I studied Latin at O Level, and would have done A Level had my school had that choice available. It did amazing things for my spelling in general, and comprehension of new-to-me words in English. It also gave me a solid foundation for guessing at meaning in other Romance languages. We had a lovely teacher who really made lessons interesting, so obviously that helps, but I never thought that it was pointless or boring.
Anything can be interesting, including Latin!
Hi Gisella,
Lingua Latina does have a story, though, which it uses to introduce quite a lot of mythology on the way, and in the end, snippets of real poetry (Catullus, for example): I would say it’s a long way from the traditional Wheelock / D’Ooge grammar book.
But it’s intended to cover the same ground as a traditional grammar in the course of a school year: you don’t need any other book (or language!) to go from scratch to reading some quite complicated Latin. Naturally it introduces increasingly complex grammatical concepts as it goes along. In fact, the last chapter is a (simplified, I think) extract from a real Roman grammarian… If people want more detailed explanations of some of the grammar, then there are formal grammars tied to the series as well, but they’re not strictly necessary.
It sounds like Cadw Swn has adopted some of the same principles, though doesn’t it include translations? I shall have a look at it.
If we’re talking about the YouTube clip I linked to, no, it’s not AI. It’s a little slow and mannered – and as you say, it’s in ‘restored’ pronunciation, not Church Latin – to help understanding, but Luke Ranieri is a real person. This is him messing around in Latin in New York… (no need to watch the whole thing!)
As usual he’s not to everybody’s taste – I find him a little too exuberant, personally… – , and some have suggested that his pronunciation isn’t perfect, but as you say, nobody really knows. But the Lingua Latina series he recorded can be a helpful adjunct to the book and if you follow his pronunciation you won’t be far off the modern understanding of restored pronunciation, I think.
Yeah, in the long video, he has examples of using his re-reading technique in modern languages where he’s clearly not a native speaker. Indeed, I found the fact that he was sometimes a bit unsure of his pronunciation quite endearing and inspiring – it’s too easy for me to not use the Welsh I have because I’m worried about it not being perfect. So watching his video not only gave me an idea for how to improve my accent, it also inspired me to record the audio version of my vocab builder book as well!
I can’t claim to speak for anyone else, but for me it came from an interest in mythology, a romanticised view of “traditional” school subjects from reading so many Enid Blighton books, the sense of injustice that friends at grammar schools had the opportunity to learn things I didn’t, and quite crucially a failure to realise how many languages there are in the world to learn.
Some people are a bit sniffy about him because he doesn’t have any academic qualifications in the field, apparently, and because he’s now clearly on the well-trodden monetarisation path – which I don’t like either. But for people who like the basic method in the book, the (free) videos are a useful accompaniment to get a feel for how the text sounds - you don’t have to sign up to the rest of the carnival…
For me it’s mostly as @M2017 said, and also it is absolutely fascinating that academics throughout centuries have stuck so rigidly to their “ideal” Classical Latin that you can read texts from 2,000 years ago up until the present day, all in exactly the same language, and even have a pretty clear idea of how speeches in the Roman senate would have sounded, millennia before audio recording was invented.
And then there’s a bit of a perception that Latin is an especially challenging language to learn. I do love a challenge… (They said the same about Welsh. Look what happened!)
The method of learning set out in Familia Romana also really appeals to me. Okay, the first chapter is just some very basic sentences, statements of facts, and repetitive, but it introduces key points of grammar by using them. I’m sure as you carry on it gets more complex and a real story can develop.
Cadw Sŵn is quite similar in concept, now you mention it.
My father learned a bit of Latin in school, with the Cambridge Latin Course, which is still considered the gold standard 50+ years on. It was taught as if it were a modern language, and even introduced concepts a lot of other language courses have since borrowed, which at the time were somewhat revolutionary.
So as a child I’d read stories in which children at boarding schools struggled to get anywhere with Latin, but I also knew my father understood a bit and had fond memories of reading and hearing about Caecilius and his family, whose fictionalised story runs through the CLC. (They were a real family, and thanks to the preservation of Pompeii there really is a lot known about them!)
It’s almost like time travel, really. I’ve always felt the history, culture, and stories which belong to a language are the main reasons to learn it, and Latin has heaps of all that!
Is there a timeline for Russian via the App? Ta.
As I understand it, the ‘recreation’ of Classical Latin pronunciation is a fairly recent phenomenon – as in ‘the last hundred years or so’. Until then people spoke it with a ‘local’ accent, or with the Ecclesiastical pronunciation. There was even a distinct ‘English Latin’ pronunciation (which we will still instinctively use when pronouncing Caesar and Cicero as Seizer and Sisserow, and why we never say Weeny Weedy Weeky as we should…) Then early last century there was a movement to rediscover the original pronunciation.
There’s wiki page on it here Traditional English pronunciation of Latin - Wikipedia, if anyone’s interested…
If you really want to get into the weeds of how they ‘know’ what it sounded like, one of the standard works on the subject is Allen’s Vox Latina (1965), which you can probably find to download somewhere. I have it somewhere as a pdf, but it’s far too technical for me to have read anything more than the introduction…
As in the meaningless schoolboy doggerel
Caesar adsum jam forte
Pompey aderat
Caesar sic in omnibus
Pompey in his at.
I had a wonderful Latin teacher, a Belgian woman who actually spoke Latin fluently, or so it seemed to me at the time.I changed schools and my new one didn’t offer Latin, so I left it behind, but I’ve always wanted to pick it up again. And I believe the attention to detail and finding patterns the Latin grammar instilled in me helped me to be a good programmer when I worked in IT and had to look for bugs in the code!
I do think you’re right about the link between being good at coding and at languages. I’m sure at some level it’s pattern recognition and the feeling for syntax (which words/forms are appropriate in this situation to get that result…).
I don’t know if there’s a link between being good at the, but it’s the patterns and puzzles of both that excite my brain in the same way.
Well, they are called programming languages for a reason!
Hi Bill
We won’t be looking at Russian until Q2 2025 at the earliest. We have a bunch of others ahead in the pecking order at the moment.
But it is on our radar and I suspect there would be quite a lot of interest
Thanks. Not a problem. Bill
Must say I wasn’t expecting Finnish to be next. What an interesting choice! So cool to see SSi covering another language that has fewer resources.
Anyway, the main thing I wanted to ask is whether Aran will do another one of his marathons for YouTube using the new content. I really enjoyed the Manx and Dutch ones.
Well it’s funny you should say that because 2025 is going to be all about intensives.
Japanuary will see a 10 day intensive in Japanese for English speakers.
As well as a series of monthly 1-day intensives in Finnish and Italian.
We’re doing all of these experiments to explore the benefits of different approaches
There will be a bunch of live streaming of these.
We’re also thinking of doing some intensive ‘learn-alongs’ for other new courses such as Chinese, German and Portuguese once they get out of Alpha.
Exciting times indeed.
Lots of fun to be
The other interesting thing about Finnish is that conversational Finnish doesn’t appear to be well served at all. Most of the Finnish courses available cover the formal, written Finnish, which is quite different from what people speak.
So, we’re very happy that we can provide this service.
Please let us know if you have any Finnish contacts who might appreciate hearing about this. Like embassies and stuff.
Thats great news regarding the intensive sessions. Will there be anything like thst regarding Spanish?
Diolch
On the French course:-
When “that she needs to…” in subjunctive is used, the male voice repeats “elle” in all examples
i.e. qu’elle elle ait besoin de…
On a more gramtical note, when giving example sentences of the above subjunctive, although there are examples starting with “pensez-vous…?” and “je ne pens pas…” (which as I understand need to be followed by the subjunctive), examples are also given using “je pens…” followed by the above subjunctive pattern - which I think is incorrect, but obviously as a learner am not certain.