State of the Projects, June 2020
salvete amici, χαίρετε φίλαι
Here we are, the start of June, ready for another newsletter!
Teaching & the like
Teaching has been going well. I've had 5 classes running through this term: Intro Greek A, Intro Greek B, Intro Latin B, an intermediate Latin reading group doing selections from 500-1000AD, and a Latin role-playing group. Most of these classes are about halfway through their 10-week block, and they've all been a pleasure to teach.
Latin RPG was always going to be an experiment, despite playing D&D in Latin twice at Rusticationes. I've really enjoyed having our four participants work on understanding the story, and participating as much as their growing language allows. I've also asked them to write summaries each week, and I edit and feed them back their texts, which has been particularly helpful for some.
The medieval Latin group has been great too. These are mostly anthology-selection texts, and I've never read any of them myself before, so it's giving me a great taste of a range of authors too.
The Video Course
I've been talking about this for quite some time, but I'm pleased to say that's it's finally becoming real. I enrolled a few very-early Alpha participants, and that's helped encourage me to be recording material weekly and uploading it. I think in another month or so I'll have a good number of modules complete, and be able to deploy it both for some introductory Greek classes, and to look at enrolling people at it publicly.
It's also coincided with me producing some more free content, specifically on my youtube channel:
Reading and Writing:
This is where COVID-19 has had the greatest impact. My ability to carve time out for significant reading and writing has been detrimentally impacted by the demands of Working from Home, and family-life at home.
Mostly, then, I've been working away at a popular book that I have under contract. It's a guide for those getting Latin tattoos, consisting of a bit of an introduction to the language, advice for getting a tattoo, and a glossary of words, terms, and sayings. It's coming along reasonably well.
In the later half of the year, deo volente, I'll turn my attention to/back to other writing endeavours.
I have been working slowly on LGPSI revisions. In particular, adding long vowel marks and revising early chapters. This coincides with a little bit of video recording, and as I move forward I'll be looking at writing new material too.
That's it from me. Much bigger things to worry about in the world, but there's my small slice of Latin/Greek work out of Australia.
Seumas