You can download it for free in PDF from the Latin charts page.

And here’s how to do it:

1. Make an HTML file with the material you want as reference, styled for the iPhone, with the CSS inline in the file. You can preview it in your browser to get it to look the way you want to. Here’s a sample file: LatinConjugations.html (Note: it’s not perfect yet. The content doesn’t go all the way across to the right edge of the screen.)

2. When you have your file ready to go, put it in your Dropbox folder.

3. Open the Dropbox app on your iPhone and voila! There it is. (Dropbox’s syncing is almost instantaneous. It’s sync bliss.)

Advantages: it’s easy to get the file on once it’s made, and Dropbox’s integration with pretty much everything is seamless. The Dropbox iPhone app also lets you save files for offline viewing, which is handy if you’re frequently out of reception/wifi range.

Disadvantages: you have to know HTML, and it takes time to prepare the files. (It would be fairly easy for someone to write an app that generated files like this, however.)

If you’ve got other methods, tell us about them in the comments. (And this is by no means the only way to do this. I just happen to love Dropbox with an undying passion. ;))

And yet my emails and even text messages remain in proper English, adorned with perfect punctuation and capitalization and the like. What gives?

I’ve been thinking about it, and my guess is that it’s because IM is a real-time conversation (synchronous, since I love using fancy-schmancy lingo :P), where email and text messages aren’t necessarily so (asynchronous). As a result, email and texts are more like written English, where instant messages become more like spoken English in all of its messy glory. ;)

Does this bother the OCD editor inside of me? Not really. I used to be a prickly stickler about proper English, but my undergraduate training (I was an English linguistics major) made me realize that a living language is far more organic than I realized, and for it to stay alive, it has to have breathing room. That means room for different styles, including some sans caps and puncts. will txting n im destroy english 4 good? LOL no

:P

The colored part prints out darker, by the way, so it’s not quite as bright as it seems here.

Anyway, there’ll be more soon. (And in all sorts of cool languages like Gothic and Old Irish and Middle Welsh. I’m giddy. :)) I plan to focus on basic grammatical charts, though I might do some simple vocab lists and short texts as well. We’ll see — if you have any ideas or requests, let me know. Oh, and the final charts will be released for free in PDF, of course.

Update: I’ve finally finished the chart. :) It’s available on the Latin charts page. Enjoy!

So, for the past few years I’ve been collecting translations of Moroni 10:3–5 (since it’s one of our flagship passages of scripture). It’s been up on my old site, but I just barely moved it over to here and figured I’d give it a little shout-out while I was at it: Moroni 10:3–5

Right now I’m at 58 languages. There’s obviously still a bit left, including the harder languages like Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Urdu, Persian, Armenian, Cambodian, Amharic, etc. (By “harder” I mean harder to type, since I have to hunt and peck at the character palette. Latin alphabet-based languages are a lot easier. But I think the harder ones are more fun. :)) And eventually I’ll go back in and add in the publication info (since many of these languages have more than one edition of the Book of Mormon) and the missing book titles (like on Palauan, Papiamento, and Pohnpeian).

Anyway, if any of you want to type up the text for a language that isn’t listed here, that’d be awesome — just email it to me and make sure you say what language it is. Thanks!

…Prof. Lambdin simply does not dabble in his languages. He attacks them, not only with zeal (though that is always present), but with a plan, to conquer them. First, learn the basic grammar as it is commonly understood (or misunderstood), some basic vocabulary; read some texts. Then, like a linguistic pathologist, take the language apart: scrutinize the lexical bones, particularly those idioms, usually associated with the most common verbs, that present obstacles in every language; analyze the morphological muscles, render them unformidable; track down the syntactical tendons, overlooked by others. Meanwhile, put most of the dictionary on flash cards and commit it to memory. Now read the best of the literature like a native, until boredom sets in from lack of challenge, and it’s time to move on. The number and range of languages that have been subjected to this process is remarkable: there are the Semitic languages, of course; but also Berber, Finnish, Turkish, Swahili, Hindi, Chinese, and some fifty or sixty others, it seems…. And when called upon to transmit his knowledge and understanding, another side of his extraordinary linguistic ability came into play; as a teacher of language, he is simply the best. It is one thing to be able to learn languages; it is quite another to describe them with such clarity that others are able to gain a similar understanding. Occasionally, an available grammar would meet with his approval and be used. But more often, he would find the grammars too frustrating; if he did not feel comfortable with a language after going through a given grammar, he would not expect his students to. So he would write his own, a clear report of the dissection process described earlier, the morphology and syntax broken down into easily comprehended lessons, the vocabulary glossed in such a way that the words really do have meaning, and exercises, lots of exercises, written to ensure that the grammar and vocabulary make sense and are remembered, so that by the time the first texts are encountered, the language is an old friend, not a dimly perceived, refractory set of vaguely familiar forms.

(For the astute, yes, I did already post this two years ago, but that’s forever and a day and this quote really deserves repeating.)

You see, my freshman year I took Latin and Coptic, both semesters. Then after my mission I took Middle Egyptian and Greek, then Old English, and then Middle English. And this semester I’m taking Welsh. Not all of these are completely Davy Jonesed (and Welsh is thriving), sure, but even so, there’s something seriously awesome about studying languages no one else cares about. Aye, it warms the cockles of my heart. (Here you go, in case you were wondering. I know I was.)

In other news, I’m back in classes for the first time in a year and a half — I’m taking Welsh and Playwriting, and they’re both a lot of fun so far. (Had to write a ten-page play by today. We got our titles and actors by random selection, mine being “Into the Oven” (one of the titles I’d suggested) with Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie, and Zooey Deschanel starring in it. Hypothetically, of course. And I really shouldn’t say this on my blog, but I am gaga over Zooey. I try to keep my celebrity crushes to a minimum, since they’re effectively pointless, but yeah, Zooey’s so attractive it drives me crazy. And I’ll stop talking like a teenage girl now. :P)

And on a related note (to the playwriting, not to Zooey, though I sure wouldn’t mind talking more about her ;)), I’m directing a play (Ben Phelan’s “The Sword Without, and Terror Within”) for this next New Play Project set of shows. We had our directors’ meeting tonight and will be holding auditions next Tuesday and Thursday from 7–9pm each night in the HFAC. (Exact location to be determined. I’ll announce it again when we get closer.) And the shows will be performed in October. Fun times.

[tags]New Play Project, Zooey Deschanel[/tags]

The problem, though, is that there are so many classes I want to take. I took a lot of just-for-fun classes during my undergrad years, but let’s face it: there are tons and tons of really cool classes at BYU. The list keeps growing longer. (And if you have any good recommendations, I’m fine with it growing even longer, so leave them in the comments. :))

For this semester I’ve settled on two classes, Welsh 101 and Playwriting 1, both of which look like they’ll be a lot of fun. I’m excited. I miss being in class. I don’t really miss midterms or finals, but the exhilaration of learning makes it worth it. Mmm. I get little wavelets of goosebumps just thinking about it…

It isn’t just blogging that I’ve been slacking off on these past two weeks — it’s pretty much everything. So I’ve written next to nothing, hardly even been myself. I’ve got to figure out how to prevent this in the future…

Anyway, today I decided that I need to consolidate my writing projects, because there are too many of them — twelve or so plays, seven or eight novels, a handful of stories that want to be novellas, etc. — and without focusing on one at a time, I’ll never get anywhere. So, I’ve decided to give myself a few blanket categories to work within, and inside each category I’ll only work on one thing at a time. Here are the categories (for now):

1. Short fiction. This’ll be short stories, basically. I thought about taking one of the stories I’ve started and finishing it, but I feel like I want to start afresh — particularly because most of my stories to date have been fantasy of one sort or another, and I’d like to write something realistic. And religious.

2. Long fiction. I’ll try to alternate projects between fantasy and realistic, but that may or may not work. Anyway, the novel I’ll be working on for the time being is Rupert’s Umbrella Adventures. (It’s YA fantasy.)

3. Short play. This is my New Play Project category. :) My first project is to finish revising Alchemy so I can get it out for more feedback and see if I’ve fixed the problems that cropped up in the current draft. Then I’ll start writing a play to submit to the next NPP show, “Long Ago and Far Away.” (I have till June 3, and I want to submit three or four different plays, but so far all of my ideas have been for the other sets this year. Grr.)

4. Long play. I started writing a play tentatively called The Color of Love for Script Frenzy at the beginning of the month, but it pretty much went nowhere. (I have two or three pages of dialogue and that’s it.) The milieu of the play — a BYU student ward — is one I know quite well, and it should be a fun play to write. (And no, it won’t be like Singles Ward. If I’m lucky I might even be able to redeem the genre. :P)

5. Nonfiction. This’ll be my book/essay category. For now, the book I think I want to write is one on how to write a grammar text, particularly for dead languages. In other words, how do you teach a language through a book, without being boring and monotonous? So I’ll be researching pedagogical methods of language instruction, particularly focused on doing it through a book and not through a class or audio or anything else. But I’m free to change the focus if my research shows that my current idea is too restrictive or something. :)

6. Music. The oddball category, I’ll admit. It’s pretty much here purely to get me writing music more often. I’m going to start out by trying to write an arrangement of “I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go” for the violin and piano.

Anyway, I’m not entirely sure that dividing things up this way will work, but it seems to be the way my brain organizes them, so we’ll see. I’m also going to set goals for these projects, both long-term and weekly, so that I don’t let lots of time slip by without getting anything done.

I reserve the right to change any and all of this. :P