Dear Medieval Religioneers
I have been intrigued to see the reaction to Sol's posting of a fake
Latin quote, particularly the fact that there seems to be a
consensus that medievalists do not need to be Latinists and that a
certain level of Latin is enough to produce reliable research.
The great question for me is "what is enough Latin knowledge?"
George and Carolyn will know that this was a question I asked often
(usually in the hope of finding some way to not meet their
ludicrously high requirements) when we studied together in Toronto,
and Kurt Villads Jensen, being one of the many who tried to teach me
before Toronto, will also know how I hated the language.
We are currently planning to introduce a Latin component for all
post-graduates studying the period 1000-1600 which I have been asked
to teach together with a colleague. Toronto is known for its Latin
and the problem we are facing as a history department at a UK
university where we must expect our students to have no foreign
languages (I lay the blame for this one squarely at Margaret
Thatcher's feet, although I know that the falling level of Latin is
a Pan-European phenomenon: being accused of one more sin is not
going to hurt her) is one of "how much Latin can we expect to teach
in 50 hours and will it actually do any good for the students?"
What do you all think? What is "enough Latin"?
Frederik Pedersen
Frederik Pedersen
Department of History and Economic History
University of Aberdeen
King's College
Old Aberdeen
AB9 2UB
Scotland, UK
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