Mnemonics for Latin

Mnemonics for Latin

Using the Method of Loci to Memorise the Verb Table.

The use of mnemonics can help speed up the learning of various elements of Latin Grammar. Methods like this were used successfully by Roman Orators, and studying how to apply mnemonics formed an important part of the curriculum, as one of the tools needed for rhetoric. The method comes down to us through a work in Latin by an unknown author. The piece, called Rhetorica ad Herennium, is estimated to have been written around 85 BC, though it is unlikely that it was original with this author. The author of this textbook of rhetoric examines each of the five parts of rhetoric, including as the fourth part memoria in which he explains the method of loci. It is the only complete source from the classical world to survive, although there are brief references to the method by others, including Cicero and Quintilian, the chief teachers of rhetoric in the ancient and medieval worlds, and later in the Renaissance.

NOTE - not everyone can 'see' images in their mind's eye - I can't - at least -  not clearly, yet the system can still work well for me. I can remember the shape and texture of objects very clearly, so, instead of 'visualising' them in the boxes, I imagine running my hands over them to feel them - very odd it is indeed, running my hand over an imaginary eyeball with an arm growing out of it - but I can then 'see' - for want of a better word, the object very clearly. I don't really 'see' it, but I know exactly what shape it has, and where it is. So the method of loci is still a powerful system for me, even though I can't imagine pictures. If you have an auditory memory, you could do the same thing, but with sound.

A Verb Room using the Method of Loci.

The curious diagram you see here, is very useful, as it is a systematic method for the loci, developed by Fenaigle in the early 1800's. When combined with Gouraud's perfection of the mnemonic system, (which Grey had attempted to base on the Ancient Hebrew mnemonic system of acrostics, known in Classical texts as 'Simanim'. ) we end up with a very powerful artificial memory system.  All this sounds very arcane, but has a beautiful simplicity to it.


Step One:
Get comfortable. Sit with your back to the fireplace, or to a wall of your room.
Imagine the floor is divided into 9 squares, 3 squares per row.
Number them:
1-2-3
4-5-6
7-8-9

These 9 are represented in the diagram above, by the 9 squares in the middle.

On your left, is the first wall. Divide this, too into nine squares. Number them, starting from the top left
1-2-3
4-5-6
7-8-9

Now, compare your floor with your wall. None the consistency? This,however, is the FIRST wall, so each of the numbers has a ONE in front of it.
11-12-13
14-15-16
17-18-19

However, don't remember them like this, just as plain single digits.

Place the number TEN just above this wall, on the ceiling.

Then, do the same for the remaining two walls. The second wall will be the numbers 21,22,23 etc, and the third, 31,32,33, and the wall behind your back, 41,42,43 etc

Now, examine, the diagram above. If you cut it out, and folded it up, with the numbers on the INSIDE, you will have your room.

Take some time to get this pattern firmly into your head - I would spend a good 10 minutes, running over it in your mind's eye.  The method for constructing this memory room is outlined very clearly is this little books by S.Sams 
Ignore everything in the book, except for his very clear description of how to imagine the memory room.
You can put one of these memory rooms in every room and closet in your home. The first room would be for numbers 1 - 50, and the second for 50 -100 and so on.

Setting this system up in your head requires a small investment in time. Once you have it, you'll have it with you for life. Getting a large sheet of card, and drawing out the diagram above, and constructing the cube, can also  be of assistance.


NOW, for memorising the verbs using the method of loci:


Turn to page 191 of Sam's Book, (i.e. the last 4 pages or so) where he sets out his system for using the memory cube for learning the Latin verbs. I used the system very successfully myself, so it appears to work for me. It might work for you as well. Sams does not give all forms in his example, you can supply the passive and deponents yourself on the remaining 2 walls of your first room, and place irregulars in another room  - or put them alongside the regulars in the same boxes, once you have learned the regulars - remember to keep the tenses in the same loci, even in a new room.
IGNORE the number-word equivalent system given by Sams. If you want to play with this acrostic system, use the more advanced system developed by Gouraud:

Here is the floor of your room:

FIRSTLY, memorise the positions of these in their boxes. You may make up stories, visualise them. ( See the declension tower for examples of how to do this)

The first step is to be able to quickly recognise the forms. The second step, is to be able to give them over.

Here is a simplified set-up. We will learn it, then flesh it out with the full forms of the four paradigms for each tense. Aids to memory are in parentheses - feel free to make up your own ones)

1 I DO Am-o  ( note how it resembles i do)	2 I DID am-abam (I did fall on my bum)	3 I HAVE am-avi (note the resemblance avi - have)
4 I HAD am-averam (I had Avraham over for dinner)	5 I WILL am-abo (I will be about to arrive)	6 I MAY am-em (am-em, I may)
7 I MIGHT OR COULD am-arem ( I might visit a hareem)	8 I SHOULD HAVE am-averim	9 I SHALL HAVE am-avero

Note - all forms on the diagonal ( in green) from amo, end in o - i.e. amo, amabo, amavero. 

The form 'I should have' (red) is almost identical to the form of I shall have.

You can think of your won mnemonics for the forms I have not given.

So, sit in your armchair, and imagine these arrrayed on the floor, in their boxes. Be as vivid as you can, make your images as concrete as you can.

Once you know exactly where the words fall, and which words are in which box, add the rest of the forms of the paradigms of each verb to each box. I would draw up a plan of the floor, and write out the tables in each square, as per the instructions in S.Sam's book.

An hour or so of effort should have you remembering where the things are.

Remember, make use of the objects in your room that happen by chance to fall in the squares. For example, in my room, the top right corner had a table with a top hat on it, so I thought up the line ' I have a top hat', and so immediately recalled that that square was occupied by 'I have'

Now we leave the floor, and turn our imagination to the wall on our left, which we divide into nine squares:

1  I WOULD HAVE (I would have missed him) am-avissem	2 TO DO (the standard infinitives, amare, monere,regere etc) TO HAVE ...'D (To have missed the 'm; that fell off amavissem was really irresponsible!) amavisse ( with no final m)	3 TO BE ABOUT TO To be about to put a suppository up your recturum esse
4 DOING amandi IN DOING amando TO DO amandum (a giant eatingalmonds, while chanting fee fi fo fum)	5 TO DO (To do: to lose some weight from my tummy) amatum TO BE DONE ( To be done, now that its gone, to keep it off) amatu ( the tum has gone!)	6 DOING amans What am I doing? I'm eating almonds! (amans) What am I about to do? I'm about to give some almonds to this tourist! ABOUT TO DO amaturus
7 DO! ama!	8 SHALL DO! am-ato	9  DONE amatus TO BE DONE amandus (This is the last square and we're all done, but there is still more to be done)

If you have a reasonably good visual or spatial memory, you should be able to get all of this memorised in about one hour. Add all the other forms, as given in Sam's book at the very end. review it regularly...the first attempt will be really hard. Then it will get easier. You will find, even after one hour of this, that your comprehension of texts will jump, as you will recognise verb forms, and be able to relate them to their locations.

Learn to Speak Latin

The Latinum Latin Language Course is a successful free online audio course, devoted to teaching the Latin Language. The course functions as a “Latin Language Outreach Program”, and has an international user base. Several thousand audio files are downloaded from the course website every day. The Latinum Course is supported by resource materials for vocabulary learning, located on Schola,  with images and Latin words, but no other language. Users are encouraged to use their newly acquired language skills on the growing Latin-only Social website, Schola.

The Latinum Course uses modern language methods to teach Latin, based around an intensive oral system that would be too time intensive to implement in a classroom situation, but which is very well suited to distribution via the internet and iTunes, for use through the medium of a computer or personal stereo.

Apart from offering lessons in Classical Latin, Latinum also hosts a growing range of readings from Classical Texts and the Roman Poets, recorded by a number of contributors worldwide, some of whom are famous for their delivery of Latin prose. Thus, Latinum attracts both new students of the language, and also those who may have been studying for many years.

The Latinum Course is unique, in that it focuses on Latin as a living, spoken language. The course is aimed at giving its users a high level of fluency in spoken Classical Latin. This has not generally been a goal of courses in Latin since the Renaissance. The premise of the course is that the fastest road to an all round complete knowledge of the language, is to treat it as a modern language, and to learn it using the techniques that have successfully been applied to teaching English as a second language. A user who can speak Latin with some fluency, can then read the language as a fluent speaker. They should be able to think in the language, and not perpetually translate every sentence into their mother tongue in their heads. A fluent speaker will have a fast reading speed, and will be able to read and enjoy more aspects the vast and varied literature that has been written in Latin over the past 2300 years. It is the goal of the Latinum Course to assist in producing such students, a new generation of fluent Latinists, who will be able to use their Latin practically as a means of active communication, indeed a generation of Latinists such as the world has not seen for over 400 years.

to learn a language successfully, you need to expose yourself to it - the studying you do in class is really only ever going to be a very small part of the effort needed. Latinum is designed to help fill a gaping hole in Latin study - the lack of enough immersion material. 

The U.S. State Department groups languages for the diplomatic service according to learning difficulty.:

Category 1. The “easiest” languages for speakers of English, requiring 600 hours of classwork for minimal proficiency: the Latin and Germanic languages. However, German itself requires a bit more time, 750 hours, because of its complex grammar.

Category 2. Medium, requiring 1100 hours of classwork: Slavic languages, Turkic languages, other Indo-Europeans such as Persian and Hindi, and some non-Indo-Europeans such as Georgian, Hebrew and many African languages. Swahili is ranked easier than the rest, at 900 hours.. 

Category 3. Difficult, requiring 2200 hours of study: Arabic, Japanese, Korean and the Chinese languages. Classical Latin falls into this group

Will you get a chance to practice Latin? This is the thorny problem with Latin - partially solved by the internet, and access to Schola  and the growing number of Latin Speaking clubs around the world. If you had been learning latin 300 years ago, you wouldn't have this problem - there would be enough Latin speakers around.

To be a successful learner of any language you need the chance to hear, read and speak the language in a natural environment. Language learning takes an enormous amount of concentration and repetition, which cannot be done entirely in the classroom. Will you have access to the language where you live, work and travel? 

The Latinum Course uses as its base text the comprehensive textbook for Spoken Latin, written by the famed 19th century linguist, G.J.Adler, called " A Practical Grammar of the Latin Language".

The map above shows red dots, representing clusters of ten users, showing the location of the user base of the Latinum Course for learning how to speak Classical Latin, over the months of May - July 2008. Larger dots are clusters of 10-99.  During this period, over 12 700 individual users accessed the Course website. Over 2 million audio files will have been downloaded from the Latinum Course since the program came online in the first quarter of 2007 through to the end of July 2008. 

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