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So, like many people I'm intrigued by the possibilities of chatGPT. I have been particularly impressed that it renders responses to prompts for Latin with texts that on the whole both (a) grammatical, and (b) make sense. On the whole, it struggles with Ancient Greek, often producing texts
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The poor in spirit - that's the good life! The Heavenly Reign is theirs.Mourners - good on ya! They'll be comforted.The meek are bonzer, they'll get the Land as an inheritance.Hungry and thirsting for justice? Too beaut. They'll have all they
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Why is πόρνη translated as 'prostitute', but πόρνος is not? This question arose on the sinking-ship of Twitter, and since I was tagged, I started to think about it. I don't have a very in-depth answer, in that I'm not a lexicographer,
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Lately I have been listening to Ursula Le Guin's classic novel The Left Hand of Darkness, which portrays the world of Gethen, populated by a version of humans that are androgynous most of the time, except for a period once a month (kemmer) where they become male or
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Syra, quae male audit, id quod medicus dīcit audīre nōn potest; itaque interrogat: "quid dīcit medicus?" Aemilia (in aurem Syrae): 'Medicus puerum dormīre' dīcit." So, in Chapter 11 of Familia Romana, Ørberg uses a simple but effective technique to introduce indirect speech (oratio obliqua, or
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In light of last week’s discussions on twitter and then here, I ended up doing a bunch of reading and reflection about CEFR things… Not that you have the time, but sitting down and reading some of the extended documentation on CEFR scales is not an unprofitable activity. I
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I realised that not everybody is on twitter (blessed are you), and so here's a short note that a few months back I started (yet) another blog/substack, in which I write about Christian life, praxis, and do book reviews. If that's of interest to you,
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I'm responding to recent twitter Discourse kicked off by @CarolusCarman about whether the push for CI means that we are in favour of sub-par content, and whether it's okay that the classics world has a bunch of people running around who aren't truly
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This weekend, I'll be hosting an online conference on the online teaching of (classical) languages. If you haven't heard that by now, apologies for not telling you! I thought I would put up a last call for registrations here. It's On Saturday 15th October,
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Strange Fruit (original by Abel Meeropol) (English Below) καρπὸν τὰ τοῦ νότου ξύλα φέρει ἄτοπον (ἐπί τε φύλλοις αἷμα, τῇ τε ῥίζῃ αἷμα) ἀνέμῳ σῶμα αἰωρούμενον μέλαν νότῳ ἄτοπος τῶν λευκῶν κρεμασθεὶς καρπός νόμιον τοῦ ἐσθλοῦ νότου θέαμα ἐξῳδημένα τε ὄμματα στόμα τε διεστραμμένον μαγνωλίᾱς εὐωδίᾱ καινή καιομένης ὀσμὴ σαρκός
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I realise that by now you are mostly used to me starting umpteen projects. Some of those get finished. Some of them are ongoing. And some eventually wither and die due to my lack of impetus. Anyway, none of that deters me, really. I spend my free time working on
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So, if you've read through parts one, two, three, four, you'll have gathered that I have a lot of criticism of online theological education as a model. In this post I want to push back against myself, and really suggest that there are two key things