Fortune" - intra Fortunam debet quisque manere suam, "each person should remain within his own Fortune."

The word pellicula, meanwhile, might be familiar to those of you who are Spanish speakers, as película, the word for "film," in the sense of moving film, or a movie. In Italian, pellicola refers to photographic film. In English, however, the word "film" comes via the Germanic filminjan, meaning "skin, membrane," from Germanic fell, meaning "hide" - a word that is cognate with Latin pellis, but not derived from it.

So, hoping that you are feeling happy within, beneath or in your own skin at the moment, here are today's proverbs read out loud:

2379. Infra tuam pelliculam te contine.
2463. In propria pelle quiesce.
The number here is the number for this proverb in Latin Via Proverbs: 4000 Proverbs, Mottoes and Sayings for Students of Latin.

If you are reading this via RSS: The audio content is not syndicated via RSS; please visit the Latin Audio Proverbs blog to listen to the audio.
For more Latin proverbs, fables and commentary, visit the Bestiaria Latina blog, or you can sign up to receive the latest posts by email.
Aesop's Fables in Latin now available at Amazon.com.
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