Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Thursday, September 25, 2003

Virent ova! Viret perna!

Yay, yet another instalment from the professors Tunberg!

Green Eggs and Ham translated into Latin

I was fortunate to have both of these authors as instructors whilst at UK. Jennifer Tunberg taught me Latin paleography. Terence Tunberg taught Latin literature. He's especially an advocate for teaching Latin as an oral language and is one of the reasons that the UK Classics Department has an annual immersive workshop on spoken Latin, Conventiculum Latinum. I haven't been able to attend since they started, but I would really love to...maybe next year. I've had the basic Latin language classes plus reading Mediaeval Latin in the history programme; I think I'm considered fairly fluent given that it is not usually considered living, spoken language these days. I can read it with only a little dictionary look-ups needed. But speaking's a totally different matter.

I'm glad the Tunbergs have added this to their other Seuss translations (Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus: How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Cattus Petasatus: The Cat and the Hat have also been done) and their Alma Arbor: The Giving Tree. I have Lenard's translation of Winnie the Pooh and the (Grinch. But I do need to get the others, definitely...and Vere, Virginia, Sanctus Nicolaus Est! and Harry Potter in Latin.

Ah. I love Latin. It makes me happy. Which is not most people's reactions. They probably think of that one section of Monty Python's Life of Brian where the Roman soldier makes Brian conjugate things correctly and write the graffiti on the wall a hundred times. Does that make me insane? Or just a language/classics geek?

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