Qvid est casus

Casus Nominum quot sunt?

Latin Immersion

Latin Immersion

The other day, in a comment at Aspiring Polyglot, Unzum of SoYouWantToLearnALanguage, noted some under-appreciated podcasts. One of them was the Latinum podcast. I'd seen this podcast listed at Unzum's site before, but hadn't gone to visit.

What a wealth of stuff! The core of the Latinum podcasts is an audio version of a Latin textbook by Adler designed to teach conversational Latin. In addition, there are Latin stories, poems, etc. Yes, the site can be a bit tricky to navigate, and mypodcast.com can run a little slow sometimes. But it's worth the trouble for the gems to be found.

The creator of Latinum says you need 2 hours a day for 3 years - at a minimum! - to become fluent in Latin. That could be a bit discouraging unless there is some really important long term reason for you to speak Latin fluently. Of course, there is one reason to speak Latin fluently - so that you can read the classics with a Roman ear. Learning enough Latin to decipher Ovid and Vergil may open you up to the greatness of their craft and the versatility of Latin, but it won't move you. It's more like understanding the humor of a joke after it's been explained to you. You may enjoy it and even retell it for its cleverness, but your experience of it won't include the shock of spontaneous discovery.

One of the features of the podcasts is lessons where Latin phrases are introduced interspersed with either French or German translation. It's a bit odd, but a nice brushup for a polyglot. What's best, however, is that this program, by extended listening, causes Latin to seep into your brain. The first lesson includes a lot of question forms. While I've looked at Latin off and on for years, I never really got the hang of things like tacking a "ne" on the verb to form a question. After 45 minutes listening, the "habesne"s and "estne"s come almost as easily as tossing est-ce que onto the front of a question in French.

If you're serious about knowing Latin, not just knowing about it, be sure to check this out.

Of course simultaneous to all this as been the rise of my Latin studies (Greek studies have remained the same, which is to say very early beginner). In large part due to the wisdom provided by Andrew Campbell in his interview posted at The Woodshed, I’ve moved to the center of my studies the practice of listening to Latin. Pretty much every available waking moment I try to listen to Hans Orberg read from his bookLingua Latina. And I have downloaded several of the over 300 podcasts from Evan Millner’s Latinum podcast.

I already see the wisdom of Andrew Campbell’s suggestion to make studying Latin more than merely reading it — which means more than merely looking at it. No, hearing it out loud, whether from a study recording or from talking Latin with another person (which Hannah and I are at the very very early stages of doing) totally brings the language alive. We’ve begun to text to each other in Latin, a bit. I’ve begun to sing simple songs to the girls in Latin; songs of my own creation. And a simple game we play in the family — where’s Oona?/Twyla?/Izzi? . . . There she is! — (as a form of peek-a-boo) — I’ve started to play in Latin, using the same tones of voice, and the girls have already picked up on it, with Twyla already playing the game in Latin. (Ubi Oona? . . . Es te!)

And what strikes me in all of this that all that separates Latin as a dead language from Latin as a living language is people speaking it. That is it. Start speaking it, and it takes on an organic, vibrant character that even the same words written on a page don’t have. Of course, we are still so early in our family speaking Latin — baby steps, quite literally — I don’t want to get ahead of myself. But it is fun, nonetheless.

Original letters, illustrative of English history; with notes and illustr. by H. Ellis edited by Henry Ellis

Original letters, illustrative of English history; with notes and illustr. by H. Ellis edited by Henry Ellis: ""

A Learning Methodology for Latin

A Learning Methodology for Latin

Evan Millner

There are things that a student of a new language should take note of - to get really good, fast, you need to immerse yourself in the language.  There is no other method that will get you to fluency with speed. The secret is TIME. LOTS OF IT, all devoted to listening to the language you are trying to learn.

You can go a certain distance by focussing on grammar, but my suggestion is to go light on the grammar, only learning a little of it at a time. Spend your time simply getting a lot of material in the language into your head. Spread your grammar learning over a period of months, and keep learning grammar, until the day you die.....Latin grammar is complex, and will be an ongoing project of slowly perfecting what you know.

Certainly, read a grammar text to get an overview. Start making an effort to learn verb forms and the declensions, but don't kill yourself with the effort. You will learn the verb forms through exposure, through listening. That being said, there are methods one can use to commit the verb tables and declension tables to memory with relative ease, using artificial memory techniques.

If you are learning to read, you need to be able to recognise structures, not reproduce them. The level of detailed grammatical knowledge needed to do this is much less than that needed to produce the language. Most Latin courses 'over-teach' the grammar.

Get your head out of a book, and spend your time listening. Listen. Listen more. Read as well. Use the Adler textbook, and the audio lessons, and learn the lessons. Try to generate speech (it will be really hard for the first year or two, then it will click into place). Take your Latin to the gym. Go for long walks, and do your heart a favour. Walk somewhere quieter - where you can happily mumble to yourself, and repeat what you hear, aloud. Do it in the busy City streets  - no-one will pay attention anyway. Do this, in order to etch the patterns of the language into your very being. 

Also, focus on learning vocabulary, even more than you focus on grammar, especially in the beginning. Gaining a large vocabulary, quickly, will boost your confidence enormously. You can listen to the vocab files on Latinum. Listen to them regularly. Building up your vocabulary is about 80% of the job. You will be surprised how many words you learn by listening to the vocabulary recordings. These also give you the correct quantity, (vowel length)  from the word go. This is important, as when you eventually read proper Latin texts, the vowel quantities are not marked. If you ever get really good, and want to write sonorous prose, or poetry, having correct quantity is a huge advantage. It also means that you will be able to pick up a Latin or Renaissance author, and read his or her poetry without much effort. 
So, listen. Then listen some more. Also, the picture images for vocab building that I develped, currently located in the photographiae archives on SCHOLA, and also on You Tube, are also quite useful.
But, fill your ipod with Latin, and listen, listen, listen.

Listen to things you understand. Listen to things you don't fully understand. Memorise a poem or two, even before you understand the Latin. One day you will, and the poems will bloom forth in your mind. The archives on Latinum have a wide range of texts to listen to.

Listen to the fabulae faciles. It is really important to listen to, and read, a lot of basic Latin. Reading, however, is tiring, especially for a beginner. So, fill your ipod with stories and the Adler lessons, and fill as much time as you can with Latin. 

There is no magic route,  but this 'passive' route of simply listening, really works. Our brains are not in 'passive mode' when we are listening to a new language. They are really busy, forming new neural networks. Recent research has shown that even the structure of the nerves in the inner ear change, when exposed to a new language. So, listen, listen, and listen. You will be surprised at the rapid rate of your progress, despite it seeming so 'easy' - no slogging with a textbook. It is vitally important to be relaxed and stress free - listening helps- if you miss something, you just listen to the lesson again. Listen to the fabulae faciles and the texts of the great authors, until they become second nature to you. Absorb them. Internalise them. Do this for about four years, and you will be as good as anyone who ever learned Latin in ancient times.

Another study in July 2008, at Dartmouth's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, showed that the brain models 'passive' observed information in the same way as it models it when the subject was actually doing the actions. In other words, simply listening, engages the brain in a similar way to actually performing. There is, then, really no such thing as 'passive learning'. After all, infants learn most things  this way. Why should adults be any different?

Once you are reasonably competent, try to read Latin Grammar textbooks in Latin, not in English.

One word of admonition - get a good headset - one of the old fashioned loooking ones, with a baffle around the ears. They are less expensive than a hearing aid, and cheaper than the inconvenience of going hard of hearing, or developing tinnitus. You won't need to have the volume up so loudly, if you use headphones with a baffle -  especially if you are listening outdoors or in the gym. The usual bud-style headphones are unsafe to use, unless you are indoors in a totally quiet environment. 

Conversation from Schola's Chatroom

2:39amJasonvel quam ego

2:41amJasonda veniam quaeso, puto me non bene loqui latine hac nocte

2:42amJasonsed tamen, quomodo te habes?

2:42amAndrewvere dicis! tecum amica adest!. felicitatem vobis!

2:43amAndrewSalve Omar!

2:43amDcn. Omar LoggiodiceSalve Andrew!

2:44amDcn. Omar LoggiodiceLingua latina intellego, sed non bene

2:44amAndrewTot multa tibi nomina sunt, non possum equidem eligere, per quod ad te adire possim!

2:44amJasonSalve Omar, arbitror me non antea te cum locutus sum

2:44amDcn. Omar Loggiodice(sed non bene loquor)

2:46amAndrewNoli timere loqui Omar, et scies, ut etiam verbis paucis potestas est dicere.

2:47amDcn. Omar LoggiodiceJason, bonus est loqui hic, correptio respecto

2:47amJasonutiman plus hominum non timeat ut plus in locutorio sint

2:48amDcn. Omar Loggiodiceutiman?

2:49amJasonignosce, utinam

2:50amJasonutinam plus hominum adsint in locutorio et loquantur

2:50amDcn. Omar Loggiodicecertus, intellego

2:52amJasonvidistisne usquam fabulam televisificum nomine "Lost"

2:52amDcn. Omar Loggiodicenon, non vidi

2:53amAndrewnecnon ego non vidi

2:54amAndrewet nomen :"Lost" valde frequens est. multae fabulae eodem nomen habent.

2:54amJasonenim est fabulam americanam

2:54amAndrewqua de re agitur in fabula?

2:54amAndrewbreve sis :)

2:55amJasonsed in america, in televisione, solum est unus tam clara fabula

2:55amAndrewhaec fabula multas series habet?

2:57amDcn. Omar Loggiodiceeram infirmus, ita non vidi "TV"

2:57amJasonvel, quid vocabulum uteris pro "fabula in televisione'?

2:58amJasonquod vocabulum aptum est?

2:59amAndrewrecte uteris tuum verbum. nam longum nomen est - fabula e televisione continua et affectuosa

3:00amDcn. Omar Loggiodicefábula televisífica inventus est a vatican.va "PARVVM VERBORVM NOVATORVM LÉXICVM"

3:02amDcn. Omar LoggiodiceAndre, ubi didicistis linguam latinam?

3:02amJasonin hac fabula, id est de homines qui in insula vivant

3:02amAndrewCerte non vidi! Ego ipse disco linguam, ex libris.

3:03amJasonsed in proxissima episodia erant homines qui latinam linguam modernam locuti sunt

3:03amJasonest fabula anglica sed erant homines quit res dicant latine

3:04amAndrewsine ullo magistro, quia in Kazakhstania, ubi habito, haec linguae omnino non student in scholis.

3:04amJasonsed veniam quaeso, necesse est ut abeam

3:04amAndrewvaleas Jason et amica tua!

3:05amDcn. Omar Loggiodicevaleas Jason, bonum est loqui tecum

3:05amJasonet tu, valete

3:07amDcn. Omar Loggiodicestudiant ceteris linguae?

3:08amDcn. Omar Loggiodiceceteris esse debet cetera, certo?

3:08amAndrewita vero! Anglicam precipue, Germanicam linguam.

3:13amDcn. Omar Loggiodicequoque ego debeo abire, bonum est loqui tecum, forsan loquamur vicissim

3:14amAndrewGratias Omar! necnon mihi grate. Valeas!

3:14amDcn. Omar LoggiodiceValeas!