Creating CI materials

You can’t.

Well, bye everyone!

Well, okay, since you’re here, I guess I could explain what I mean. Recently I was asked if I could write some short informational “CI” texts to include in a packet to be distributed to various Latin teachers. I said no, partly because I’m overcommitted as it is, and partly because I’d have had to like, research stuff, which is effort.

The thing that’s stuck with me though is the idea that we can include “CI materials” in such packets. I don’t think there’s such a thing as “CI materials.” There’s definitely such a thing as “I” materials, that is, materials that provide input in the target language. The “C” is as usual the difficult part. The reason you can’t make “CI materials” as such is that you can’t make something and guarantee it’ll be comprehensible to all parties.  I’m comfortable writing for my own students because I have a decent idea of what’s known versus unknown to them. When writing Cloelia or other stuff for public consumption, however, I don’t have that knowledge. That’s why I don’t want to be known as someone who writes “CI novellas” or “CI texts.”

There are certainly things you can do to make materials that are CI-friendly, however. What I mean by CI-friendly, or CI-oriented, is this: the texts (or videos whatever) are designed with the end goal of comprehensibility in mind, and are presented in ways that make that goal as easy to attain as possible… assuming the teacher & students put the work in to make it there.
Here are some ways you can make materials CI-friendly.

Latin Novellas: Getting the most out of the editing process

The Latin teacher community is really nice. A lot of people give themselves and their time abundantly to help other teachers. For this reason, sometimes it's easy to take the community for granted. Here are some suggestions from me on how to make sure you get the help you need for editing your work without inadvertently taking advantage of others.

(FWIW, I didn't really follow all of  these steps in writing Cloelia. I am trying to save you woes and rewrites by suggesting a better way of doing things.)

More under the cut.

Latin Novellas: How to improve your Latin

Ah, so you have read the other two entries and you're on board with trying to write really solid Latin. Awesome! Tips below! And I've decided the bit about how to ask for help editing/pre-reading should be its own post, so hold out for that on Thursday.

More under the cut.

Latin Novellas: Why attention to attested usage matters

When it comes to English, I try to be a descriptivist rather than a prescriptivist. If I am in a store and I hear a kid say, "I should of broughten mo' money." (and yes, I've heard kids in my rural, lower income, largely white area say "broughten."), I don't correct them because I'm not a jerk. If however I were writing a novel about similar kids for an ELL audience, I would never ever write "I should of broughten mo' money." Why? Because I don't want to teach them weird things that aren't considered "standard" English by the community of English speakers at large.

(To be clear, I don’t think anyone has written anything at the level of “I should of broughten” in Latin, but I wanted to share that weird example of English doing its living language thing because I think it’s super cool.)

With Latin, the community of Latin speakers is MUCH smaller, and the community of native Latin speakers is dead. All the same, my goal for my kids is for them to be able to read Latin which was written by native speakers and maybe to communicate with other Latinists around the country and throughout the world. Why? Because Latin is a language, and it deserves to be treated as such, even if it’s dead. I’ve struggled a lot with the “point” of teaching a dead language. One of the conclusions I’ve come to is that it doesn’t matter if it’s dead, so long as my kids are still getting the language-learning experience that helps their brains work better (I’m not a neurologist, clearly.). To that end, I want them to be exposed to the things about Latin that aren’t like English: the word order, the morphology, the preference for verb forms compared to English’s love of substantives, everything, etc. Just as we understand other cultures by learning how they differ, I believe we benefit from understanding languages on their own terms.

Now, we’re not perfect Latin speakers. No one alive is, probably. You’re going to make errors. By all means, do so as you teach and in your TPRS stories and whatever you do in your classroom. I’m not saying every Latin teacher needs to be Reginald Foster himself. So long as you are working to improve, ideally by reading more Latin, there’s no problem. (More under the cut)

Cloelia update

Woah, would you believe I've sold 100 copies of Cloelia? It's only been out less than a month! Thank you so much, everyone! I am delighted that you like it. If you don't like it, I can't offer refunds but please give it to someone else for free rather than burning it.

Anyway, important news! Life being the way it is, there were errors. I've put out a new version, which I'm calling v.1.1. The links to the new PDF & glossary are on the Cloelia page over here.

Click under the cut to see the detailed changes, but here's a general overview.

General Reasons for Changes

• Word Choice: forms of alius have been reexamined and often omitted or changed.
• Pronoun Position: personal pronouns, wherever possible, have been moved to second position to better reflect idiomatic word order. If they are in the first position, they are in most cases meant to be somewhat emphatic. The exception is "et eōs relinquō" on p. 37, which I simply couldn't do neatly. Additionally, "someone and I" phrases, e.g. "pater et ego" have been changed to "I and someone," e.g. "ego et pater" to better reflect Latin idiom.
• Vowel Length: corrected macrons on nefās, alterīus, and forms of lacrimāre.
• Prepositions: instances of "ēmittere ad" have been changed to "ēmittere in" to better reflect Latin usage. instances of "contra + accusative ... pugnare" have been changed to "cum + ablative ... pugnare" to better reflect Latin usage.
• Glossary: added, removed, and changed some definitions to reflect other changes made in this version.
• Other Changes: All other changes are marked with an asterisk and explained at the note.

It's a good time to be a Latinist!

Within the last three or so weeks, the number of Latin novellas on the market has more than doubled!

Here is my cat modeling with the titles on offer. What's great about these is that they are, unlike most textbook readings:
1) actually interesting
2) actually readable by first or second year Latin students
3) starring (some) characters who aren't boys

Well, only two have what you can call female protagonists... and only one (Cloelia, full disclosure it's mine) has ONLY a female protagonist and an equal number of named male & female characters, but it's still better than the Latin textbooks out there. There are more coming out soon from Pomegranate Beginnings with female protagonists, too. We're still working on not white, not hetero representation, but this is a good start. I've got something in mind but it's not my next project. If you have an idea for representing a more diverse Rome in text or whatever medium... DO IT. We need it. Latin is for everyone, not just cisgendered, heterosexual, white English upper-class school boys in good enough shape to row for Oxford when they're done at Eton pip pip cheerio. Let's get our textbooks to reflect that.

You can find them here:

• Cloelia: Puella Romana (free full text PDF also available) by Ellie Arnold (me!)
• Brando Brown Canem Vult by Carol Gaab, translated & adapted into Latin by Justin Slocum Bailey
• Pluto: Fabula Amoris by Miriam Patrick and Rachel Ash
• Itinera Petri: Flammae Ducant by Dr. Robert Patrick
• Iter Mirabile Dennis et Debrae by Dr. Christopher Buczek