Back to school ... in 1649.
Who needs an app when you
can learn the Latin command forms from Charles Hoole?
“An easie entrance to the
Latine tongue ... a work tending to the school-masters's eas, and the weaker
scholar's encouragement in the first and most wearisome steps to learning.”
Apart from teaching a bit of
Latin here, it also shows us the rather odd way we wrote in 1649! But the other
point of interest is that Hoole – and he wasn’t the only one in the 17th
century – still emphasised practice in speaking the language. And you can see
that, regardless of how old the book is, it still contains some very useful
vocabulary.
Rise betimes [early] ¦ Surge
manē
Go to bed betime ¦ Dēcumbe
mātūrē
Light a candle ¦ Accende
candēlam
Put out the candle ¦
Extingue candēlam
Sweep the chamber-floor ¦
Verre solum cubiculī
Brush my coat ¦ Verre
tunicam
Doff you [doff: take off
(clothes); get undressed] ¦ Exue vestēs
Don you [dress yourself; get
dressed] ¦ Indue tē
- accendo, accendere [3]:
light (a fire)
- dēcumbō, dēcumbere [3]:
lie down; recline
- extinguō, extinguere
[3]: put out (a fire)
- exuō, exuere [3]: take
off
- induō, induere [3]: put
on
- verrō, verrere [3]:
brush; sweep up / out
And so, if your teenage son
or daughter has an untidy bedroom, you can say “Verre solum cubiculī!” and know
that the Latin teachers of the mid-17th century were saying it to their pupils!
And the bizarre letter that
looks like an /f/ is a seventeenth century /s/.
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