What about Latinitas?
LNDb does not, and will never, give ratings of the supposed Latinitas of the novellas, and it's something that people shouldn't be worrying about.
1. What other teachers have written works for them and their students. When you see a bit of Latin that doesn’t seem right to you, remember: it wasn’t written for you. This teacher wrote it for their students, and even if it doesn’t suit your needs, it suits theirs. Respect that.
2. Unsolicited criticisms of Latinitas don’t educate; they embarrass and degrade. They only make the corrector feel superior and the correctee feel inferior. This is especially true if they’re of a group that has been historically shut out of Classics study (e.g. women, POC; cf. mansplaining)
3. You may be wrong. Or both of you may be right. In reading all of these novellas, and many times I thought I found a little mistake in Latinitas. Yet most of the time, it was I who was incorrect. You know Latin, but they know Latin too. Respect that.
4. “Good Latinitas” is an unknowable construct. While you can make assumptions based on the corpus of Latin literature on what constitutes proper Latin, these are only assumptions. Unless you have regular séances with Cicero, you don’t know better than any of us.
5. If it doesn’t work for you, make your own. Martial 1.91:
Cum tua nōn ēdās, carpis mea carmina, Laelī.
1. What other teachers have written works for them and their students. When you see a bit of Latin that doesn’t seem right to you, remember: it wasn’t written for you. This teacher wrote it for their students, and even if it doesn’t suit your needs, it suits theirs. Respect that.
2. Unsolicited criticisms of Latinitas don’t educate; they embarrass and degrade. They only make the corrector feel superior and the correctee feel inferior. This is especially true if they’re of a group that has been historically shut out of Classics study (e.g. women, POC; cf. mansplaining)
3. You may be wrong. Or both of you may be right. In reading all of these novellas, and many times I thought I found a little mistake in Latinitas. Yet most of the time, it was I who was incorrect. You know Latin, but they know Latin too. Respect that.
4. “Good Latinitas” is an unknowable construct. While you can make assumptions based on the corpus of Latin literature on what constitutes proper Latin, these are only assumptions. Unless you have regular séances with Cicero, you don’t know better than any of us.
5. If it doesn’t work for you, make your own. Martial 1.91:
