Latinum

На одном форуме Эван Милнер (Evan Millner aka metrodorus aka Molendinarius) изложил (по английски, разумеется) некоторые соображения, касающиеся возросшей актуальности изучения латинского языка в наши дни по сравнению с недавным прошлым. Нынешнюю ситуацию Милнер сравнивает с началом книгопечатания. Некогда печатный станок сделал книги доступными широкому кругу людей и способствовал расцвету латыни, так как многие смогли обратиться к классическим произведениям. В наше время существование электронных библиотек (взять хотя бы Книги Гугл) приводит к тому, что человек, имеющий подключение к интернету, имеет в своём распоряжении не избранные томики Цицерона, а огромное множество пылившихся ранее на полках латинский книг, содержащих двухтысячелетнее культурное наследие. Милнер делает вывод, что для овладения этим наследием сейчас как никогда важно уметь по крайней мете свободно читать по-латински, что требует организации глубокого изучения этого языка.

Эван Милнер - энтузиаст, много сделавший и делающий для популяризации латинского языка в интернете. В частности, он является создателем сайта Schola и подкаста Latinum.

У нас на форуме близкие идеи некогда высказывал Damaskin, см., например, Латынь и эллинский.

Learning Latin with Comenius

Comenius arranged his course in a gradated series:

1. The Vestibulum, with an associated grammar for beginners

1a. The Orbis Sensualium Pictus - an amplified form of the Vestibulum.

2. The Janua Linguarum, with an associated grammar and lexicon.

3. The Janua Linguarum Aurea, with an associated grammar and colloquia.

4. The Atrium, with an associated grammar.

5. A Lexicon wholly in Latin.

How could the student use this material?

1. His or her  first step, should be to listen to the Vestibulum in bilingual audio, until the work can be fully understood in the Latin only. This will mean listening to the book several times. 

Once the student has done this, he or she needs to read the work - there are some digital scans available through the Europeana portal. Simply type "vestibulum" into the search box, the first three or four texts are examples in Latin and Hungarian. These texts can be downloaded as pdf files.

1a. The Orbis Sensualium Pictus is your next step. (If you cannot download the Vestibulum you could begin with the Orbis Pictus) You will notice that you have not been exposed to any formal grammar - this will follow, once you have started to expose yourself to the language, and build up an intuitive structure, and a good vocabulary.

The Orbis Sensualium Pictus is available in audio in a bilingual format on latinum, and also, for revision, in a monolingual format. There are many examples of this text in many languages parallel to the Latin available on google books, europeana, and archive.org

This text needs to be listened to and re-read many dozens of times - it is a long text, and will give you a rich vocabulary of 1000's of words - preparing you for reading a wide range of texts in Latin.

2. Comenius' introductory grammar is not yet available in bilingual form - this text can at present only be accessed through the CAMENA scan of Comenius Complete Educational Works (Opera Didactica Omnia)

here is the link to the introductory grammar: Scroll down to the bottom of the page to locate it, and then click through to read each page.

Once you have studied the Vestibulum and the Orbis Sensualium Pictus, and feel you know the vocabulary, you should consolidate what you know by reading the following texts, which cover the same ground, with differing degrees of variation and amplification of the material.

Reading these subsidiary texts is a useful self-check, to see if you have actually learned the material in the Orbis. If you are struggling, return to the Orbis Pictus, and re-read it a few more times. 

1. Liber latinus in usum puerorum editus

2. Der Kleine Lateiner

3. Vestibulum Germanico-Latinum (Georg Vechner)

4. Vestibulum Majus

latinum

Breadmaster: For Latin, check out the YouTube channel of evan1965. He's a chap in London who's made it his mission to teach people Latin orally, as part of which he's posting a series of short videos which, when completed, will in theory form a complete Latin course. He has also done a series of audio podcasts based on a nineteenth-century Latin textbook, which I got a good way through - they vary from a bit impenetrable to very useful. The new video series seems like a lot of fun. I liked it when he introduced the "potus inebriatus vilis" - a big bottle of vodka.

Sabe latín

Sabe latín

SCHOLA

In foro LATINO estis. Qvidqvid igitur aliter qvam latine compositum delebitur.

Hoy el Náufrago se ha encontrado con una grata noticia, al menoS para él. En este mundial batiburrillo digital que es Internet, donde uno encuentra cosas despreciables, páginas interesantes, herramientas útiles, infinidad de utilidades, también se topa con sorpresas en las que no habría pensado. La que hoy ha encontrado en esta babel de idiomas, es una página escrita en latín, denominada SCHOLA. En ella se pueden encontrar páginas personales, foros de discusión, grupos de amigos, ‘películas’, sección de fotos, chats, todo ello escrito el la lengua de Virgilius, Caesar, o Marcus Tullius Cicero. Todo un hallazgo para alguien que estudió latín en el antiguo bachillerato y dos años más, en la Facultad, en los entonces llamados ‘Comunes’ (cursos), donde se estudiaba además de Lengua, Historias y otras materias, Griego y Latín. Muchos años han pasado desde entonces y este encuentro ha sido una sorpresa agradable . Que en este mundo donde imperan las ciencias físicas, químicas, económicas y políticas, las tecnologías, antiguas y nuevas, las ingenierías y demás estudios técnicos, donde las lenguas clásicas van despareciendo de los 'curricula', constatar que hay gentes que aún se sirven de nuestra lengua madre para comunicarse entre sí es, para el Náufrago, una gran noticia, aunque haya olvidado mucho de aquello que estudió.

Le satisfizo doblemente, que haya alguien que se dedique al cultivo de conocimientos, considerados ‘inútiles’ en nuestros planes de estudio, y también porque, con un poco de esfuerzo, pudo ver que no se había olvidado del todo de declinaciones, conjugaciones y sintaxis. De este modo, y con un poco de esfuerzo, pudo llegar a entender, con más o menos acierto, lo que Andrew Semipalatins , un Kazakhstaní, preguntaba a sus ‘disputatores et disputatrices’ del ‘forum’. Decía así si comentario:

“Salvete disputatores disputatricesque forumi Scholae!

Velim, ut quisque de rebus in regione sua nobis proponeat. In animo crisim habeo.In Kazakhstania, ubi habito (quae in Asia centrali est), male res se habent. Fabricae sistunt, hominibus munus adimitur, merces per multos menses non solvitur. Etiam milites et custodes publici domum dimittuntur! Quid in anno proximo erit? Quid de rebus his malis putatis?"

Más o menos, diccionario en mano , el Náufrago llegó a entender qué preguntaba a sus ‘dialécticos y dialécticas’ sobre las medidas que estaban tomando en sus respectivos países para aplicar a la crisis que también llega a ‘Kazakhstania,’ donde vive : se cierran fábricas, crece el desempleo, pasan meses sin poder cobrar los sueldos. Incluso a militares y agentes públicos. que los mandan a casita. ‘¿Qué ocurrirá el año que viene? se pregunta ¿Qué pensáis de todo esto? añade

Gran pregunta la de Andrew que ni en Kazakhstano, ni en inglés , ni en latín, ni en español tiene respuestas sin mentiras. Pero más allá de esta endemoniada pregunta, el Náufrago ha celebrado que en Kazakhstan haya gente que utiliza el latín para comunicar con sus amigos alemanes, griegos, norteamericanos, yugoslavos, italianos, argentinos o rusos.
-------------------
- Ref: SCHOLA. http://schola.ning.com/

Europe

Europe, and European civilisation? Where lies its heart? It lies in the Rome of Caesar, the Rome of Cicero. From the fall of the Roman Empire, until the edges of living memory, the throb of the culture of Rome was the heartbeat of European civilisation. Alongside it, beat the secondary hearts of the Church and the Synagogue – but it was Rome that provided the cultural lifeblood of secular Europe.

In the twentieth century, for the first time since the fall of Rome, the blood of Latin has drained from Europe’s arteries. The language of Rome, removed from requirements for university admission in the mid twentieth century, slid rapidly towards oblivion. Our common language, and the common set of ideas that had held Europe together with a unity of purpose for over 2500 years, ideas and language that defined our civilisation, became foreign to us. The measured words of Caesar, and the epic thrill of Vergil, were words and patterns that were once as familiar to every schoolboy in Albion, as ‘Poker Face’.

The fiery prose of Cicero, defending the virtues of the republic, the sharp smut of Catullus, the measured lines of Tacitus and Livy – all are now truly as dust. In 60 years, Europe let slip the painter, and the boat of history drifted silently. Few mourned, and even fewer understood their loss.

As Rome finally fell, the Church and the Synagogue weakened, and faltered. The Biblical text, with its alternative narrative to that of ancient Rome, in the span of a generation became as foreign to most Europeans as the Bhagavadgita.

As a result, we lost the ideological core that has given our civilisation such vitality – the dramatic tension that defined the relationship between the worldview of pagan Rome of the Caesars, and the Bible – Athens and Jerusalem - a tension so extreme, that one could feel it hum – this tension is no more. We still feed off its residues, but for how much longer can a residue sustain? We are slack, irresolute, and weak. A new generation has arisen that knows not Caesar.

Those who are growing up in Europe this century are impoverished. Once, a Briton could declaim, with little irony, ‘Civis Romanus sum.’ A child of this millennium not only cannot, but cannot comprehend the proclamation. The children of our time do not know the ground upon which the idea that is Europe stands. Some feel a sense of loss, a sense of lack, but they know not of what. This generation, defined by consumerism and a shallow palimpsest popular culture, a shadow of Rome, its bread, its circuses, is almost rudderless. Will this generation be able to withstand the force of those in our midst who have not abandoned their founding myths and ideologies? With what will it oppose, if not with mindless fascism? Therein lies the danger of emptiness, and a bloodless heart.

Our anaemic civilisation has lost its narrative, and we have nothing to oppose the ideological purity of those who have not. Is it not time once again to render unto Caesar, those things that are Caesar’s? Is it not time we returned to our roots? Is it not time once again for the virile prose of Rome, and for the pumping blood of Rome to flow?

MMX

Teaching Latin in Latin

In the Renaissance, Latin was usually taught through the medium of Latin. Various textbooks were published, giving teachers examples of the types of dialogues they could use to examine in grammar, from the very first stages.

Vocabulary was built by showing objects, by acting out, or by displaying pictures.

This method of teaching died out when Latin stopped being used as a spoken language of the educated, around the mid 1700's. The main reason this happened, was the rise of the Nation State, and the resulting focus on patriotism, and the national languages.

By the mid 1800's, Latin was almost universally taught as a translation course, or as a philological course, and not as a language course per se.

However, as Comenius noted in the mid 1700's, no matter the goal - for example, when teaching Biblical Hebrew, where no communicative facility is required, the most expeditious method of gaining knowledge, is still through listening, and reading, with listening coming first - the point is where do you stop developing your skill - if you are just learning the language to read in it, your skill level in speaking need not develop.

In Comenius' day, skill at speaking the vernacular, and Latin, were both desirable.

In the late 1900's various teachers tried to resurrect the previous method  - Adler, in 1856, wrote a huge textbook based around spoken Latin. Others composed similar courses. 

However, the lack of teachers who could speak the language, or teach it in the language itself, meant these efforts were largely ignored. Scientific knowledge about how languages are learned progressed. Latin remained a philological subject. The hours available for teaching it were much reduced,and the expectations that students would actually be able to read fluently, vanished. A generation of teachers arose who had limited language skills in the language they were teaching - versed in grammar, they were more akin to linguistics students, who analyse a language, than their colleagues in the French and Spanish departments.

There is a growing number of teachers who want to teach Latin in Latin, who acknowledge that this makes their classes more attractive to their students, that enrollments are higher, when the classes are more enjoyable, and are not just about grammar, and translation.

As an experiment, a model language class was developed, and the lessons posted on YouTube, using Adler's Latin Ollendorff text as the fundamental text, with the grammatical exegesis in Latin drawn from a selection of renaissance textbooks. 

This course - which will consist of several hundred short lessons, makes extensive use of gesture, physical objects, and slide shows with voice over for objects that cannot be easily obtained. Latin is taught through dialogue. Grammatical concepts are introduced incrementally, and slowly the student builds up the ability to discuss Latin grammar in Latin, while gradually expanding their ability to talk about a wider range of subjects.

Internationational Audio Visual Latin Course - Latin taught through Latin

The Cursum Latinum  is currently in development. At the time or writing, over 200 lessons are available , with new material being uploaded to the dedicated YouTube channel on almost a daily  basis - the complete course, which will cover all the fundamentals of Latin, and a great amount of more advanced material, will comprise well over 1000 lessons. 

This is a course designed for the serious student of Latin, who wishes to be able to read texts which do not have translations (i.e. the vast bulk of material ever written in Latin in the past 2000, most of which remains untranslated). Due to its unique structure, the Cursum Latinum can be used by both adults and children. Even advanced students of Latin can benefit enormously from this course.

The Cursum Latinum is designed to train students to read and think in Latin. It is not a translation course. The goal is to reach a high level of reading fluency.

The methodology is very traditional, and uses a methodology that has documented origins in Roman times.

At present, the Cursum Latinum is only available (for free) on YouTube. It is the only course of its type in existence. There are a small number of teachers around the world, who teach Latin in Latin, but at present, the Cursum Latinum is the only example of such a course openly accessible, outside the confines of the University of Kentucky's Latin department, the Vivarium Novum, and a handful of classrooms around the world. 

Unlike a book-based course, the Cursum Latinum offers you a teacher. As the course follows Adler's text, "A Practical Grammar of the Latin Language for Speaking and Writing Latin", it is possible to use Adler (available on Google Books) to move along with the course, although the exact match to pages in Adler is not explicit, as the course uses other material, notably the educational materials for teaching Latin in Latin developed byJohn Amos Comenius in the mid seventeenth century, and materials developed by der Millner himself.

As the course is entirely in Latin, it can be used by students internationally. It also has the distinct advantage in that it will not date, as Latin is immutable, but the vernacular languages shift over time.

The foundational methodology of the Cursum Latinum is that developed by Jean Manesca in the late 1700's for teaching language orally, using conversation. This method was subsequently adopted by Henri Ollendorff, who wrote a textbook for teaching Latin using this method in the early 1840's. George Adler, a noted German-American linguist, re-wrote this text, and published it in 1856, the year before his death.

The text then sank into oblivion, to be rediscovered by der Millner in 2007.

Initially, the text was serialised as an audio course along with the English explanations, on the Latinumpodcast.