(17 Dec. 2011)
Weird random memory time: my high school offered only French and Spanish as foreign language credits (required to graduate), but also offered Latin as an elective. (Supposedly learning Latin helped on the 'Verbal' section of the old SAT--which is actually largely complete crap because, although the grammatical and sentence structures of English are taken from Latin, the words themselves are mostly German or French in origin.)
So naturally, in order to help the students taking the Latin course, they designated a small portion of the school library for... Latin books. And I don't mean textbooks or material originally published in Latin--though they did have them--but contemporary books translated into it. Among them were 'The Giving Tree' and 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'. I remember the word 'Grinch' was changed to 'Grinchus'.
I just thought it was a bit funny, even though it does make a lot of sense to teach a new language through familiar material.
So naturally, in order to help the students taking the Latin course, they designated a small portion of the school library for... Latin books. And I don't mean textbooks or material originally published in Latin--though they did have them--but contemporary books translated into it. Among them were 'The Giving Tree' and 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'. I remember the word 'Grinch' was changed to 'Grinchus'.
I just thought it was a bit funny, even though it does make a lot of sense to teach a new language through familiar material.
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