immo *Quid* in secunda spatione est!

[ricardienne]

Tutoring is not a good time to completely mix up one's languages. Or: ricardienne taught her student the Latin word for "intoxication" because she was somehow convinced that she knew it was the word for "toad." (Stupid French...)

However I can now conclude the following about Things That Do Not Interest And Do Interest Middle School Boys:

Things Not of Interest to Middle School Boys (no snickering: these things would totally have interested my brother when he was in eighth grade!):
-The loss of traditional senatorial freedom under the principate.
-Writers, patronage and tyranny.
-Really clever subversion of the stupid sentences in the book.
-Julius Caesar with zombies (I don't know why he didn't like that one).

Things of Interest to Middle School Boys:
-Sentences with words that sound vaguely dirty in English.

Okay, so I should have known that already.

For reasons unknown to me, I've been translating "Who's on First" into Latin -- it works quite well, if I do say so myself. Most of the declarative/indirect question issues go away if you make it colloquial enough that the verb drops, and then the joke works just as well in any language. In the process, I came across a "Shakespearean" version, which is also pretty awesome and hilarious.

Comments

[achyvi.livejournal.com]

I think perhaps it is time to recognise that your brother is just plain weird.

[ricardienne.livejournal.com]

I suppose growing up with him did give me a skewed impression of how potentially intelligent boys were.