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 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!

Storyboard That - Werewolf Story from Petronius

Happy Halloween, everyone! Thanks to Keith Toda, I recently learned about Storyboard That, a website in which, as the name suggests, you can make storyboards. Since most of my teaching is based in stories (often Greco-Roman myths, original contemporary stories, or original scripts based on films used for Movie Talks), I was eager to use a tool that combines the text of a story with visuals. Not only does this satisfy my creative and visual side, but also provides an additional support for my students' comprehension of the text. 

In Latin II, Keith recently made a storyboard for the story that we are currently reading (about Aeneas and his journey from Troy to the Sibyl). I really liked how his storyboard turned out, so yesterday I decided to check out Storyboard That for myself. 

Here are pros and cons I've found so far from using it over the past day:

Pros:

• Easy to use (with some degree of a learning curve)
• Lots of options for graphics. It comes with tons of backgrounds, characters, symbols, et al. Characters can show emotions, motion, face forward/backward/to the side, and more.
• Lots of culturally-based graphics like ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the European Middle Ages.
• Lots of options for customization (e.g. changing colors, sizes)
• Lots of options for exporting (.pdf, PowerPoint, image files)

Cons:

• The free version is severely limited, so I bought a subscription.
• The subscription is pretty expensive (You can buy a teacher membership for 12 months for $71.88.)
• Perhaps it was my connection, but the website is pretty slow at times.
• I wish there was an easier share option. Maybe I haven't found it yet, but all I've been able to do is share the link to my storyboard.
• Some tools could use some refining to make them faster to do (copying and deleting cells, adding images).

My first storyboard with Storyboard That was a slightly condensed version of the werewolf story in Petronius' Satyricon. In case you are not familiar with the story, the characters Encolpius and Ascyltos attend a lavish dinner party hosted by the decadent freedman Trimalchio. One of the guests, a freedman named Niceros, tells a story about how, when he was still a slave, he went to the house of his girlfriend Melissa one night while his master was away. Along the way, Niceros and his companion, a soldier, stop by some graves along the road. The soldier stops to relieve himself beside the graves (a fairly common practice in antiquity), but then undresses, places his clothing beside the road, urinates around them, turns into a wolf, and runs off. Niceros tries to pick up the clothes, but they have turned to stone. Niceros eventually reaches the villa where Melissa lives (she is also a slave), who tells him that a wolf had attacked the livestock on the villa, but another slave managed to wound the wolf with a lance. Frightened at the fate of his companion, Niceros returns to the site of the clothes and finds blood there instead. Niceros then returns home where he finds the soldier in bed being treated by a doctor.

Here is the storyboard I created:

Click image to enlarge

I must confess that I am proud of my portrayal of "circumminxit." 😜

A subscription to Storyboard That is expensive, but since my curriculum is mostly stories anyway, I plan to make full use of it and create storyboards for every story that we read in Latin I this year. I hope to have an updated review in the spring after I have used this service more. 

Enjoy my favorite holiday!

Cum fratre

Latin 1 First Story of the Year

Many teachers who are new to CI, especially Latin teachers, ask the question, "How do you start level one?" The traditional way of teaching Latin typically jumps right into conjugating verbs. That's at least how my first few days of Latin went (to be fair, it was also at the college level). Our modern world language colleagues at least can start the year with the old standbys of greetings and simple expressions for interpersonal communication (e.g. talking about family, interests, and likes/dislikes). 

In my Latin 1 class, we do all of these (minus conjugating verbs), but I also like to get my students moving and engaging with one another via Total Physical Response (TPR). With TPR, I deliver simple messages in Latin to my students to perform simple actions with high-frequency verbs. To make it more engaging, we use stuffed animals.

"I ad ianuam!" "Go to the door!"

"Cape animal ex sacco!" "Take an animal out of the bag!"

"Fer leonem ad Amandam!" "Bring the animal to Amanda!"

"Marcus dat felem Liviae!" "Marcus gives the cat to Livia!"

All of this involves me narrating and ordering various actions while pausing to point at the words on the board with their accompanying English meaning.

This year, inspired by my colleagues Rachel Ash, Miriam Patrick, and Keith Toda, I decided to make my own story using the vocabulary words from our TPR activities. This way, my students can see and hear (as we read aloud the story) these high-frequency words, get as much exposure to and repetition of said words, and acquire words that will serve them for as long as they study Latin.

The story I wrote, titled Ubi est telephonum Mirandae? (Where Is Miranda's Phone?), was a surprise hit with my students! The story draws not only from our TPR word base, but also from our class cell phone procedure and rejoinders. I used Latin names (Miranda and Iulius - Julius in English) that are familiar in English to help my students see that many of us have Latin names and that the Latin-speaking past is not so distant. Here is what it looks like:

Hodie puella (girl) est in Lilburn. Nomen ei est Miranda. Miranda est discipula. Miranda intrat conclave (classroom). Miranda videt in tabulā: “Ubi sunt telephona?”

Ubi est telephonum Mirandae? Scilicet est in sacculō! Miranda videt in sacculō. Telephonum non est in sacculō! Miranda non habet telephonum! Ubi est telephonum Mirandae?! Miranda vult telephonum!

Miranda it ad armarium. Telephonum non est in armariō. Miranda it ad excipulum. Telephonum non est in excipulō. Miranda it ad mensam. Telephonum non est in mensā. Ubi est telephonum Mirandae? Miranda non habet telephonum. Miranda vult telephonum!

Miranda it ad ianuam. Iulius intrat conclave. Miranda inquit (said), “Ubi est meum (my) telephonum?”

Iulius inquit, “Visne telephonum? Da mihi (to me) stylum.” Miranda capit stylum. Miranda fert stylum. Miranda dat stylum Iuliō. Iulius habet stylum.

Iulius inquit, “Da mihi chartam.” Miranda capit chartam. Miranda fert chartam. Miranda dat chartam Iuliō. Iulius habet chartam.

Iulius scribit in chartā, “Te amo (I love you).” Iulius dat chartam Mirandae. Miranda capit chartam.

Miranda inquit, “Fufae!” Miranda ponit (puts) chartam in sacculum. Miranda videt aliquid (something) in sacculō sub (under) libellō. Miranda videt telephonum! Euge! Miranda habet telephonum!

Why was this simple story such a hit? The reference to our cell phone procedure was a nice inside joke (and a great way for me to remind my classes of my policy 😈). My students ate up the almost love story. Some felt bad for Iulius and his failed attempt to woo Miranda. Some commended him for his audacity. Some found his flirtations creepy. Some students made predictions about the location of Miranda's phone (one was correct!). One class wanted to know more about Miranda and Iulius' relationship and wondered if they had a past, which I will keep in mind in case I decide to write a continuation of this story.

Before I wrote this story, I felt overwhelmed at the thought of writing a narrative that both engaged my students and gave them sufficient exposure to and repetition of high-frequency words in Latin. I'm sure many new CI teachers share the same apprehension. After all, when I was a student - and later a teacher - in traditional Latin programs, I relied on textbook exercises (however absurd they may be - I'm looking at you, Dominus iacet in via!) and on adapted readings from classical literature for practice. I now plan to write more stories for my classes in the future. I can only hope that they will be just as fabulous.