Cultural Lesson: Islamic Burial Practices

I did this lesson on Islamic burial practices with my Latin IV class last year as we were reading my publication Nasreddin Chogia: Fabellae. One of the fables alludes to Islamic burial practices. Here is my Latin adaptation of the fable:

Chōgia ōlim hieme in silvā ligna caedēns, “Algeō!,” inquit, “Ergō, mortuus sum!”

Ergō, Chōgia cum dēcubuisset tamquam mortuus, “Efferendus sum!,” inquit.

Chōgia cum domum rediisset, tum, “Mortuus sum,” inquit uxōrī, “in silvā. Iubē amīcōs mē efferre.”

Deinde Chōgia cum in silvam rediisset, dēcubuit.

Cum uxor Chōgiae in tabernam vēnisset, “Nasreddīn Chōgia,” inquit, “in silvā mortuus est.”

Amīcī Chōgiae, “Quī scīs?,” inquiunt.

Uxor, “Quia,” inquit, “Chōgia domum rediit et haec mihi dīxit.”

(A translation for readers who do not read Latin:)

Once upon a time, Hoca, while chopping firewood in the woods in the wintertime, said, "I am cold! Therefore, I am dead!"

So Hoca, when he had lay down as if he were dead, said, "I must be carried out (i.e. for burial)!"

So Hoca, when he had returned home, then he said to his wife, "I died in the woods. Tell my friends to carry me out (i.e. for burial)."

Then Hoca, when he had returned to the woods, lay down.

When Hoca's wife had arrived at the coffeehouse, she said, "Nasreddin Hoca has died in the woods."

Hoca's friends said, "How do you know?"

The wife said, "Because Hoca came back home and told me this."

After reading this fable with my students, I wanted students to understand Islamic burial practices and why Nasreddin Hoca feels such a strong sense of urgency to be buried when he believes that he is dead. For this lesson, students located QR codes posted around our building at school. These QR codes linked to a sentence in Latin and a clue to the location of the next clue. All of the sentences described steps involved in a traditional Islamic burial. Students not only located the QR codes and copied down the Latin sentences, but also put the sentences in chronological order.

The sentences for each step. I glossed new terms in Latin or in English in parentheses:

1. Muslimus periit. (A Muslim has died.)

2. Cadaver (corpus mortui) inter 24 horas sepeliendum (in terra ponendum) est. [The corpse (the body of a deceased person) must be buried (placed in the ground) within 24 hours.

3. Cadaver necessariis (e.g. sororibus, fratribus, filiis, matri, patri, etc.) lavandum est. [The corpse must be washed by relatives (e.g. sisters, brothers, children, mother, father, etc.).]

4. Cadaver involvendum est. (The corpse must be wrapped up.)

5. Cadaver in arca ponitur. (The corpse is placed in a coffin.)

6. Cadaver ad meschitam effertur. (The corpse is brought to a mosque.)

7. Cadaver in sepulcretum effertur. (The corpse is brought to a cemetery.)

8. Eis qui adsunt orandum est. (Those in attendance must pray.)

9. Cadaver in sepulcro sepeliendum (in terra ponendum) est. [The corpse must be buried (placed in the ground)].

10. Cadaver in Meccam advertendum est. (The corpse must be turned towards Mecca.)

After putting the steps in order, students then wrote in Latin summarizing the fable in their own words in Latin and explaining why Hoca felt such a strong sense of urgency to be buried.

The worksheet:

Mercurius Omnia Furatur/Ἑρμῆς πάντα κλέπτει

Available in both Latin and Ancient Greek

When he is born, the god Mercury/Hermes is no normal baby. He can walk, talk, and even make music. But what he really wants to do is steal from the other gods. Will Mercury/Hermes get away with it? Or will the gods find out that they've been tricked by a newborn baby?

Mercurius Omnia Furatur (Latin Version)

Click to see on Amazon

• Total Words: 1,598

• Vocabulary: 79 (excluding names and unique forms), 217 unique forms

• 72% of the vocabulary (86% if excluding glossed words) appears in the Dickinson College Commentaries Latin Core Vocabulary, which consists of 1,000 high-frequency Latin words.

• 80% of the vocabulary (91% if excluding glossed words) appears in Mark A. E. Williams' Essential Latin Vocabulary, which consists of 1,425 high-frequency Latin words.

• Intended level: Novice (1st year)

First 103 Words:

Hodiē puer nātus est. Hic puer est fīlius Iovis et Māiae. Māia est māter puerī. Iūppiter est pater puerī. Iūppiter est rex deōrum.

Hic puer est mīrus. Hic puer ambulāre potest. Hic puer loquī potest. Hic puer canere potest. Nōmen puerō est Mercurius.

Hodiē Mercurius in Cyllēnē monte nātus est. Mercurius cum mātre habitat. Mercurius cum patre nōn habitat. Nam Iūppiter in Olympō monte habitat. Mercurius est puer mīrus. Mercurius domō exīre vult. Mercurius loquī vult. Mercurius canere vult. Mercurius autem vult fūrārī.

Mercurius clam domō exit.

Mercurius: “Ego volō domō exīre! Ego volō fūrārī!”

Mercurius videt testūdinem!

Mercurius: “Ego volō habēre testūdinem!

Ἑρμῆς πάντα κλέπτει (Hermes Panta Kleptei) (Ancient Greek Version)

Click to see on Lulu

• Total Words: 2,225

• Vocabulary: 87 (excluding names and unique forms), 263 unique forms

• 62% of the vocabulary (80% if excluding glossed words) appears in the Dickinson College Commentaries Greek Core Vocabulary, which consists of 500 high-frequency Ancient Greek words.

• Intended level: Novice (1st year)

First 100 Words:

τήμερον παιδίον τι ἐγένετο. τοῦτο δὲ τὸ παιδίον ἐστὶν ὁ υἱὸς Διὸς καὶ Μαίας. ἡ μὲν γὰρ Μαῖά ἐστιν ἡ μήτηρ τοῦ παιδίου. ὁ δὲ Ζεύς ἐστιν ὁ πατὴρ τοῦ παιδίου. καὶ ὁ Ζεύς ἐστιν ὁ τῶν θεῶν βασιλεύς.

τὸ δὲ παιδίον ἐστὶ θαυμαστόν. βαδίζειν μὲν γὰρ τὸ παιδίον δύναται. διαλέγεσθαι δὲ τὸ παιδίον δύναται. ᾄδειν δὲ τὸ παιδίον δύναται. Ἑρμῆς δέ ἐστι τῷ παιδίῳ ὄνομα.

τήμερον δὲ ὁ Ἑρμῆς ἐγένετο ἐν τῷ ὄρει τῇ Κυλλήνῃ. καὶ ἡ μήτηρ μὲν οἰκεῖ μετὰ τοῦ Ἑρμοῦ. ὁ δὲ πατὴρ οὐκ οἰκεῖ μετὰ τοῦ Ἑρμοῦ. ὁ γὰρ Ζεὺς οἰκεῖ ἐν τῷ Ὀλύμπῳ ὄρει.     

Self-Publishing in Greek

In the world of self-publishing novellas for language learners, most authors use Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Why? For authors, it is easy to use - you just need to upload your manuscript and cover artwork and you are pretty much ready to publish. With KDP, your novella is published on Amazon and is accessible to Amazon's massive customer base. Many customers already have an Amazon account and are probably familiar with how Amazon works, so customers can buy your novella in a matter of seconds.

Sound too good to be true?

There are some drawbacks to KDP compared to other self-publishing websites, such as:

• If you have ethical concerns about Amazon
• KDP's royalty rate for authors is lower than those of other self-publishing websites
• KDP (almost) only supports publishing in languages that use the Latin alphabet

This last point obviously presents a challenge for those of us who wish to self-publish in Greek (Ancient, Modern - it doesn't matter!). In this post I will share all of the hurdles I had to overcome to publish my novella in Greek.

But there are Greek books on Amazon! How does that work?!

I am pretty certain that those books were published through CreateSpace, which Amazon bought out a couple of years ago. I never used CreateSpace, but I believe that it supported Greek. As far as I know, KDP continues to support all books that were originally published with CreateSpace.

There is also a way to circumvent KDP's language policy, which I will share at the end of this post, but this requires violating KDP's language policy.

I. Choose a self-publishing company.

There are a variety of self-publishing companies out there. Most of them are targeted at authors who wish to self-publish books in English for a wide audience, i.e. not those of us who wish to publish novellas in languages other than English for a very select audience (i.e. language teachers and self-motivated language learners). 

I went with Lulu. Why?

• Writers of Latin novellas use it (such as these)
• Lulu allows free edits (some self-publishing websites charge a fee if you need to fix errors in your book - no thanks!)
• No language restrictions! (Caveat: Books in Greek can only be sold on Lulu and are ineligible for their wider distribution service)

No self-publishing company is perfect, so choose the one that best suits your goals.

II. Convert your PDF files into a press-ready PDF files

Before publishing my novella, I had no idea what layers and flattening were in PDF files. KDP allows authors to submit any old PDF. Other self-publishing companies, on the other hand, require that your PDF be flattened to remove all layers (also described as a "press-ready PDF"). 

The easiest way to do this is with Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. 

The downside? Adobe is expensive! As of August 2020, it costs $14.99/month (USD). I am lucky that my work PC has Adobe already installed.

To convert your PDF to a press-ready PDF, click File, then Save as Other, then select Press-Ready PDF (PDF/X). In the save menu, I also clicked Settings... and selected Save as PDF/X-1a. It turns out that there are different types of press-ready PDFs. According to the wisdom of the Internet, PDF/X-1a seems to be the safest option. 

You will also need to convert your cover artwork PDF file too.

III. Publish!

At this point, your Greek novella should be ready to publish.

Fonts: Stick with PDF-friendly fonts that support Polytonic Greek. I used Source Sans Pro and Palatino Linotype. There are plenty of fonts to choose from, but always check your PDFs to ensure that they display correctly. Fonts may look great in your word processing program of choice, but may not be rendered properly or at all in a PDF. I had to change my fonts at least a few times!

Publishing with KDP: Remember how I said earlier that you can try to circumvent KDP's language policy and self-publish in Greek? It is fairly simple, but I have not attempted it, so do so at your own risk. The secret: select English as your book's language. I have heard that KDP will remove your book if they find out that your book is in an unapproved language. That was too big of a risk for me to take, so I decided to play it safe and publish on Lulu. 

I still have a lot to learn about self-publishing, so please share your tips and tricks! 

γράφε δή!

Story Character Instagram Posts

If you've gathered anything from reading my blog, it's that I'm not a teacher who takes things too seriously (did you notice the name of my blog?!). I've always had a cheeky and silly side (they don't call me Iohannes Lascivus for nothing!), which I love to bring to my classroom. 

In the past two weeks, my Latin II classes read a story version that I wrote based on the film Snack Attack, which I first presented as a Movie Talk (or whatever they're called nowadays, again my cheeky and snarky side coming out!). To practice with vocabulary and demonstrate their comprehension of the Latin story, students created Instagram posts for one of the two characters, the old woman (anus in Latin, yes, you read that correctly) or the young man (iuvenis in Latin). Students were required to create these Instagram posts as their chosen character's reactions to the events in the story/film. Students could also be creative and have fun by using Latin hashtags that I wrote or by giving their character a funny username (my favorites are Instagranny and Best_anus_ever). 

It is worth mentioning that I do not have an Instagram account, so the inspiration for this assignment came from my impressions of the most ridiculous of Instagram tropes (e.g. shameless self-promotion, oversharing, glorification of the mundane), but, again, I'm all for irreverence and camp. 

Here is the slideshow with the instructions and a sample created by yours truly (pardon the quality of the drawing and handwriting):

Here is the worksheet (one side for the students to create their posts and the other side with Latin hashtags that I wrote):
 
To see the worksheet in its original formatting, click here. 

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Samples of student work:

That username! 😂

Best_username_ever!

Story Matching Activity

The new year is in full swing and I am almost in my sixth (!) week of the year (I already am if pre-planning counts!). What have I been up to since my last post? The last academic year came to an end and I went to the ACL Institute in New York. It was my first time at ACL, so it was fun meeting people whose work I have admired from online (where do I begin? Jenn Jarnagin, John Bracey, John Piazza, Lance Piantaggini, Chris Buczek, Justin Slocum Bailey) and catch up with former colleagues. I want to write a post about the changes I've made to my teaching for this academic year eventually.


Back to the topic of this post...

Here is an activity that I did with my Latin II students this past week. Based on the survey I gave to my Latin I students last year, they said that they wanted to continue reading Greco-Roman myths, which made up the majority of the texts we read in Latin I. This year, so far we have read two stories based on the myths of the god Vulcan/Hephaestus, inspired by stories originally written by Keith Toda and Rachel Ash and modified and extended by me. The first story covers Juno/Hera throwing Vulcan/Hephaestus off Mount Olympus. The second part covers Vulcan/Hephaestus' scheme to trap Juno/Hera in a chair that he made, the gods' attempts to bring him back to free Juno/Hera, and Bacchus/Dionysus getting Vulcan/Hephaestus drunk to convince him to return to Mount Olympus. We have been covering the second part for the past two weeks, so I created this tactile and interactive activity as we begin to wrap up our time with this story.

The activity is simple: I created a storyboard for the story using StoryboardThat (see this post from last year about my experiences with it). I printed out the storyboard (with the text cropped out) and the matching sets of sentences from the story and cut them into individual strips. 

Colours of the world! Spice up your Latin!

What did students do? In groups (in chairs, on whiteboards, on the floor), they

• Match each set of sentences with the appropriate picture.
• Put the matches of sentences/pictures in the correct order in which they appear in the story.

Different colors=no problems!

A few considerations:

• I printed each set in a different color for aesthetics and to prevent the sets from getting mixed. 
• Students completed this activity entirely from memory. As I mentioned above, they have been reading this for over a week now, so I would only use this activity after students are already very familiar with the story.
• Cutting out the pictures and sentence sets for nine groups of students took me about 4 hours. I love these types of activities, but this drawback makes me only do this a few times a year. Maybe I need student aides? 

Spend 4 hours cutting things out because I'm a control freak vs. Save time by having students cut things out 

The activity took about 15-20 minutes and not a single group struggled with recalling the story, so I was very satisfied with the outcome!

2018 Year in Review

2018 has (almost) gone, so I'd like to reflect briefly on some of the highlights of my year. 

2017 was a year of life-changing highs and lows. I passed the edTPA, got and accepted my job in Georgia, completed student teaching and my Masters, moved to Georgia, and finished my first semester in my new job. All these helped me through 2017, my most painful year personally. 2018 has had its ups and downs too, but I am grateful to be in an even better place now.

2018 was my first calendar year as a Latin teacher at Parkview and as a 100% CI teacher, so it's overwhelming to narrow down a list of highlights. 

Teaching:

• TPR - I first used TPR in 2017, but I did not feel that I was as successful as I wished to be. This past August, I really felt successful doing it again. See my post about it here.
• Brain Breaks - I first used Brain Breaks in 2017, but did not implement them consistently. Starting in August, I have made them a routine. See my post about it here.
• Writing my own novice-level Latin texts - Most of these have been translated and adapted from primary sources like Hesiod's Theogony (Saturn's overthrow of Uranus, the Titanomachy) and Homer's Iliad (Jupiter, Neptune, and Hades drawing lots) for Latin I students.
• Modifications for special ed. students - Miriam Patrick and I have been working closely to create activities and supports for our special education students, especially in Latin I. More details to come in a future post!
• Acting in the faculty play - Students invited several of us faculty to star in Check, Please, a play about a series of blind dates gone horribly-yet-humorously wrong. I played the role of Tod, a little boy who fools a woman into a date. 

  

  At 29 I could still pass for a kid. Yes, I am wearing a Mickey Mouse hat. Thanks for the youthful genes, Mom and Dad!

• Dressing up as Luigi for Halloween!

  

  Luigi forgoes Italian for the day because of half-off burritos at Chipotle on Halloween!

Greek & Latin:

• Biduum Georgianum - I had so much fun! I would love to do the longer immersion programs for both Latin AND Ancient Greek! See my post about it here. 
• Batrachomyomachia - I read two Greek texts this past year. First was the Batrachomyomachia, an epic poem that parodies Homer's Iliad. Instead of Greeks vs. Trojans, it's mice vs. frogs. I loved it - especially the deus ex machina ending!
• Digenes Akrites - The second Greek text I read was Digenes Akrites, a Byzantine poem about the life and adventures of Digenes Akrites ('Biracial Frontiersman'), a half-Arab, half-Roman hero who lives on the nearly-lawless eastern frontier of the empire (eastern Turkey today) and fights wild beasts, a dragon, and guerrillas. I graciously consulted Elizabeth Jeffrey's editions and translations of the Grottaferrata and Escorial manuscripts. This experience was a fun introduction to demotic Byzantine Greek and I'd love to learn more Modern Greek!

Travel: 

• The Midwest - In May and June, I enjoyed a nice roadtrip through the Midwest (Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio) with my girlfriend. It was great to see my family and best friends again in the Chicago area. Cedar Point was AMAZING! The best amusement park I've ever been to!
• Egypt - Also in June, my lifelong dream of going to Egypt came true and it was everything I had hoped for and more. Let me travel geek right now - I stayed in Cairo (just blocks from Tahrir Square!), Aswan (on Elephantine Island!), Luxor (steps from the Nile!), and Alexandria (right across from the Mediterranean!). I saw and did so much and I can't wait to go back!

  

  The Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza! I went inside too!

• Istanbul - Coming back home, I had a long layover in Istanbul thanks to flying Turkish Airlines, one of my favorite airlines. Since it is Istanbul - AKA my favorite place in the world - I had to go see it even for those brief hours I was there. I got on the metro shortly after it starts at 6:00 AM and explored the city on foot. I checked out some Byzantine churches, walked along the Sea of Marmara, and visited Hagia Sophia (my eleventh visit - yes, I'm shamelessly obsessed!) - all with more than enough time to hop back on to the metro and return to the airport to fly home. 

  

  Under Hagia Sophia's legendary dome for the eleventh time, but just as excited as ever!

Annum novum faustum felicem tibi, lector!