About Quasilatin

One of the reasons the review process was set up for the Latin readers at TarHeelReader was because some students have created and published readers which are not really usable by others. These readers have been labels as "quasilatin" rather than "Latin" in order to separate them out from the Latin collection.

The readers have not been unpublished, and are still available online - but in this way, other Latin students and teachers will not stumble across them and be confused by their odd language. There are a few possible reasons why a reader would be classified as "quasilatin" instead of Latin:

• Typographical errors. Sometimes the Latin has so many typographical errors that it is not possible for the reviewer to easily correct those errors; instead, the author would need to do some more work on the reader, carefully correcting all the typographical errors (this seems to happen when someone is copying a poem or other classical text, and makes errors in the typing)
• Grammatical errors. Sometimes people attempt to compose in Latin by copying words in their dictionary form and arranging them in sentences. For a language like Latin, this approach does not work, because the endings on all nouns, adjectives and verbs change from their dictionary form based on their grammatical role in the sentence. If a sentence does not use the correct endings, it is not possible to read and understand what the Latin means.
• Chopped up paraphrase. Sometimes when people are paraphrasing a long text in Latin, creating a shorter paraphrase, they might leave out important words, so that the resulting phrases and sentences do not make sense. If you copy the words from an existing text, such as a poem, but do not make sure those words fit together, the result can be very confusing. When you paraphrase a text, you often need to change the endings on the words in order to make sure that the new version is grammatically correct.
  

Revising your quasilatin reader. You can see the items that have been reclassified as "quasiLatin" readers at the TarHeelReader website. If you are the author of one of those texts, you can work on it some more, and ask that it be reviewed again, to see if it can be put with the Latin readers. Before you do that, you should probably ask someone - such as your teacher, or some other Latin students - to look at the text and make sure it is written in good Latin. You might also use an online discussion board - such as one of the Latin Ning websites - to ask some people to check on your Latin and make sure it is good to go. Here are some Latin Ning websites where you can get help with that: eClassics, Schola (this one is all in Latin, which is fun!), and Aesopus.

When you are done revising your quasilatin reader, you can ask to have it be re-reviewed by leaving a comment here at this blog post. Make sure you include the specific title of your reader, along with its address. If you would like a personal reply to your request, make sure you include your own name and email address, too.