Sunday, December 16, 2007

On Carols

I love language and languages. Playing with words? Sign me up. Figuring out the connections in the Romance Languages? I am SO all over it- even if only in my amateurish way. There comes a time, however in the life of the music teacher when you've "Got to do What You've Got to Do." regarding Latin and 5th graders.

Them: WHY do we have to sing Oh Come All Ye Faithful in Latin?

Me: Because it's what people do, it's cool, it sounds good, people will think you're geniuses, and it will make the song longer.

After pointing out Fideles and relating it to "Faithful" and hence a possible connection to the dog name "Fido" and reminding them that when we sang that song in Spanish and it had the word bienvenidos and how it means welcome and how cool is it that it's almost the same as venite meaning "come" in Latin (and secretly remembering the French verb venir but being smart enough not to give too much information), I had to resort to mnemonics and cracking myself up.

Adeste Fideles
no mnemonic required-they're the first words.

Lae ti triumphantes
The Lady and three elephants or as they preferred the lady is on fire-don't ask me how.

venite venite in Bethlehem
o.k. so the venidos thing might have worked

Natum Videte
they totally came up with this one-they somehow believe its saying "don't date 2 people"

Regem Angelorum
This was the hardest line and I ended up using "Regis is a drunken (rum) Italian angel."

Venite Adoramus Venite Adoramus Venite Adoramus
repetition is the key to all things- they made the adore and adoramus connection as well.

Dominum
Yes, I did. "Let's come adore Dominoes Pizza."

Sign that the name Fido is no longer en vogue- after the above comparison, one student raised her hand and said, "I saw that name for a dog in a book I was reading. I thought you said Fiddo" (with an i as in lid.)

8 comments:

flutter said...

HA! don't date two people...

Lydee said...

Oh boy, those crack me up moments are good moments. I'm feeling better, thank you.

Anonymous said...

*giggles hysterically* I didn't realize that was latin.

Kim said...

You are a true Latin scholar! Very funny. I lvoed singing in Christmas caroils in Latin when I was in high school choir. It sounded cool and made me feel like I belonged to a secret monastery or something.

Mag said...

Oh man, you have to quit all that pesky THINKING! Don't you know how uncool it is to USE your brain!?!

(I am so on your page with this post. I am a serious linguaphile myself.)

Yarnhog said...

I learned the Latin version in about fourth grade, and never forgot it. Just think--some day those kids will be telling their own kids about their kooky music teacher who taught them that "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" was about drunken angels!

Sunflowerfairy said...

My sister used to sing christmas carols in her sleep, in italian. She was a trained opera singer. My bed was about 5 feet away from her. There was more than one night where I swear she bellowed so loudly that my parents had to scrape me off the ceiling. But it never woke her up. lol

Sarah said...

Very clever! Strangely, your technique reminds me of a project I did in linguistics where we had to create an English translation of some ancient Greek ("The Odyssey," maybe?) based solely on how the words looked. We were going off a previous attempt that began "Oh men in Aida ..." All I can remember of it is that I had no idea what I was doing, but it was darn fun!