November 1, 2011

Fun in French!


For La Toussaint, Mrs. O'Connell's French III Honors students celebrated with madeleines, tea, and Proust.

October 28, 2011

The Underworld!

In honor of Halloween, Ms. Ellery's Latin I students are embarking today on a spooky adventure. With the help of Edith Hamilton's Mythology, the boys are following Aeneas's journey through the underworld, where the souls of the dead reside. Ms. Ellery, or rather the Sibyl, is leading them past the infernal rivers...




(The boiling blood of the Phlegethon!)






















...past the terrifying, three-headed dog Cerberus...



(The three-headed dog with his Cerberus snacks!)




















...all the way to Elysium, where the blessed souls dwell.

October 24, 2011

Prairie Home Companion Latin Tribute

(From Bolchazy-Carducci)

Garrison Keillor pays tribute to his college Latin professor during the September 10, 2011 edition of Prairie Home Companion. Keillor's very first class he attended as a freshman at the University of Minnesota in 1960 was "Latin Readings" with Professor Margaret Forbes. A Google™ search shows that the January 14, 2006 show contained a similar tribute to Professor Forbes.

As part of the tribute, University of Minnesota Professor Emeritus of Classical and Near Eastern Studies, Robert Sonkowsky recited the Latin of Horace's Ode 1.22. This poem was one of the Latin selections studied in Keillor's "Latin Readings" course.

Click to see the full line-up for the show and to access the audio for Segment 3, in which Keillor speaks of Professor Forbes and he introduces Sonkowsky's recitation.

October 19, 2011

The New Case for Latin

From Time.com:

"As part of Virginia's high-stakes testing program, schools that don't boost their scores by the year 2007 could lose state funding. So Fairfax City, just 18 miles southwest of the White House, has upgraded its two crumbling elementary schools with new high-tech television studios, computer labs and one very old feature — mandatory Latin."

Read more here.

September 14, 2011

A French Feast from a Political Pot

Here's a tasty article from the New York Times, spotted by Madame O'Connell:
MORELS speckled the forest floor. For a lavish meal with family and friends, Françoise Branget, a deputy in the National Assembly from the Doubs region, sautéed those earthy black mushrooms with Bresse chicken, the king of French fowl, and the pungent “vin jaune” from the nearby Jura district. For Ms. Branget, this was not just a feast. It was a celebration of her campaign to unite deputies on the left and right in a national cause: the promotion of French gastronomy.
Read the full article here.

September 11, 2011

"Why Some Languages Sound So Fast"

Here's an interesting article from TIME about language density.

"(This study serves) as one more reminder that beneath all of the differences that separate Tagalog from Thai from Norwegian from Wolof from any one of the world's 6,800 other languages, lie some very simple, very common rules. The DNA of speech — like our actual DNA — makes us a lot closer to one another than we think."