Why Study Latin?

Why Study Latin? 
by Molendinarius, December 8 2009.

"Today, every laptop with an internet connection contains more information than the Great Library of Alexandria. At its peak, that library contained 700,000 books, until the Christian Emperor Theodosius I ordered it burned down; today, Google Books has over seven million – and that's before you count everything else online. In 1941, Jorge Luis Borges wrote a short story imagining a "total library" containing all written information. Seventy years later, it exists." Johann Hari, The Guardian, 8 December 2009.
The implications of Google books, and the availability of the vast universe of literature written in Latin, previously hidden - even, in many instances, to specialists, should be sending a shudder through your world.
For once, you have an honest answer to give, an answer you can shout from the rooftops - to the perennial question, "Of what use is Latin". 

The answer lies behind your search box on google books. Type in 'haec est" and a torrent of literature will pour forth to assault you. The cultural production of two thousand years, written in Latin, unread, unknown, there for the picking and reading.
What do we have? Novels - both Roman remains, and Renaissance fiction - science fiction even! Poetry - more than you could imagine. Dialogues. Plays. Stories and Fables, Philosophy, Science, Mathematics.....the vast bulk of the intellectual production of Europe, from Roman times, until the early 1800's, was written in Latin. The most renowned poets in Europe, wrote in Latin to continental acclaim.
Due to an ever shrinking pool of readers over the course of the 20th Century, this material is nowadays largely unknown, a vast terra incognita - even largely uncatalogued. The Latin works of Milton and Addison, Buchanan and Locke, go unread.  There is also a vast, unread mountain of material in manuscript, some of it only now being published for the first time.
As one blogger online remarked recently, because of the wonderful thing that is Google, having thrown open the world's libraries -  "we starve amidst a banquet". Never before in history, has anyone had access to the breadth and depth of Latin literature, that you personally have access to now, at the click of a mouse. The volume of material on Google increases by the day.

We see some signs of adjustment to this shift taking place in the teaching profession - "Latin for the New Millenium" - but old habits and old ideas persist. Teachers are reverting to renaissance teaching methods, that stressed an ability to read quickly, to speak and write Latin. Philological, pedantic methods of teaching, that will not equip our students to delve into this world, persist. For these books, there are no English translations. To read this material, you need fluency and command of the language - fluency to peruse quickly, and find the gold nuggets in the dross. Fluency to simply cover ground. Even if you pick a tiny area of knowledge, you could not hope to read all the texts written on the subject in Latin.

Some scholars claim they are only interested in reading 'Classical Latin', written by the very Romans themselves. These scholars cut themselves off from the 2000 years of literary criticism and commenting on Latin texts, written in Latin. The vast bulk of scholarship on Latin original texts, is only available in Latin. Most of this material is terra incognita, and professors of Latin have not yet adjusted to the paradigm shift that must necessarily take place. Most spend their time publishing in English, French and German, and reading the work of other scholars in English, French and German. Small surprise, then, that their skill in Latin remains stunted. 

For a Classicist to ignore works written in Neo-Latin that discuss the poetics of Virgil, for instance, while happily reading modern critical material in Italian or German, is surpassing strange. Yet, that is our reality - as many of these pre-modern critical texts are unknown, and have sat on bookshelves, in vast repositories, unopened for centuries. Even their titles are often unrecorded in the literature, let alone discussion of their contents. 

Now, more than ever, Latin teachers, and students of Latin,  need to focus on fluency and an ability to read with fluidity - to give our students the tools to enter this sacrum sacrorum loaded with the wisdom of millenia. They need to show their students this vast depository, to demonstrate the usefulness of having a skill in reading this language.

If we do not transmit our wonder and amazement at this turn of events - then we will have failed to grasp an opportunity that no generation has ever had before.

The momentousness of this change is such, that it can be compared to the shift that took place in the world of letters after the invention of printing - leading to the wide dissemination of Classical texts, and to a burst of improved standards of Latin literacy. Once the preserve of a few monks in cloisters, anyone could now own Cicero, Vergil, and use these texts to improve their Latin. The result, the Neo-Latin Renaissance, that really only took off after the invention of printing.

Now, we face another paradigm shift - for us, as readers of Latin, we were more akin to the monks, with access to only a few valued tomes - the vast production of the renaissance was unavailable to us, even to the specialist - now, the floodgates have opened. 
How will we respond?

Audio Visual 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 now defunct Latinum podcast.

A Historical perspective on Greek and Latin teaching

A historical perspective on Latin/Greek teaching : by Evan der Millner

August 2010

This topic is a very wide ranging one – and a brief essay such as this, can only hope to cover the subject giving the barest of outlines. In this essay, I will mainly concern myself with what could be called the Rudiments of language education. I will also point out that some 'new' methods such as the approach favoured by the CLC and similar modern courses, are actually not new at all.

We are fortunate in knowing rather a lot about how the Romans went about teaching their children. Rome was a bilingual society – so education always involved an element of second language teaching. For contemporary foreign language teachers, the surviving evidence is fascinating.

Most of the direct evidence we have for language teaching dates from around the end of the third century, but we have an abundance of indirect evidence as well – fragments of papyri, ostraca and wax tablets, a syllabary inscribed on a tomb wall in Egypt that had been turned into a classroom, and, the most surprising survival of all, that body of texts now known as the hermeneumata. From around the same time period, we have the elementary Latin grammar of Donatus, which was composed for Roman boys who already spoke Latin.

My discussion of Latin education will keep returning to the hermeneumata, and Donatus, whose echoes keep reverberating through the curriculum down the centuries, except for a brief hiatus during the 'philological period' of the nineteenth century.

What were the hermeneumata? They were standardised texts,used across the Empire to teach Roman boys Latin or Greek, depending on which end of the Empire they found themselves in. They appeared to serve two purposes – they acted as primers in the child's native language, and were also used to teach a second language. The texts we have are bilingual in Latin and Greek. Most of the examples come from the Western Empire. However, we can see the uniformity of these texts across the Empire, as a Greek-Latin-Coptic example survives, that is almost identical to one of the European versions. Although the earliest surviving text we can date is from September 11 207 AD, the standardised format of the manuscripts would suggest that the methodology – probably originated by Greek pedagogues - was already well established by this time.

The hermeneumata contain a number of elements – vocabulary lists for everyday life arranged by theme, vocabulary lists  arranged alphabetically, simple dialogues designed to activate the vocabulary, narratives, and simplified fables.

The dialogues aim to relate to a boy's everyday life, while also inculcating the virtues of good citizenship – piety and virtue.

We know that authors such as Aphthonius especially wrote simplified versions of fables for inclusion in primary textbooks. (N. Holzberg 2002, The Ancient Fable) These, and short, often humorous dialogues and narratives, were the elementary literature used in the Roman schoolroom. (Anglo-Saxon Conversations, Gwara and Porter. 1997)

Basic education started off with the alphabet, followed by the learning of syllables – extensive tables of syllables were composed. (Bonner,1977, Education in Ancient Rome). Each consonant was in turn combined with the five vowels – ba be bi bo bu, ca ce ci co cu, and so on, through the alphabet. This practice originated, once again, with the Greeks. An excellent reconstruction of a Roman syllable table can be found in the Institutionum Grammaticarum of Aldus Pius, (MDVII, Venice) whose comprehensive table of syllables stretches over five pages – consonants in front of vowel, vowels in front of consonants, two or three consonants in front of vowels, etc.

Pius writes” Imitati autem sumus antiquos et graecos et latinos grammaticos. Discant igitur pueri quot syllabarum sint dictiones”.

The primary reader ascribed to Julius Pollux, who was tutor of Commodus, is worth looking at as an example of a Roman lesson book. Written in the late second Century, this text begins as follows: (I have interpolated Comenius' sixteenth Century take on this, to show the direct influence of the Classical model)

“Bona Fortuna, Dii Propitii!

Praeceptor, Ave! (c.f Comenius: Salve, Lector Amice!)

Quoniam volo et valde cupio loqui graece et latine, rogo te, magister, doce me. (c.f C: Quis docebit me hoc?)

Ego faciam, si me adtendas. (C: Ego, cum Deo)

Adtendo diligentur.....

Pollux then lays out his method : “Duo ergo sunt personae quae disputant, ego et tu. Tu es qui interrogas, ego respondeo. Ante omnia, lege clare, diserte”

We see the same principle operating in Donatus, whose Ars Minor is constructed as a sort of grammatical dialogue. “Verbum quid est? Pars orationis cum tempore et persona etc” (Gramatici Latini, Keil). Donatus is providing a textbook, and also the suggested outline of a lesson plan for the praeceptor.

This method of teaching continues through the Carolingian period, into the Middle Ages, and into the Renaissance, when several hermeneumata texts were 'rediscovered', with so many other Classical texts. (Colloquial and Literary Latin, Dickey and Chahoud, Cambridge 2010). The influence of these texts on Erasmus, Vives and, particularly, Comenius, was immense. Parsing grammars – more detailed than Donatus, and aimed at second language speakers, had started to appear even earlier, constructed entirely on the dialogic principle – composed in a self conscious effort to imitate  classroom practice in Ancient Rome. (exemplified by Priscian's famous “Partitiones duodecim versuum Aeneidos principalium”).

The Roman method of teaching was lauded by Simon Grynaeus, in a letter included in the 1536 Basil edition of Polluxes Onomasticum, which itself formed the model for Comenius' Janua, and Orbis Pictus. The influence of the Omonasticum and the ideas in Gryneaus' letter, on Comenius, are self evident. “non gravabitur praeceptor, praesentes ipsasque si potest, si non potest, pictas, sculptas, aut quomodocunque seu verbis seu gestibus expressas bene certa cum nomenclatura res, principio puerilibus oculis animisque quam diligentissime subjicere”

In the 1800's there was a move away from this Classical Roman method of teaching, to a newly invented method I would characterize as grammar-translation, with an emphasis on only using texts that were written by the Romans themselves. A Latin sentence not penned by a Roman of the Golden Age, was not Latin worthy of consideration, and no student should set their eyes on, or be corrupted by such a thing. Aesop was rejected, as were parsing grammars, dialogues, and the short narrative stories that had been the stock in trade of second language education in Latin  for over 2000 years. Teaching Latin came to mean teaching grammar, and reading Latin came to mean translation. The methods that had been used since Roman times, in a more or less unbroken tradition, were largely abandoned. Aesop, who was a staple of the Roman and Renaissance primary classroom, was abandoned, depriving students of a rich source of easily digestible Latin. Dialogue went the same way. Students were thrown straight into Caesar,  or some such author, as the primary text, before being rapidly exposed to Virgil, and quite advanced Classical literature. This represented a total break with the Classical tradition. In the name of 'authenticity', a new and artificial method of Latin pedagogy arose, one that bore little relationship to its Roman predecessor.

Perhaps it was felt that, as Latin was no longer required as a spoken idiom, the teaching method should change:As Comenius noted:  “discendae sunt non omnes totae ad perfectionem esse, sed ad necessitatem. Nec enim est opus Graeca et Hebraica tam expedite sonare, ut vernacula, quia homines desunt cum quibus loquamur.".Comenius astutely noted , however, “Omnis lingua usu potius discatur quam praeceptis. Id est, audiendo, legendo, relegendo et transcribendo”. It did not make a practical difference if a language needed to be spoken: the teaching method should not change.

Thus we find many modern courses,  with their mix of grammar, dialogue and narrative, are far closer to the Classical curriculum than anything we have seen published in over 200 years. The only thing missing from most of these courses is the extensive parsing in Latin, and use of Aesop, which provided students in ancient times extensive active language practice in L2, in a safely delimited area, and through Aesop, a much  wider range of vocabulary than that encountered by a modern  student of the language.

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 amonolingual 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

Locutorium Scholae

Colloqviminī, O Sodālēs Latīnophōnī, in hōc novō Locūtōriō Virtuālī (chatroom) cum aliīs SCHOLÆ sodālibus.

LOCŪTŌRIUM VIRTUĀLE SCHOLÆ

Sī in līneā Interrētiālī cum Scholā nunc es, inscrībe, sīs, nōmen tuum et agedum: Intrā in Scholæ Locūtōrium Virtuāle, fenestrā hūjus Locūtōriī in angulō qvadrī vīsíficī (screen) apertā relictā qvō facilius perspectēs qvis alius in Locūtōriō sit cum qvō confābulārī (chat) forsitan velīs.

Memor estō illīus sapientis et vétĕris prōverbiī:

"Piscātor patiēns prǽdam suam capit."

"Qvōmodo illūc intrābō", fortasse interrogās. Preme cyberpressōrium (mouse) tuum super internexum rubrum(red link) qvī suprā appāret, et qvadrātum confestim vidēbis ubi "Screen Name" (nōmen cybernēticum) legēs. Dēlē deinceps "Screen Name", et ĭbĭdem intrōdūc, ope plēctrológiī (keyboard), tuum usōris nōmen. Deinde prĕmĕ cyberpressōrium super spatíŏlum qvod iuxtā est, ubi ánglicē legitur: "Log In" (= inscrībe hīc nōmen tuum ut in situm intrēs). Postrēmō prĕmĕ cyberpressōrium ĭbĭdem, et ecce: DICTVM FACTVM!

Nec cryptogrăphēma nec inscriptiōnem ēlectrónicam tuam est necesse intrōdūcere! Qvid potest simplicius esse?

In Locutōriō Virtuālī Scholæ, porrō, cum aliīs collŏqviōrum partĭcĭpĭbus pŏtĕrĭs commūnĭcāre, micrŏphōnum aut machĭnam phōtographĭcam tēlārem adhibēns, aut - sī vétĕrem, venerābilem, expertam, atqve, insuper, ā mājōribus trādĭtam commūnicātiōnis viam māvīs qvam illa technológiā modernā excogitāta artifícia - ad simplĭcem scriptiōnem, in mŏdum mŏnăchōrum mediævālium, confúgiēns.

LOCŪTŌRIUM VIRTUĀLE SCHOLÆ

Comenius Project

Latinum’s Comenius Project

"A Rosetta Stone for Unlocking the Latin Tongue"

Project Outline August 2008

John Amos Comenius  ( March 28, 1592 – November 15, 1670)  was a European Educator from Moravia, who wrote an important series of school textbooks for learning Latin. These were textbooks covering the complete curriculum, as he devised it. The textbooks were written in Latin, and come in a gradated series. The aim of these textbooks was to get the students to become fluent in Latin, as school was taught in Latin - but the textbooks were not all LATIN textbooks, but general schoolbooks, covering the subjects we now recognise as history, politics, the sciences, &c.

 The goal of learning Latin was combined with general scholarship, so the reader was not just learning the language, but useful information about the world as well, at the same time.

As such, these books are of enormous utility to the student of Latin, as they cover areas of knowledge with which we are somewhat familiar, and they provide a wealth of vocabulary, and knowledge about real things in the world – while at the same time giving us an insight into the mindset of the Renaissance, in a manner that no amount of academic study can give us – for by studying the course outlined by these textbooks, we become one of Comenius’ students, and are transported back in time. At the same time, we build up and strengthen our Latin.

Comenius' textbooks were very famous, and some editions remained in active classroom use until the early 1800's. Most editions are bilingual (Latin plus some other European language, including Hebrew and Classical Greek), some are trilingual or more, with the text running in parallel columns -  such a text is a veritable Rosetta Stone for learning Latin. One of the online texts you can access has parallel translations in German, Polish, French, and Czech.

 The Magna Didactica 

LEVEL ONE
Orbis Sensualim Pictus 

The first text Latinum will present will be  Comenius’ Orbis Sensualium Pictus.
We will use the first American edition, in English and Latin, as this is available on Google Books. The book can be purchased as a reprint.
  

Versions:
Orbis Sensualium Pictus - Anglice - Latine. (1810)  available at Latinum in audio Orbis Sensualium Pictus - Anglice - Latine - newer imprint of above text. available at Latinum in audio
Orbis Pictus   Die Weldt in Bildern, Swet w Obrazych, Swiat w Obrazach, Le Monde en Tableaux. (1833)
Variant Text:
Nouveau Orbis Pictus - Germanice - Latine - Francogallice (1832)

This book is Comenius' foundation textbook, and it covers in a very basic format, all the main areas of knowledge as they were understood in the seventeenth century – biology, physics, geometry, trades, philosophy, music, recreation, law, politics, etc. This book was written for six to seven year olds, but it serves quite well for adults as well, although each topic is of course only treated in the barest of outlines. 

Each lesson is an ‘object lesson’, and all the words given are illustrated in drawings that accompany the lesson, aiding in memory and understanding. The lessons are interesting historically, as they describe the processes of long extinct trades, adding to your store of Latin words related to everyday life.

 

In order to progress to Comenius’ higher level textbooks, it is necessary to master the vocabulary in the Orbis Pictus – and going through the book seven or eight times will be necessary – possibly more. The Orbis will give you a vocabulary of a few thousand words.

LEVEL TWO
The Vestibulum

The next text in Comenius’ series is the Vestibulum to the Janua Linguarum. This is a simple text, of a slightly higher level than the Orbis Sensualim Pictus. Comenius also wrote an essential introduction to Latin Grammar, to accompany it. He wrote two versions of the vestibulum, both of which are useful texts. Two versions of this text are in the Opera Didactica Omnia.
Versions:

Vestibulum in usum illustris paedagogei Albensis

Vestibulum ( Latine - Hungarice )

Vestibulum Majus.(Latine-Germanice)  

LEVEL THREE
 I will use 1796 text of Johann Georg Lederer: Der Kleine Lateiner, for level 3. This text follows the outline of the Orbis Pictus very closely, while introducing some material some material from the Janua, and thus serves admirably as the ‘next step up’. This text is in German and Latin, but is similar enough to the Orbis for a beginner to assimilate after studying the Orbis.

Comenius' Latin-Latin dictionary.

This dictionary was especially written for the vocabulary contained in the Janua and the Atrium. There are two editions, one for the Janua, one, more advanced, for the Atrium. The Lexicon Januale is in the  Opera Didactica Omnia.
Several Editions of the Lexicon Atriale  will be appearing on Google. The first one to appear online, is, unfortunately, a poor scan, with the edges of many pages sliced off.  It, is, however, still very useful. Laura Gibbs has started a project to transcribe the dictionary, to create an online, fully searchable text. several people are already contributing. This is a very important project, as no 'pocket' Latin-Latin dictionary is available, either in print, or online, apart from this scan. As part of your Latin studies, I urge you to contribute, and help transcribe a few pages, lines, even one entry, of this dictionary. Every little will help to get this up and online as soon as possible.

LEVEL FOUR

 
The Janua

The Janua Linguarum Reserata Aurea uses the same chapter outlines as the Orbis Sensualim Pictus, but the material is fleshed out in much more detail. The text, reprinted so often, comes in several verrsions, as Comenius composed variant texts, and the editions from different places and times have important differences, but they all follow the same chapter structure. 

Versions:
Latin, French, Dutch 

Latin, Classical Greek, French

Latin and Classical Greek ed. Theodoro Simonio

Latin, German Italian and French. 

Latin, German, French, Italian ed. Duez.

French-Latin 

 Copies of the Janua Linguarum can also be viewed as scans at the Comenius Library in Japan. (Before the first google editions appeared in late 2008, this was the only way to view these texts).

This text with its parallel translations is a veritable Rosetta Stone for unlocking the Latin language. I will be using the critical edition of the Janua. The earlier editions of the Janua are simpler than later editions, so I may present this text in two versions, a lower level and higher level version.

Comenius also wrote an intermediate Latin Grammar, composed in accessible Latin, for students of the Janua Reserata. This material is now available online in the two versions of this text are in the Opera Didactica Omnia.

LEVEL FIVE
Schola Ludus

This section will be the Schola Ludus, where the material of the Janua Linguarum Reserata is presented in short dialogues and ‘plays’ – although these are not dramatic plays, but rather expositions, using conversation.I will use the critical edition of the Schola Ludus. The colloquies in the Schola Ludus develop the educational themes in the Janua in more depth. This text is available online as individual photographs of the pages, and can be found listed here. 
Schoal Ludus also exists in the Opera Didactica Omnia.
  

LEVEL SIX

A text composed of 700 sentences, all in alliteration, for ease of memorisation, called
" Vestibuli Lat. Lingvae Auctarium". This text is also avaiable in the  Opera Didactica Omnia.

  LEVEL SEVEN
Atrium

The Atrium. The atrium contains Comenius' Higher level Grammar, and advanced philosophical discussions of the material initially introduced in the Vestubulum and the Janua. See the  Opera Didactica Omnia.

LEVEL EIGHT
Latin authors in the original. 

Comenius thought a student should not open any works of original Latin literature, until fluency had been developed. He estimated this would take three years, if conducted FULL TIME in a school only following his curriculum.  Part time, you are looking at six - ten years to attain the level of fluency that Comenius would have expected from his students.