_New Latin Grammar, for Schools and Colleges_ and _Writing Well_ are two books* I picked up last evening and began perusing . . . until arrested by two "phenomena."
I took Latin in high school and graduate school, I think five or six years all told. Had I had _New Latin Grammar_ (NLG), dated late 1800s, I surely would have failed miserably.
How did I survive anyway? My best recollection was to get hold of interlinear translations--Caesar, Cicero, others? I could not have then nor now been able to learn anything much from NLG. In sum, this tome must be considered a reference book, for it lacks examples and models sufficient to give anyone a sense of a written or spoken language to test their studies and understanding.
I do observe in this source, however, elements I may have learned at one time, and these are the same types I encountered when trying to learn Czech. Unsuccessful attempts at Czech were and continue to be that you need to be a human computer to put a simple sentence together, or to decode one. Did I ever learn Latin--for the same deficiency, the lack of a brain like a computer? I strongly doubt I learned much Latin in any event, for memories of even classes attended are but gossamer wisps disappearing in the ether of some disembodied brain in a forgotten yesterday.
To wit quizzically, my interest in AI, machine translation, and what I have coined inter-linear translation displays. I have built the tools I need to read in languages I am today familiar with--French, Italian, Spanish, German. I use these tools to give me subtitled text so that I can test and check my reading and understanding of passages, those that I select for challenge, entertainment, review, reinforcement, fun, etc., including examining how that other language expresses what I give it in my naturally-speaking/-writing English.
(Old guys have got to get their kicks somewhere other than food and pining over days and opportunities lost for not having flirted with this one or that, bit of language that is, or fluff, of course.)
_Writing Well_ has a sentence I had to re-read several times and almost gave up decoding. Page 28 and following: "Reading is the process of writing in reverse, and writing is the mirror image of reading." I could not get (comprehend) both of these declarations, or "analogies" as the authors say. Are they really analogies?
Moving along to the next pages, it becomes clearer. The authors sketch how one reads and how one writes. They do this by typifying and universalizing reading and writing processes, as if Husserl were coaching them on essences of phenomena through description of what it (the experience of a phenomenon) is like.
Hah! Okay, I get what that sentence on 28 was saying, and I tested their description of "their process" against this, what I am doing now, writing. It does not fully stack up and in this way.
I write as the words and sentences come to me. I do not silently read what I propose to fix on paper or screen before I do just that. The words and sentences just come. It flows, unless I pause and read what I have just written and then, as if by magic, the next one appears in whole or in part as I put pen to paper or tap away on a keyboard.
But I accept their point. More generally I have been concerned with getting better at writing--I excuse this propensity by calling myself a student of writing. And I am deeply concerned about what it is readers understand by what they read. In this sense, I suppose trying to be a good writer is to have a reader (oneself?) in mind that will be able to understand precisely what I am writing.
To wit quizzically, my interest in AI, machine translation, and what I have coined inter-linear translation displays. I have built the tools I need to read in languages I am today familiar with--French, Italian, Spanish, German. I use these tools to give me subtitled text so that I can test and check my reading and understanding of passages, those that I select for challenge, entertainment, review, reinforcement, fun, etc., including examining how that other language expresses what I give it in my naturally-speaking/-writing English.
(Old guys have got to get their kicks somewhere other than food and pining over days and opportunities lost for not having flirted with this one or that, bit of language that is, or fluff, of course.)
_Writing Well_ has a sentence I had to re-read several times and almost gave up decoding. Page 28 and following: "Reading is the process of writing in reverse, and writing is the mirror image of reading." I could not get (comprehend) both of these declarations, or "analogies" as the authors say. Are they really analogies?
Moving along to the next pages, it becomes clearer. The authors sketch how one reads and how one writes. They do this by typifying and universalizing reading and writing processes, as if Husserl were coaching them on essences of phenomena through description of what it (the experience of a phenomenon) is like.
Hah! Okay, I get what that sentence on 28 was saying, and I tested their description of "their process" against this, what I am doing now, writing. It does not fully stack up and in this way.
I write as the words and sentences come to me. I do not silently read what I propose to fix on paper or screen before I do just that. The words and sentences just come. It flows, unless I pause and read what I have just written and then, as if by magic, the next one appears in whole or in part as I put pen to paper or tap away on a keyboard.
But I accept their point. More generally I have been concerned with getting better at writing--I excuse this propensity by calling myself a student of writing. And I am deeply concerned about what it is readers understand by what they read. In this sense, I suppose trying to be a good writer is to have a reader (oneself?) in mind that will be able to understand precisely what I am writing.
At this point NLG will return to the shelf. _Writing Well_ will hang out next to a chair I have adopted for reading books of the material, versus electronic, sort. Does this text address learning the/a language by writing? I doubt it except for students at more advanced proficiency levels.
The next installment will then have to be about reading, in particular, using inter-linear documents in the face of what I find to be a problematic recommendation: learning a foreign language primarily by reading in that language without ready aids except repeated uses of words/phrases in delimited contexts. So stay tuned for more.
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* These are from a collection I am storing for a friend. Here are references so you can see for yourself.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15665/15665-h/15665-h.htm
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15665/15665-h/15665-h.htm