Saturday, April 03, 2010

What's the Deal with Sentences? A Song for Learning Latin Sentence Patterns

In our Latin Club, we use the Latin for Children curriculum from Classical Academic Press. In level A, the children learn chants for sentence patterns that they can use to start translating and easily creating Latin sentences. Here's a song I wrote about the sentence patterns to help the kids remember them, and just for fun!

Here's the link to the video on YouTube.

What’s the Deal with Sentences?

What’s the deal with Pattern A?
What does SNV mean?
Like “Sweep no vents” or “See no views” Or “Steal no victories”?
SN stands for “Subject noun”
And V for action verb.
So SNV is pattern A
Now you’ve heard the word.

So “Vir intrat” and “Vir Mutat” and then “Viri pugnant”
“Magister clamat” and then “Magister ambulat”

What’s the deal with Pattern B?
SN LV PRN?
A linking verb like sum, “to be”
Connects two nouns together
The subject and the predicate
Are linked and then equated
I’m a girl(boy) and you’re a boy(girl),
With pattern B we state it.

So “Filii sunt amicae” and “Marcus est amicus”
“Dominus est socius” and “Servus est filius”

What’s the deal with Pattern C?
SN LV PrA?
It’s just the same as Pattern B
Except for one small way
In the predicate we see
An adjective is waiting
To be linked with the subject noun,
In Pattern C relating.

So “Vir est bonus” “Vir est malus” “Viri sunt ignoti”
“Magistra est antiqua” “Discipuli sunt novi”

Enjoy! Here's the video:


2 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:25 PM

    This is great! Thank you so much for recording it so we can practice at home.

    -Colleen Poteat

    ReplyDelete
  2. Another possibility (to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb):

    Subject, Object (ind. then dir.)
    Adverb, then, at last, the verb,
    Should the subject missing go
    Verbs say what you need to know
    Subject, Object (ind. then dir.)
    Adverb, then, at last, the verb,

    ReplyDelete