“The vowels are, as it were, the Souls, and the consonants, the bodies of words.”
“Now the Soul moves both itself and the body, but the body is immovable apart from the Soul. Such, then, are the consonants without the vowels. They may indeed be written by themselves, but they can neither be uttered nor have any power apart from the vowels.”
P. 101 “Alcuin and the Rise of Christians Schools”
So… what is wrong with this? Can we say it is good enough, or too far off the mark to be of use? I’m thinking about using it in Farmer Buridan, a text for kids in special education for behavioral issues, short raunchy stories of a farmer who always gets around the nagging bitchiness of his wife to stop being lazy, by employing classic elements from philosophy to get the job done quickly so he can dissapear and rest in the shade.
I don’t have a good theory or plot for grammar, but Alcuin seems a good place… this pops out. I know a lot of boys in these classes have Cartesian issues, like to daydream. It seems a good metaphors to build on, but my understanding of constanants and vowels such. I figured it was just directions on putting your tongue and lips in places and blowing, not really different than a tutorial on performing a better golf swing.
I want these boys in the 6th grade to have college grad level access to math and logic, despite being behind generally their own classes. I am not having a issue with most, but the grammar obviously is causing me issues. I like how Alcuin presents ideas, his style can be adapted and made raunchy and laughable (to keep them interested) but this is stumping me. I want to start here, but is his idea to alien to the modern understanding of what constitutes a vowel or consonate. If a discussion ever was to break on in the past on this in a philosophy group, I would of looked on the non existent watch on my wrist saying “wow, look at the time” and gotten out. We really don’t think of these things.