Saturday, May 29, 2010

Writing Strategy: Amplify a Proverb

In addition to commenting on a proverb, you can also recreate a proverb, amplifying it and expressing the same idea in a new way.

In some cases, there might be an existing proverb that contains several of the words you need already! When I saw this list - mereo - fides - vel - remaneo - unus - that immediately reminded me of this traditional proverb: Testis in uno falsus, in nullo fidem meretur. The proverb already had three of the five words in it! So, all I needed to do was find a way to fit in vel and remaneo, which was not hard to do: Testis in uno vel falsus vel ambiguus, in nullo fidem meretur; dubitatio semper remanet.

Sometimes, you might end up amplifying the proverb to a much greater extent. For example, when I saw this list of words - primus - sanctus - arripio - aetas - ex - the words aetas and arripio made me think of Vergil's famous words, Omnia fert aetas, "Time bears away all things." I use that tiny proverb in Vergil to inspire my longer expression of the same basic idea, using all the words in the list. You can see the results here if you are curious.

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Do you have some good strategies for doing the Vocabulary Challenge in Latin? Share your ideas here! Here are some strategies that I've used in writing my responses.



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