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"Brute Force" Latin Learning Technique | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Torgam Triglot Newbie Germany Joined 5274 days ago 6 posts - 11 votes Speaks: German*, English, French Studies: Spanish, Dutch | Message 1 of 8 16 September 2010 at 5:22pm | IP Logged |
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While randomly surfing the internet I stumbled over this description of a quite particular approach to learning Latin and I was wondering what the community's opinions about this method are: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/Latin.htm
Would anybody with Latin learning experience care to comment? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6462 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 2 of 8 16 September 2010 at 6:11pm | IP Logged |
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Lingua Latina is an awesome course, the kind that I'd want to have for all languages,
but there is no reason to spend 6 months à 30 days à at least 30 minutes = 90 hours at least learning all grammar out of context before starting on Lingua Latina. Lingua Latina also doesn't recommend that - they introduce the grammar part by part, in 35 chapters plus 21 additional reading chapters that gradually approach the classic style of writing. I found that it's much easier to learn grammar shortly before or shortly after you encounter it in context, so that the context can help you *. This way it's less daunting, easier to understand, easier to memorize, and the whole process is a lot more rewarding as well, because you can start to read texts in Latin on day one, rather than day 180. I teach Latin by introducing grammar and vocabulary step by step, whenever it's necessary to keep reading (and Lingua Latina also teaches grammar that way!). After less than 45 hours, of which only 25 in the classroom, my students have picked up all that grammar plus a decent starting vocabulary, so that they can translate non- simplified texts by Roman authors. That means we spend only half the time that this guy recommends for grammar study alone, and already we're much further as well. Yes, at that stage reading Latin doesn't go as fluently as reading English, but you know what? You still have 45 days that he would have had you spend on rote memorization, and you could still go over Lingua Latina to develop your natural reading ability. Or just keep studying Roman authors; it's more interesting. * For example if you're a board gamer, you certainly heard of the "Spiel des Jahres" award, which is German and translates to "Game of the year". When learning German, just link this phrase, which you already know, to the Genitive, and you'll have no trouble remembering that masculine or neuter words like das Jahr change to des Jahres for Genitive. Edited by Sprachprofi on 16 September 2010 at 6:12pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Torgam Triglot Newbie Germany Joined 5274 days ago 6 posts - 11 votes Speaks: German*, English, French Studies: Spanish, Dutch | Message 3 of 8 02 December 2010 at 11:13am | IP Logged |
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Just to say a quick word on the issue again: I have followed the Dowling methods, just not quite as extreme, I only wrote down each table 50 times. At that point, I pretty much could recite any verb conjugation/noun declension by heart. Then I started Lingua Latina and found it to be very easy. I have reached Chapter 16 now and haven't encountered any stumbling blocks yet, a success that I'd partly attribute to the fact that it rarely takes me more than a second to recognise the endings. However, I obviously don't know what it would have been like without the memorisation so take this with a pinch of salt. In any case, Lingua Latina is simply an unbelievably good book. Strongly, strongly recommended to everybody who would like to pick up Latin. Also very well suited for self-study together with the College Companion book. (that's what I am doing) Edited by Torgam on 02 December 2010 at 11:31am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5513 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 4 of 8 02 December 2010 at 12:36pm | IP Logged |
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Of course, once you get past the beginner stage, you should also check out www.perseus.org, where you'll find classical texts with each word parsed (translated and analysed morphologically). It's absolutely brilliant. The best thing is that thay have Greek too, and introducing Old Norse and Arabic (if I didn't dream it).
4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6286 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 5 of 8 02 December 2010 at 1:06pm | IP Logged |
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Congratulations on staying with the project!
If you like the Lingua Latina book, I suspect you will like the CD. It includes the MP3 audio recordings of the text and a basic yet extremely helpful program that you can do the end of chapter exercises. BUZZ if you get the wrong answer. Friendly chimes if you get the correct answer. I've been distracted by other things things this year so I still haven't worked my way past chapter six. I need to get back with the program. Edited by jimbo on 02 December 2010 at 1:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6695 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 8 02 December 2010 at 2:44pm | IP Logged |
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I read Sprachprofi's comment and agree: do your memorization along with your practical reading - the combination of these two activities is certainly an effective way of learning a morphology-rich loose-word-order language like Latin.
After many years with simple sentences and variations on those simple sentences you might in principle learn the inflections by picking up patterns in the texts, but way invent the wheel a second time? Somebody collected all those tables for your benefit, and it is foolish to insist on doing all the field research yourself. I would just add one thing: I think that you first should have a look at all the tables, then try to see the logic in them first and THEN do your brute memorization. In the article at mwww.rci.rutgers.edu I noticed this advice: Here is a warning. The ablative has so many common uses in Latin that grammarians have figured out names for a lot of them ("ablative of separation," "ablative of the place from which," "ablative of agent," etc). It is still customary in some Latin courses to try to get students to understand the ablative by teaching them these categories. I also remember also those names for someting that ultimately are semantical distinctions. You might have a use for names for specific constructions, but those that only indicate different meanings are not worth learning. It is much better to learn to spot the ablatives (and other things) and then see what they are used for. If you can see 'clusters' of meaning then you may want to get a name for them, but learning the names before you have a use for them is silly. Reading a hardcore Latin text is like doing a jigsaw puzzle. Ultimately you have to make all those small tags and corners fit together, but first you take a look at the heap and find the heavens, the lawns and the white things that might be houses. And then you start out fitting those that from their 'content' seem to belong together. And with a less hardcore text the order of the words is actually also a good indication of which words belong together. The Romans certainly had a propensity to put one seemingly out-of-context word in the middle of a phrase, but it is still far from being a total chaos. Edited by Iversen on 06 December 2010 at 8:34am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Torgam Triglot Newbie Germany Joined 5274 days ago 6 posts - 11 votes Speaks: German*, English, French Studies: Spanish, Dutch | Message 7 of 8 03 December 2010 at 1:44pm | IP Logged |
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@Gusutafu
Thank you very much for the link, it seems extremely helpful. I just wished it would work via pop-ups that appear when you hover over a word. :-) @jimbo Thanks for the advice but I think I am mostly covered now. I bought all their publications including the exercitia, the answer key and the colloquia personarum. Plus, there are even more free readings on their website. :-) I just wished there was even more material though. @Iversen Each chapter in Lingua Latina includes a grammatical section which gives you the table and explains them (in Latin of course) so technically the course would be able to stand on its own, particularly if you buy the College Companion or Latine Disco which are basically grammar books that explain individual constructions in even more detail than the core course does. In fact, they even explain the various ablatives and I find it quite fun to figure out for each one I spot of which kind it might be. ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6695 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 8 06 December 2010 at 8:37am | IP Logged |
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Actually I have read Lingua Latina (although I don't own it), and I didn't refer specifically to this book. But quite generally I prefer having my texts in one place and my grammar in separate book.
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