PAU Latin Language and Culture (Catalonia) common mistakes
PAU Latin Language and Culture (Catalonia) · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Translating case endings loosely: rendering an ablative absolute as if it were a plain temporal clause with a finite verb, or turning a genitive of possession into an adjective, because the overall sentence 'sounds right' in Catalan.
Candidates read the Latin for gist and then let Catalan syntax drive the output, so morphology stops constraining the translation. The habit is reinforced because the gist often produces a plausible Catalan sentence.
What to do instead
Before writing the Catalan, annotate every noun, pronoun and participle in the sentence with its case and function (e.g. 'urbem: acc., CD; consule: abl., abl. absolute'). Translate only after the annotation is complete, and check the final Catalan against the annotation, not against the gist.
Leaving subordinate clauses with subjunctive verbs translated by an indicative, or flattening a purpose clause (ut + subj.) into a simple infinitive, losing the logical link the author built.
Catalan uses the subjunctive far less than Latin in indirect questions and result clauses, and candidates have not internalised the ut/ne, cum, quod + subjunctive patterns as translation triggers.
What to do instead
Keep a short trigger list on the desk: ut/ne + subj. = purpose or result; cum + subj. = circumstance, cause or concession; indirect question = subjunctive in Catalan too. When a subjunctive appears, name the clause type before translating it.
Confusing the historical infinitive and the narrative perfect with a present-tense narration, producing a Catalan text in the present where the Latin is in the past.
The infinitive form looks like the present infinitive candidates know from paradigms, and the perfect stem is often irregular, so tense recognition fails under time pressure.
What to do instead
Drill the tense markers explicitly: -isse/-avisse = pluperfect infinitive, bare -re after a nominative subject in a narrative = historical infinitive. Check the main verb of each clause for person and number agreement before assigning tense.
In the analysis section, labelling a word by its dictionary category rather than its syntactic function in context: calling a genitive 'possessive' when it is partitive, or calling an accusative a direct object when it is an accusative of extent or an internal object.
Candidates memorise a list of genitive and accusative uses and then match by keyword, without asking what the governing verb or noun actually requires.
What to do instead
For each word, state the head word it depends on and the question it answers (whose? of what? how much? for how long?). Only then assign the label. If two labels fit, justify the choice in one sentence.
Mistaking a participle for a finite verb, or a supine/gerundive for an ordinary adjective, and then building an analysis around a verb that does not exist in the sentence.
Latin participles carry tense and voice but no person, and their endings overlap with adjectives; candidates under pressure see a -tus/-ns form and assume a verb.
What to do instead
Test every candidate verb: does it agree with a nominative in person and number? If not, it is a participle or adjective. Practise parsing -ns, -tus, -ndus and -urus forms in isolation until the distinction is automatic.
Commenting on a literary text by paraphrasing its content and then adding a stock phrase about 'the author's elegance', without naming genre, metre, rhetorical figure or historical context.
Candidates fear being wrong about technical terms and retreat to safe description; school commentary practice often rewards summary rather than analysis.
What to do instead
Structure the commentary in fixed blocks: genre and metre (hexameter, elegiac couplet, prose rhythm), speaker and addressee, two named figures with the exact Latin words quoted, and one link to the author's period. Quote the Latin to anchor every claim.
Treating etymology as free association: linking a Latin word to any Catalan word that looks similar, regardless of sound laws, and inventing lexical families that never existed.
Candidates rely on visual resemblance and on modern Catalan meanings, and are rarely taught the regular correspondences (e.g. Latin f- to Catalan f-/h-, -ct- to -it-, initial cl-/fl- to cl-/fl-).
What to do instead
Learn the regular sound changes as a checklist and apply them: if the derivation breaks a known correspondence, reject it. Distinguish inherited words from learned cultisms and from borrowings, and give the intermediate form when you claim a family link.
Confusing Roman institutions and offices: mixing consul with praetor, tribune of the plebs with military tribune, or the comitia centuriata with the comitia tributa, and dating events by the wrong magistracy.
The vocabulary is dense and the functions overlap; candidates learn names without the specific powers (imperium, veto, auspicia) that distinguish them.
What to do instead
Build a comparison table with columns for number, term, imperium, veto, and main function, and fill it for consul, praetor, tribune, censor, aedile and dictator. Attach one dated example to each office so the fact has an anchor.
Placing authors and works in the wrong period or genre: putting Seneca's tragedies in the Augustan age, treating satire as a Greek import, or attributing the Aeneid to a prose genre.
Literary history is studied as a list of names and dates rather than as a timeline of genres, so the connections between author, reign and form are never made.
What to do instead
Draw a timeline by reign (Republic, Augustan, Julio-Claudian, Flavian, etc.) and place each author with one work and one genre on it. For each genre, name its Greek model and its first Latin practitioner.
Answering the classical-heritage question with vague statements about Latin being 'the root of Catalan' instead of identifying a concrete survival: a specific learned doublet, an inscription, a Renaissance translation, or a legal or political concept transmitted through Latin.
The heritage domain feels like general knowledge, so candidates do not prepare named examples and fall back on platitudes under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Prepare a bank of ten to fifteen concrete cases with names and dates: e.g. a Latin-Catalan doublet pair, a medieval Catalan translation of a Latin author, a Roman-law concept still in the civil code. Answer with the specific case, then explain the transmission.