Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Caeci sunt duces caecorum

Translation?

"They are blind and they are leading the blind."

In other words, guess who spent about an hour helping her son with his Latin homework?

Shyeah, right.

It's lucky I live 900 miles from my family of origin, or the roars of scornful laughter would shatter every pane of glass in my house.

11 comments:

  1. That's why my children take French.

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  2. De nobis fabula narratur.

    Ovah heah we have to take Latin -- not full-on yet, though -- AND Spanish.

    -J.

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  3. You had me a little nervous with that translation there...this is why I hesitate to read your blog from work, I never know if I'm about to get myself in a heap o' trouble with the internet monitors. Phew.

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  4. bb: The other one takes French. Which would be easier to help with, because I don't have to remember nearly as much grammar. (Although I use the term "remember" lightly, since for the most part, I never learned it or understood it in the first place.)

    J: It's ... alive. Now stop bragging. My children go to a public school, aiight?

    Tress: This is why I was very careful not to use a phrase that used the Latin for "with," which wouldn't make it past your firewall. If you don't know what the word is, ask Joke's trilingual son.

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  5. I took Latin while I was at Smith because I had this crazy idea that educated people knew Latin. What I learned is that people-far- smarter-than-me are the ones who know Latin, so I applaud you.

    I never quite made it through Caesar's Bellum Gallo -- I stopped at Winnie Ille Pu.

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  6. OK it could be worse. I could do French; I can even do a bit of Latin (Russian helps). BUT last week my 6-year-old came home and started spewing information about the different types of clouds and I was like whoa...

    His response, "You know that, RIGHT?" I knew he was smart. I didn't realize it would be so soon that I would have to look up answers to his questions.

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  7. But how do you say, "I love Poppy's Blog" in Latin?

    Because "Me amo la bloga de Poppy" sounds more Spanish than Latin.

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  8. Melissa: I only took it because my school made me. I admire my son for actually selecting it voluntarily.

    Margalit: Oh great--another show-off. :D

    Hearts: What is it with kids that age and clouds? No one taught me anything about clouds, ever, and then my daughter came home talking about cumulo-nimbus clouds. Say what?

    Ree: Amo blogam Papaveri.

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  9. Or past a well installed bit of mosquito netting.

    -J.

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  10. P.S. I have progressed from being dead to merely being moribund.

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Gentle Readers:

For the time being, I have turned off comment moderation. Please don't spam; it's not nice.

xxx, Poppy.