Latin

Joe_duffy

Anybody out there (out of the whole 120 doin it) got any tips/tricks for the Latin exam?

Africa

Dude, i pity you. Latin? Im sure that must be hard....

Doubt theres anyone here that does it...but you never know.

Breezer

Doubt theres anyone here that does it...but you never know.

Indeed you dont

Teacher's predictions:

Roman authors: Learn Livy, Cicero, Pliny and Seneca
History: Octavian (before he became Augustus), Tiberius, Year of Four Emperors, Claudius' wives, Tiberius (particularly the stuff about Germanicus).

Are you doing Aeneid or Livy for Q3? If you're doing Aeneid, make sure you know how to talk about the similes and have a couple of scenes prepared for vivid/varied scenes, poetic beauty, action and suspense, that kind of thing. And know about Virgil and his other works lke Eclogues and Georgics, that comes up a good bit but hasn't for a while as far as I know.

The rest of it's fairly unpredictable, all he really gave us was time management.

Nil desperandum!

What school you in by the way? I think there's about 6 schools in the country that do Latin

Beau

I`m from St.Patricks Classical School, Navan. We were doing exam papers from 1930 during the year :eek:

Richard_Fonzie

History: Octavian (before he became Augustus), Tiberius, Year of Four Emperors, Claudius' wives, Tiberius (particularly the stuff about Germanicus).

Wow, Latin sounds much cooler than Irish, or English & French/German/Spanish etc. for that matter :eek:

Breezer

1930?! I thought we were bad with 1960! Suppose the language doesn't change much these days...

Anyway RF Latin is about a million times more difficult than Irish, French or English. While I can speak those 3, I still have trouble visualising the Romans ever using Latin for conversation. I can read and write it, but if I try to speak it it takes me at least a minute to come up with even the most basic of sentences.

And regarding the history aspect, sure it's interesting, but regurgitating everything about 20 people whose names mostly end in "us" did/wrote about in 15 mins is tough to put it mildly.

Incidentally, anyone know the Latin word for "yes"? I've been meaning to find this out for the last 6 years. Not once have I actually needed it...

punka

latin for "yes": most people just say "sic."

it's been a couple of years since i did the exam but here are a couple of pointers:

for the final question, the examiners are looking for 4 points. so if you're asked to write about the reign of Claudius, make sure you have 4 distinct points you talk about (eg wars, public works, administration, women & freedmen).

you're pretty much guaranteed a question on augustus or tiberius. if you're not doing the art option make sure you know something about the 8 authors they ask for unseens ie caesar sallust livy cicero ovid horace virgil catullus. i don't know what came up the past couple of years but it's quite rare for them to ask about authors other than those 8, at least it was back in my day. oh and make sure you know something about caesar and cicero's political careers, sometimes they ask a q about that in the literature section.

for everything else, just make sure you know your grammar, especially if you're doing the english to latin question. and if you can try to avoid the more waffly questions in q3, as it's harder to get 10/10 in them.


and breezer, there are quite a few schools that teach latin, only in most of them people give it up after the jc. only 4 that teach greek tho, and they're all within walking distance of dublin city centre.

good luck!

Joe_duffy

Breezer wrote:

What school you in by the way? I think there's about 6 schools in the country that do Latin

Im in CBC...how are you set for the unseens? Some years they're grand and others they're just impossible.......

Pythia

I did Ancient Greek last year. Got an A aswell
Anyone doing it this year? Only 14 people or something last year.
Anyway we just looked over the papers from the last 3 years. If anything hadn't come up in them essay-wise, it was sure to come up. My teacher gave me 4 correct predictions for essays which all came up. And I only needed 3!
There's no point in looking at papers from the 30s or 60s for help. It's not that same person setting them.

Breezer

History: Octavian (before he became Augustus), Tiberius, Year of Four Emperors, Claudius' wives, Tiberius (particularly the stuff about Germanicus).

Sorry, got that wrong - forget Germanicus, learn Sejanus apparently. Although Germanicus could come up either I guess, but he's been up more recently (last year I think actually)

jeromew

well i thought that was quite a challenging exam. the translation in question 1 was trickier than usual, and the unseens were alright, but by no means easy. the history and architecture question was fine though, as was the whole aeneid question. anyone else?

Kwekubo

jeromew wrote:

well i thought that was quite a challenging exam. the translation in question 1 was trickier than usual, and the unseens were alright, but by no means easy. the history and architecture question was fine though, as was the whole aeneid question. anyone else?

I'm the other way around. My Unseens actually made perfect sense when I read them back, which is a weirdly good sign! The scansion and the architecture werre grand, but I knew practically no history, and waffled on about Augustus for a while. It's my own fault. And It's my own fault for not learning the Virgil properly.

Breezer

Question 1 was tough and I'm kicking myself because I knew multum took the genitive after it and I wrote it down like that, then changed it to accusative :mad:

Unseens were grand overall, B (the Cicero one) was tricky enough but at least my translation made sense. It wasn't nearly as tricky as it could've been, there's been times when I've just made up my own story practically

Aeneid was grand but it always is. Just please tell me Minerva and Pallas Minerva are the same??? :eek: Oh well, only 3 marks even if they're not.

4 was lovely especially after last year. And 5 - well I think 1 thing my teacher predicted came up but I knew the stuff OK. It'll be gone out of my head come next week as usual but at least now I don't need it any more!

Diorraing

jeromew wrote:

well i thought that was quite a challenging exam. the translation in question 1 was trickier than usual, and the unseens were alright, but by no means easy. the history and architecture question was fine though, as was the whole aeneid question. anyone else?

I agree, although the question on Trajan was kind of awkward. I felt the translation was really hard compared with what we had been doing in class. No problem with Aeneid question tho - it was an easy passage with the easiest simile. I don't think they mark Latin that hard anyway, seein as only 120 people do it. I heard that 67% get an A!?!