Dome Newbie United States Joined 3749 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 1 of 9 03 September 2014 at 9:08pm | IP Logged |
First post here, so I hope I'm not breaking any protocols.
My 11-year old has announced his desire to learn Japanese.
Not to be outdone, my 7-year old has done likewise with Latin.
I am looking for advice on the best way to proceed with each of these requests and will
be cross-posting these in the appropriate sub-forum.
I speak a good bit of Russian and a small amount of Spanish. English is our native
language. Any help is appreciated. Thank you in advance.
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Lakeseayesno Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico thepolyglotist.com Joined 4333 days ago 280 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 2 of 9 05 September 2014 at 4:39am | IP Logged |
First of all, welcome. It's nice of you that your first post is devoted to asking for advice concerning your kids. :) However, we always like to know more about our members, so when you have some time feel free to introduce yourself at the Member Profiles forum.
I can't really help you with Latin, but if your 11-year old wants to start with Japanese and you aren't contemplating classes, I recommend introducing him to the language through Erin's Challenge. It's specially designed to be self-study friendly and get people reading and speaking relatively quickly and it's culture-focused. I've heard good reviews of it from students.
If you live in New York or LA, I also recommend checking out the Japan Foundation's offices. Their mission is pretty much spreading Japanese language education and culture across the globe, so they're a good source to go to if you're looking for resources or classes.
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AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4637 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese
| Message 3 of 9 05 September 2014 at 8:48am | IP Logged |
For Latin I suggest getting the first volume of the Cambridge Latin Course and seeing
how she/he takes to it. This course is commonly used in the UK school system. Warning:
it gets violent at times, there is death and there is slavery, but it'll be kind of
hard to avoid that stuff when learning Latin.
The book follows a family living in Pompeii through stories and dialogues. These texts
are really engaging and enjoyable to read. New vocabulary is provided on the side of
the text and there is a dictionary at the back of the book with all the words used.
Each chapter introduces a bunch of new grammatical concepts which are used for the
first time in the texts. Each chapter also contains a section in English which
discusses life in the Roman empire.
For Japanese see my posts in this recent thread.
Edited by AlexTG on 05 September 2014 at 8:51am
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luhmann Senior Member Brazil Joined 5332 days ago 156 posts - 271 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: Mandarin, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Persian, Arabic (classical)
| Message 4 of 9 10 September 2014 at 11:38am | IP Logged |
Your 7 y.o. clearly needs to be coaxed into learning something funner, lest he will not learn anything. (edit: perhaps by Latin he means Spanish?)
Edited by luhmann on 10 September 2014 at 11:45am
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Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4843 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian
| Message 5 of 9 10 September 2014 at 12:35pm | IP Logged |
luhmann wrote:
Your 7 y.o. clearly needs to be coaxed into learning something funner, lest he will not learn anything. (edit: perhaps by Latin he means Spanish?) |
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Yeah, because Latin is an inherently not-fun language, or what?
Edited by Josquin on 10 September 2014 at 12:35pm
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akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5407 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh
| Message 6 of 9 10 September 2014 at 1:18pm | IP Logged |
Lingua Latina per se illustrata might also be a good idea. It is more intuitive than the classical grammar-translation method and the stories well suited to young children.
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tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish
| Message 7 of 9 10 September 2014 at 1:53pm | IP Logged |
You should always encourage a child's own voluntary choice of learning a certain skill.
If this is Latin, then Latin it is. It can never go wrong if you stimulate a child's own
passions. Better to let them choose freely than force them into something they hate in my
experience.
And this holds just the same if they found out about Skolt Saami in a book. Or Hausa.
Edited by tarvos on 10 September 2014 at 1:53pm
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Arnaud25 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 3841 days ago 129 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Russian
| Message 8 of 9 13 September 2014 at 7:26am | IP Logged |
For Latin, you can take a look at a book called "minimus".
It's made specifically for children from 7 to 10 and is based on the "natural method" according to wikipedia (you can read the chapter 3 on the site of the editor).
Google "minimus latin" for more infos
Lingua Latina per se illustrata is really good but I doubt a 7 y.o child can use it alone.
Edited by Arnaud25 on 13 September 2014 at 7:59am
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