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First principles of good rhetoric (good meaning "good.")

In the last post, I responded to Melanie on the topic of rhetoric.  GeekLady asked in the comments to Melanie's post,

I’m interested in the rhetorical part myself, but completely unqualified to even muse on it.  My education was very weak in the area of writing in general, much less writing persuasively…

This is actually one of my biggest homeschooling concerns - effective writing is not taught in schools, and I’m not (currently) qualified to teach it myself, so how do I remedy David’s future schooling?  

I'm not sure either, but let's speculate!

(The timing is actually great, because H. and I have recently re-aligned our plans for teaching writing to the oldest kids, to include some more direct how-do-you-form-a-coherent-argument instruction.  We're not claiming to be experts in rhetoric, just in what our kids need, but we -- both instinctive argument-crafters -- are trying to figure out exactly what instruction they need, and give it to them.  Example here of an engaging lesson plan that H. came up with recently.)

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The title of this post is meant to express my desire to formulate a moral rhetoric, not merely an effective rhetoric.

Rhetoric that is good, in the moral sense, must:

• seek to express arguments that are true
• seek to understand both arguments that are true and arguments that are false
• serve ends that are good, not bad
• treat persons with the respect and love that is due to persons 

I'm a bit redundant here.  The last is a subset of the first, since to treat persons as people, not objects -- to refuse to use a person as the means to an end -- to respect persons -- is, implicitly, to express the truth about persons.

But let's take these things one at a time.

1.  Express arguments that are true.

What's the point of writing, or speaking, anything if you don't have something to say?  And what's the point of saying something that isn't true?   A moral rhetoric rejects lying and deceit in all its forms.

 

2.  Understand both arguments that are true and arguments that are false.

I take it for granted that rhetoric is receptive as well as expressive; and of course, it's a skill that must be taught, and it's hard to learn how to express arguments without learning how to understand them.  In a moral rhetoric, even though you must strive to express only true arguments, you must strive to understand the intended logic behind false ones as well, so that you can spot error and deceit.  A moral rhetorician should be able to construct false arguments (not the same as going out and arguing them to people, and therefore not a violation of #1) for several reasons:  

• first, to test true arguments and thereby sharpening them; 
• second, in order to effectively counter them during a true argument; 
• third, in order to express the truth of the opponent's personhood, by giving their argument the respect it is due as the product of a worthy adversary, striving in charity to understand the opposing argument in the same way that one hopes one's own argument will be understood.

 

3.  Serve ends that are good.

Certain truths need not be expressed at all times, in all places, to all people, and in all manners.  ("The right to the communication of the truth is not unconditional" -- CCC 2488.)  

Boasting isn't part of a moral rhetoric.  Neither is detraction, which seeks maliciously to damage another's reputation.  Certain material is rightly confidential.  And "everyone should observe an appropriate reserve concerning persons' private lives" (CCC 2492).

Furthermore, the efforts of rhetoric should be turned where they can do good, and not where they might do evil.  True and non-confidential arguments could carefully be selected from among many possible true arguments to do evil -- for instance, intentionally to whip a mob into a frenzy of violence, or to induce policymakers to rank a certain threat greater than it is, or to draw attention away from some other thing that justice demands be acted upon.  Even true rhetoric is a tool that may be wielded to harmful ends.  

"The good and safety of others, respect for privacy, and the common good are sufficient reasons for being silent about what ought not be known or for making use of a discreet language. The duty to avoid scandal often commands strict discretion. No one is bound to reveal the truth to someone who does not have the right to know it." -- CCC 2489

 

4.  Treat persons with the respect and love that they are due as persons.

Again, this is really a special case of the first injunction to express the truth:  our rhetoric, if it is to be a moral rhetoric, must implicitly express the truth about the human person, by refusing to treat persons as objects.

Let me break this down into the first person, the second person, and the third person.  We must treat as real human beings the person who is speaking; the persons who are spoken to (i.e., the interlocutor and the audience); and the persons who are spoken about.

Our moral rhetoric cannot concede our own humanity.  We cannot, for example, consent to be treated as an object; we don't have the right to.

Our moral rhetoric must respect our audience and our opponents as persons.  We must not condescend to them or assume that they lack intelligence or moral character.  Here the Catechism sums up nicely our duty to even our opponents, in part by quoting yet another deviously rhetorical Jesuit:

"Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury.  He becomes guilty.... of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation,the moral fault of a neighbor.   To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way:

Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another's statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.

 (St. Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises)

 

 

Our moral rhetoric must not use persons as means to a rhetorical end.  Here's a sad observation about many of us who know better than to use a human being as a machine to produce output, or as a toy to produce pleasure:   We remain eager to use a real human being in our speech.  

We use them as a caricature in our arguments to produce rhetorical effect, or as a character in our stories to produce entertainment.

This isn't moral.  When we tell a story or offer an example that includes another human being, we must always strive to do so in a way that respects that person.  Would they rightly object to being used as an example?  Are we telling the whole story?  Are we telling the story in a way that respects their autonomy?

Recently on FB I came across a blog post that gives a good example of the immoral use, in rhetoric, of a human being as a caricature -- it will serve as a blatant example of something that we should be on our guard against.  

Unfortunately, many instances of using persons as means to a rhetorical end are more subtle -- and extremely tempting, especially when we think our side is right.

 

So that's a start on a good rhetoric:  (1) seek to argue true things, (2) seek to understand arguments both true and false,  (3) serve good ends rather than bad ones, and (4) treat persons as persons.

 

An effective rhetoric that is also good?  Will have to wait for another post.  (I hope it isn't long before I think up something worthwhile to say.)

Some beautiful writing on language.

From Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic.

The back story on this is that for some months, TNC -- whose story is worth reading, by the way -- I highly recommend his memoir The Beautiful Struggle -- has been learning French for the first time.  Not without some struggle that he's chronicled on the blog, in many good posts about language and how, in learning a new language, you craft a new sort of identity for yourself.  

I wish there was a single link to the entire series of posts dealing with language, but I can't find one, so this Google search will have to do:  site:theatlantic.com ta-nehisi coates french 

The last few posts have been the interior commentary while traveling for the first time to Paris.  I'm loving them, because they are more than a travelogue, they are an extended commentary on the existential  questions raised by the experience of speaking a new language and being a new kind of "other." n Here they are:

I.  Jeudi

 

At 8:45 I will board a ship. It will punch through the sky. At some point, God willing, that ship will emerge over airspace far from the beloved West Baltimore of my youth.

Something is happening in this world. I think of my grandfather, lecturing from the daily newspaper, drowning in alcohol, addicted to violence. I think of my father, working all summer as a child, saving his funds for a collection of recordings that promised to teach him French. He didn't learn French, but he learned to compel his son to want to learn French. I think of my grandmother pushing up from the Eastern Shore of Maryland raising three daughters in the projects, somehow sending them all to college.

I think of what these folks might have been had they not lived in world intolerant of black ambition. The world has changed....

Je ne sais pas. What I know is I live in a time that people who made me possible only dreamed of.   And then yesterday I almost lost it all....

 

 

II.  Vendredi

I have come to regard anyone who speaks more than one language as the bearer of great and unearned power. You say bilingualism and I imagine ice sleds, healing factors and flight. In New York, I am surrounded by the secret schoolmen of Salem. They speak and and my fingers dabble at the inhibitor collars. 

I am deep in my dark and twisted lab. I am building a machine of fantastic power and awesome savoir-faire. Soon I shall flip a switch, and all those who laughed at my "Parlay-vouz" and "Jay Nay Say Pahs" shall turn, light leaping from them into the cone of my terrible device. Then they will stagger before brilliant me, blinking and depowered. For now I just murmur "Mutie scum" under my breath and bide my time. 

I am in Geneva, like the only human on Asteroid M. They told me that the people would switch to English as soon as they heard my French. But this only happens when we are discussing money.

 

III. Samedi

 I walked to a pâtisserie, ordered a pain au chocolat and a coffee (it's becoming a ritual) and thought mostly of my wife. I was watching the people come and go. I was watching the children here, lost in their strange freedom unlike anything I've ever known. They range the city--embracing, grazing, laughing. 

When I was a kid in West Baltimore the cops called this loitering. Childhood was a suspect class always bordering on the edge of the criminal. You play football on the traffic island and the cops chase you off. Never mind that it's the only long patch of green in your neighborhood. You fly your kites from the second level of Mondawmin Mall and the les gendarmes are in effect. Go back to watching the Wonder Years and dreaming.  You nail a crate to a telephone pole, because all the courts near you have been stripped. The city doesn't send people to repair the courts, but to tear down your crate. 

Perhaps somewhere in Paris it is the same. But what I have seen is a place with a different sense of the Public, with children loosed in such a way that I have not seen even in wealthy areas....

 

IV.   Dimanche

A month ago I was giving a talk at a college where someone asked my why it was wrong for white people to use the word "nigger" in a friendly way. I responded, as I always do, by pointing out that the names people use depend on their relations. That I should not expect to call another man's wife "honey" by pointing out that he calls her the same thing. That my wife and her friends use the word "bitch" between them, but that is not a name I should expect (or want) to employ. That whatever they say, I have no desire to address my gay friends as queer. If you respect the humanity of black people, then you respect that they get to do what other humans do--ironically employ epithets in a communal way.

But walking through le jardin, I saw the problem from another angle....

I'm looking forward to more of this.

 

Why and how to question authority.

Those bumper stickers that say "Question Authority" -- have you seen them?

Once I saw a bumper sticker that said, "Who are you to tell me to question authority?"

I have always liked that one, partly because it's snarky, and partly because its snark derives from pointing out that the Question Authority folks are oblivious to the fact that, in asserting a standard of behavior, they don't so much undermine the notion of authority as set themselves up as an alternative authority.

Kaydee at Engineering Ethics Blog has a good meditation on the purpose of authority structures, and how to question authorities without questioning authority.

He focuses on the authority structure of licensed architects and engineers, who receive their authority from a licensing board, who in turn receive authorization from the government... and if you are a U. S. Constitutional fan, you know that the government in turn receives its authority from the consent of the governed:

There are those who view all authority with suspicion, and for some reason they seem especially widespread in New England, where “Question Authority” bumper stickers are almost as common as license plates; at least they were when I lived there in the 1990s.  The question I’d like to ask today is, can you be a good engineer and question authority too?   That is, is it consistent to be simultaneously an ethical engineer, and to maintain a fundamentally skeptical and judgmental attitude toward all authorities? 

...Normally we think of a person in authority as having power to decide important matters.  This is the facet of authority that first comes to mind when I think about authority with respect to engineering.  In an architectural firm, for example, only certain licensed architects and engineers are authorized to sign off on blueprints (or whatever the electronic equivalent is these days). But using the word “authorized” in that way brings up a second aspect of authority. 

Authorities don’t just get up one day and declare themselves authorities.  They have to be authorized.  In the case of licensed engineers, the state board in charge of licensing engineers authorizes the engineer to sign off on designs.  So authorities must receive their authority from, well, other authorities.  And authorities, as Austin points out, are ultimately other persons.  Even when we cite a licensing board or a book as an authority, we really refer to the person or people behind these intermediate entities.  So you can’t have authority without speaking of authorities, that is, persons who have authority.

That raises the structural question of where authority ultimately comes from....

 

Authorities must be questioned from time to time, because anyone can discover a problem that must be corrected or have an insight that must travel up the chain in order to be acted upon.  But we have a responsibility to do so in a way that preserves the existing authority structure -- which, after all, was put in place for a reason:

[N]ow and then, you may find that your authorities, whoever they are, have made an error, ranging from a mistake in a textbook to an order to falsify test records for an engineering project.  It will then be your role to deal respectfully but truthfully with the error in a way that preserves the overall authority structure, but moves the organization toward the freedom for human flourishing that [is] the ultimate purpose of all authority. 

I noted that one feature of a healthy and effective authority structure is the existence of a clear and well-accepted procedure by which information moves up the chain of command, so to speak.  It's especially important that the procedure be well-defined when the information has the potential to contradict the "authorities" or even to embarrass them, and it's even more important when human life may be at stake.  Think emergency rooms, combat theaters, and cockpits.  

Wikipedia has an interesting article on one such system of communication:  CRM, for Cockpit (or Crew) Resource Management.  (Sometimes the same thing is called Bridge Resource Management or Maritime Resource Management.)

CRM aims to foster a climate or culture where the freedom to respectfully question authority is encouraged.

... It recognizes that a discrepancy between what is happening and what should be happening is often the first indicator that an error is occurring. This is a delicate subject for many organizations, especially ones with traditional hierarchies, so appropriate communication techniques must be taught to supervisors and their subordinates, so that supervisors understand that the questioning of authority need not be threatening, and subordinates understand the correct way to question orders.

Cockpit voice recordings of various air disasters tragically reveal first officers and flight engineers attempting to bring critical information to the captain's attention in an indirect and ineffective way. By the time the captain understood what was being said, it was too late to avert the disaster. A CRM expert named Todd Bishop developed a five-step assertive statement process that encompasses inquiry and advocacy steps:

• Opening or attention getter - Address the individual. "Hey Chief," or "Captain Smith," or "Bob," or whatever name or title will get the person's attention.
• State your concern - Express your analysis of the situation in a direct manner while owning your emotions about it. "I'm concerned that we may not have enough fuel to fly around this storm system," or "I'm worried that the roof might collapse."
• State the problem as you see it - "We're only showing 40 minutes of fuel left," or "This building has a lightweight steel truss roof, and we may have fire extension into the roof structure."
• State a solution - "Let's divert to another airport and refuel," or "I think we should pull some tiles and take a look with the thermal imaging camera before we commit crews inside."
• Obtain agreement (or buy-in) - "Does that sound good to you, Captain?"

These are often difficult skills to master, as they may require significant changes in personal habits, interpersonal dynamics, and organizational culture.

Maybe the bumper sticker should read:  Question Authorities, Intelligently.

Asking for forgiveness.

When I was a kid, I got into trouble for ordinary kid-sort of things.  Not cleaning my room, backtalking (usually I didn't mean to backtalk, but somehow, I was told, things came out sounding that way), staying out too late, lying about where I'd been.

I often got myself into worse trouble for refusing to say "I'm sorry."  I was one of those people who reasoned, "I don't really feel sorry -- so it would be lying to say so.  I don't really think I was wrong -- no way am I going to 'admit' that I was wrong, since I wasn't."  

(I had not yet learned the fine art of the fake apology, so well practiced by public figures, the "I'm sorry that you were offended," or the "I'm sorry that you had to see this," much of which boils down to "I'm sorry that you got caught.")

After a while I figured out that it was sometimes in my best interest to apologize, and I did understand that.  I learned to say "I'm sorry" when I didn't mean it.  I learned that this sometimes made things better.

But as I grew to young adulthood, married and had a child of my own, I also remembered being a child, and I remembered the peculiar humiliation of being "made to say sorry" when I was utterly convinced I had done nothing wrong or even negligent.  It does happen, you know: just as happens to adults sometimes, children get misunderstood, misconstrued, wrongly judged.   And I grappled for a long time with the question:  what, after all, is the point of saying "I'm sorry?"  What is so important about it that adults teach children that they must say it to someone who feels they have been hurt, even if it is not a true statement?   What good does a "sorry" really do?  Is the pretense just social lubrication, like pretending you care about the weather or  the local sports team during obligatory small talk?  Or is there some meaning?  

Perhaps I was overthinking it, but I felt that it mattered.  I was a young adult on the verge of having to teach a child of my own.  I have never been satisfied with repeating the lessons that were drilled into me, at least not without understanding them.  I wanted to teach my child something I believed.

My first child was a toddler learning to speak and interact with others before I figured it out, in a sudden insight:  I saw the framework -- maybe just "a" framework -- in which an "I'm sorry" made sense.    

What I realized is this:  The purpose of an apology is to invite forgiveness.

Let's say that Billy believes Alex has harmed him, and is angry.  It may be that Alex intentionally hurt Billy, or it may be that Alex negligently hurt Billy, or it may be that Alex did nothing at all and Billy's made a mistake.  It may be that Alex ought to be punished for what he did, it may be that Alex owes Billy restitution, it may be that someone else deserves to pay, or it may be that no one is at fault at all.  

One thing is certain to help and not to hurt:  if Billy forgives Alex.

Christian doctrine requires believers to assert this, but so do many other sources.  Look, even the Mayo Clinic says that forgiveness will help.  

What clicked for me that day is that an apology does not necessarily have to be understood as pretending sincere regret (what if I know I didn't do anything wrong?) or repentance (what if I am still feeling angry and haven't yet received the grace of penitence?).  

This is so even if the words of an apology come out sounding something like "I am sorry, I was wrong."  The words are conventional words, part of an exchange that is ritual and thus has unspoken meaning.  They are an idiom.  They are not meant to benefit the apologizing speaker, by expressing the feelings that are inside him, so that the speaker feels his true feelings has been heard.  Rather, they are meant to produce an effect in the hearer.   

The intended effect?   To make it easier for the angry hearer to let go of his anger, to make it easier to forgive.  An apology is an invitation to forgive.  We say whatever we can say that will produce that effect.  If we cannot bring ourselves to say "I wronged you," perhaps because we know something different has happened, then at the very minimum perhaps we can bring ourselves to say, "Will you forgive me?"

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Getting back to the children.  When I got my head wrapped around the idea that an apology is an invitation to forgive, I no longer fretted about how to teach my children to apologize sincerely.  In this framework, a "sincere apology" means an expression of a sincere desire that the other person forgive you.  Even if it is hard to be sincerely "sorry" sometimes, especially when wrongly accused, it is easy to sincerely ask for forgiveness.  Who would ever wish a grudge on anyone?  

So when my child says, "But it wasn't my fault, so why do I have to say sorry?" that is what I explain:  

You will apologize to her so that it will be easier for her to forgive you.  Jesus says we have to forgive each other, and it is hard to forgive when we are angry, so you will make it easier for her to forgive you by asking for her forgiveness.

I gave them a formula to follow to make it super-easy, so they will never have to search for words.  It goes like this:

"Jane, I'm sorry I stepped on your toy.  Will you forgive me?"

"Drew, I'm sorry I wasn't looking and I ran into you.  Will you forgive me?"

"Sue, I'm sorry I said words that hurt your feelings.  Will you forgive me?"

They have to speak the person's name, they have to look them in the eye, they have to follow the "I'm sorry" with a statement that acknowledges why the person feels hurt, and they have to ask for forgiveness. 

(Furthermore, if the person they hurt is a much smaller child, I require my kids to approach the child's mother or whomever and say, "I'm sorry I hurt your baby.  Will you forgive me?")

And of course, when one of them asks the other for forgiveness, I require them to say "Yes, I forgive you."  As soon as they can.

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Sometimes the brother and sister, summoned to enact the Apologize So She Can Forgive You script before me, are already smirking at each other as they recite.  I catch the little gleam of "There goes Mom again with her apologizing thing."  I like to see that.  It proves they aren't holding a grudge against each other; it's more fun to share a silent inside joke about their mom.  I hope they are still reciting it to each other and laughing many years from now.

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Of course, there is a drawback to this particular script.

It's the fact that when I correct my children, or shout at them, or say "Argh!  Again?  How many times do I have to tell you?!?"...

...they ask for my forgiveness.

Sometimes many times a day.

My eleven-year-old will stand there listening to me lecture him for a full minute and then when I stop he looks me in the eye and says, completely seriously, "I'm sorry I didn't finish unloading the dishwasher, Mom.  Will you forgive me?"

My five-year-old will look up at me through her tears and say "Mom, I'm sorry I crumpled up my math sheet.  Will you forgive me?"

My eight-year-old will glance shifty-eyed at me and say "Mom, I'm sorry I woke up my little brother.  Will you forgive me?"

And that is when I discover how hard it can be to say "Yes."  

There is such a temptation to turn it into a "Yes, but...."  which, basically, is not a "Yes" at all.  

I am still the parent and "forgiveness" does not mean nobody experiences any consequences or pays restitution.  I find, though, that the tone is altered:   I cannot, with a straight face, say "Yes, I forgive you" and then go back to shouting about a punishment.  It comes out, a little awkwardly, with some explanation:  "You're going to have to do two math sheets now, to remind you that you mustn't crumple up your math sheet just because you don't want to do it."  "You're going to have to finish sweeping the floor for me, because now I have to get your brother back to sleep."

And after it's been one of those days, sometimes I think:  Damn it, why did I teach them to ask me for forgiveness?  How many times do I have to forgive?

How many times, indeed?  

The Wasteland.

Melanie Bettinelli of The Wine-Dark Sea has started an ambitious project of explaining to the blogosphere why T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" is her favorite poem.  

After I mentioned The Waste Land in my Make your House Fair post, I found myself pondering it in the shower (All my best ideas come to me in the shower). I was recalling my youthful zeal to enlighten the masses about how wonderful Eliot is. I have found that even among people who love The Waste Land it is often misunderstood....

When I first encountered it, I was told that The Waste Land is a poem about the bleakness and despair of the modern world—which is true to a point; but if it is a poem about doubt it is also a poem about hope. In the Judeo-Christian tradition the desert has often been a place of renewal, in the Bible new life is always springing up in places that were thought to be barren. I prefer to read The Waste Land as a great Christian epic that asserts that the problem of faith in the modern of world is not really a new problem but that people in every age need to seek again for the source of life.

...I believe The Waste Land is the poem par excellence that grapples with the problem of faith in a post-Christian world. True, the poem doesn’t mention Christ by name nor is it explicitly Christian in its imagery. But it is, to borrow a phrase from Flannery O’Connor, Christ-haunted. I believe that one must enter into the world of the poem and to accept it on its own terms but that it does help to have a tour guide. I propose to become that guide, to offer my own insights and experiences of it. 

Four posts in, and she's barely cracked the first stanza:

part 1 
part 2 
part 3 
part 4 

 

I am fond of the poem, which I encountered in high school English class; but have not had anywhere near Melanie's passion for it, and am looking forward to learning more about it.  Maybe she can communicate that passion -- one cannot have too many of those, literarily speaking.

 

Spanish from Latin, update.

So I decided to move forward with my idea and experiment with building on Latin to learn about Spanish.  Or perhaps you could say I am trying to explore Latin by looking at how it appears in the Spanish language.  We're not really sure which it will be.

The first thing we have to talk about is basic pronunciation.  We have to know, at least in theory, what the Spanish words should sound like, or else we will reinforce the wrong pronunciation even when we talk about them.  

By "what they should sound like" I mean at the most basic level.  Accent on the correct syllable; a recognizably appropriate consonant sound (e.g., pronouncing the letter "z"  as /s/ and not as /z/); vowels approximately right.   I'm not talking about accent, just avoiding mispronunciation.

So I made a little chart of Latin words and Spanish words that are their cognates and that demonstrate the differences and some of the similarities between ecclesiastical Latin and Spanish pronunciation rules.  For example: 

• In Latin gens (tribe), the g is pronounced like English /j/.  In Spanish la gente (race, nation), it's pronounced with a throaty /h/.
• In Latin hora (hour), the h is pronounced as in English.  In Spanish la hora, it's silent.
• In Latin signum (sign), the gn is pronounced as in English "lasagna."  In Spanish el signo, the g sound and n sound are distinct.
• Vowels are similar: A: pater/el padre (father), E: cena/la cena (dinner), I: vita/vida (life), O: oculus/el ojo (eye), U: mundus/el mundo (world) and aqua/agua (water).

So I figured I would work my way down the chart with the kids.  The emphasis is on similarities and differences between ecclesiastical Latin and Spanish.  I thought maybe Hannah, who knows more about linguistics than I, could talk to the kids a little bit about consonant shift and things -- why filius became el hijo, why pax became la paz.

But I am taking seriously the need to hear a native Spanish speaker pronounce the words, so I went looking for an online audio dictionary.  I think I will be pleased with this one:  SpanishDict.com .  It has audio pronunciations for most every word I tried, and short video examples for quite a lot of words.  The interface should be easy for the tween/teens to manage.

One useful tip:  For most nouns, you can get it to give you audio with the definite article if you type in the English and ask it to translate (e.g. if you type in "rey" it will just give you an audio file that pronounces "rey," but if you type in "king" it will give you an audio file that pronounces "el rey."  

I think we'll start with just a few words at a time -- maybe some with "b" and "v" in them, just so that we attack a tricky phoneme right away.  My plan is to  recite the list of cognates in Latin first, and then listen to the recordings for each equivalent (or closely related) Spanish word, and then recite the Spanish words.  So we'll start like this for b's and v's:

bonus, ambulare, laborare, vox, convocare, novem;

(listen) bueno, (listen) ambulante, (listen) laborar, (listen) la voz, (listen) convocar, (listen) nuevo.

(Yes, I know that ambulare is a verb meaning "to walk" and ambulante is an adjective meaning "mobile, traveling."  Ambulare was the only word having an "m-b" combination in the kids' Latin lexicon and ambulante is the closest Spanish cognate.)

I'm going to incorporate these lists into our twice-weekly Latin oral drill sessions to begin.

A language-learning idea.

So I was sitting with Melissa and we were commiserating about how to teach our children Spanish -- a language that none of us took in high school or college.  

"The problem is basically that I don't think I can teach myself Spanish adequately," I summed up.  "With Latin, there's no need to worry about slang or idiom or accent or conversation.  It's all on paper.  I've always been confident I could teach myself Latin, and because of that I've always been confident I could help the kids learn it.  And I have taught myself Latin, and I think I'm doing a pretty good job with the kids.  But I can't teach myself Spanish.  Or at least I'm not confident that I could do it well enough to pass it on."

All the available Spanish curricula start with basic words and conversation skills.  The equivalent of what I learned in beginning French:  "Je vais au cinéma avec mes amis."  But the conversational approach is exactly what I feel I can't do.  I think people should learn to speak a language from a native speaker, or at least an expert speaker.  

Now, Latin is different.  Nobody is even pretending that we are trying to learn to speak Latin.  We are learning to read it and translate it and write it.  That's what you do with Latin (and the writing is optional; several older Latin texts that I found in the library contained zero emphasis on turning English into Latin, apparently because teachers didn't think you'd ever want to express yourself in Latin; they must not have listened to any kids, who love to express themselves as many ways as possible).  All this requires is for me to stay a few steps ahead of the kids, which is not only doable but fun.  And so it was not hard to find a Latin curriculum that I could use to teach myself and teach the kids.

"Maybe," I said hesitatingly, "though, maybe we could just accept that we cannot really teach how to speak Spanish.  What if," I went on, gaining momentum as I considered it, "what if we decided to teach writing and reading Spanish, and didn't bother with speaking and listening comprehension except, you know, just what was necessary to discuss the words we were learning?"

Melissa nodded.  "That would be better than nothing," she said, "and it could prepare them for taking a real Spanish course later on."

"I guess I would want to teach it just as we taught them Latin," I mused, "very grammar-based.  But there definitely aren't any curricula for Spanish that follow the same pattern.  That one DVD-based course* was okay, it started with grammar right at the beginning; but it was aimed at much younger children."

As we talked, though, the germ of an idea began to form between the two of us.  And at one point, I got out my tablet and started taking notes, so I wouldn't forget anything.  Because I realized it was a good idea.

The Memoria Press Latin programs that we are using -- Prima Latina, Latina Christiana, and First Form Latin -- all have a component that examines Latin-derived words in the English language.  It has seemed like a bit of a waste of time, sort of an afterthought, and we really haven't used it much at all.  But what if instead of learning about Latin-derived words in English, we looked at Latin-derived words in Spanish?  What if we studied Spanish as a specimen of late Latin -- very late Latin?  What if learning Spanish became an extension of our Latin study?

All the beginner's Spanish programs start from scratch.  But we're not starting from scratch:  we're starting from a few years of Latin.   Why can't we build on what they know already?  After all -- a great deal of the effort that English speakers have to make, when they learn their first Romance language -- we've already been through that.  Verbs are conjugated.  Nouns have gender.  Adjectives can come after nouns.  Adjectives agree with nouns.  And we've already talked about tense, and principal parts, and negation and interrogation... a lot of concepts that take up time grasping for the first time have already been grasped.  They just need to know how to do in Spanish what they already know to do in Latin.

We could learn the Spanish equivalents of the Latin words we have already learned, and notice the ones which are cognates and the ones which are not.  We could look at the differences in pronunciation of the different letters (and talk about language-development phenomena like consonant shifts and loss of inflection).  

 Just as we now recite amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant, we could recite amo, amas, ama, amamos, amáis, aman (or maybe it would be amamos, aman, aman -- we want Latin American Spanish, not Castilian.  Those of you who took high school Spanish with an emphasis on American Spanish, did you bother with vosotros?).  

Spanish nouns don't decline, but we could introduce Spanish prepositions in the context of the Latin cases that encompass their meanings.

And all that time, we could try to make up for our lack of emphasis on speaking and listening by using Spanish-language music, cinema, TV, radio, in our homes.  Maybe I'll splurge and get Rosetta Stone at some point.

As for vocabulary, we could start with the same lexicon that we use in Latin -- not colors and days of the week and numbers, but charioteer and soldier and commander  and hill  and river and eternal  and heaven and lamb and law and slave and ally and message and envoy -- that mishmash of military and ecclesiastical terms that you learn when you're aiming to read, not a menu or a bus schedule, but the Pater Noster and the Gallic Wars.

And we could use those words and find out how to make Spanish sentences as well as Latin ones.

But later, when we already have some grammar learned, we could use a "vocabulary-builder" program to begin learning those basic Spanish words.  Maybe it will all go faster when we know from the beginning how to put the words into sentences.

And eventually, perhaps we will be able to dispatch our charioteers to the cinema with their friends -- in Latin and Spanish.

______________________

*I have found one Spanish curriculum that is grammar-intensive despite being aimed at elementary school kids.  That is Spanish for Children sold by Classical Academic Press.  Its methodology is very close to Memoria Press's Latin. 

Hot stuff.

Pardon the poverty of formatting. I am still getting used to blogging with the iPad.

Margaret's recent posts about her 2-year-old's burgeoning vocabulary made me want to join in with a little vocabulary-blogging of my own.

I know it's indulgent, and maybe only the speech pathologists among my readers will be interested -- but what's a blog for if you can't post cute kid pictures and anecdotes now and again?

Number four is seventeen months old, and his language is -- if not quite taking off -- definitely bumping along the runway and picking up speed. The unformed "ma ma ma ma ma" babble that has referred to me for many months now has only just crystallized into a clear, two-syllable "Mama." He does not say "no" yet, which is sort of surprising -- all the others had "no" early -- but he does shake his head emphatically, and when he does he means it. He nods vigorously for "yes," too, with a big smile.

We tried using sign with all four of our kids, with more or less success. This one wasn't interested until all of a sudden, around the time he started to say "mama," he began using several ASL signs at once: milk, more, toilet (which we also use for "diaper"), and an invented sign that appears to mean "HEY! THE CEILING FAN IS GOING! WHOAAAAA MY MIND IS SO BLOWN!"

I have heard him use each of the other kids' names on occasion, but not consistently. The only food he calls by name is "egg," and if he is hungry he will bring me a spatula and announce "egg! Egg!" He will also say "nack" if asked if he wants any meal or nibble. And then there is this exciting word-fragment, "vuh-vuh-vuh-vuh," that appears to mean both (1) any animal -- especially, but not necessarily, a dog -- and (2) also any sort of machine or vehicle that makes a motor noise.

But the importance of all these words and signs, useful as they are, pales in comparison with the most important word, the first one he learned, and the one he says all day long: "hot."

"Hot" has been the first word of all four of my kids -- it comes easily when every adult around you has a cup of coffee or tea in hand most of the time! -- but I have never seen another kid that was so into the concept of "hot." Every time he enters the room, my little guy looks around and quickly identifies every possible source of heat, pointing to each in turn (well, not pointing exactly, more holding his hand up in a sort of "halt!" gesture). Coffee cup on the table: hot. Toaster oven on the counter: hot. Teapot: hot. Microwave oven: hot. Any plate of cooked food set before him: hot. Open dishwasher: hot. Box of birthday candles: hot. Seatbelt buckle: hot. He likes to sit on the floor and stir a wooden spoon in a saucepan, happily chattering "hot hot hot" to himself.

The most interesting thing about this is that as time has gone on, he has generalized "hot" to mean not only "this thing could be at an elevated temperature" but also "this thing is something I am not supposed to touch." So, for example, Mama's eyeglasses are "hot." Daddy's smartphone is "hot." The bottle of wine on the dinner table is "hot." Sharpies are "hot." Mama's wallet is "hot." The older kids' schoolwork is "hot." And so on.

"We should teach him how to say 'verboten,'" Mark suggested last night. I know he will figure out the distinction eventually. For now we are just enjoying this extremely cute stage while it lasts. Babies don't keep, you know...