Learning Latin requires time, lots of time. Learning any language takes hours of listening to and reading the language, and Latin is no different. To read the classic Great Books in Latin we have to first read a number of Good Books in Latin. This course exists because it is difficult to find a guide through the beginning of reading Latin.

Understanding over Translating

While this course is not organized around learning the parts of the Latin grammar, it is grammatical. Students will be looking at and understanding sentences word-by-word, though we will usually avoid translation. This is not because translation is bad, but because Latin is so good. Very often, students understand and remember words better when they associate them, not with English equivalents, but with images, sounds, sentences, stories, and quotations.

Towards this end, this course is conducted primarily in Latin. Students will come to class expecting to hear and see Latin (and English when necessary). This practice adds to the student’s time spent in Latin—not just looking at Latin, but understanding what is going on through Latin directly.

Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata Series

This course proceeds through Miraglia’s lovely Fabulae Syrae, a student’s edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses; Carfagni’s edition of Lhomond’s Epitome Historiae Sacrae, an Old and New Testament reader; and portions of Ørberg’s Roma Aeterna, the second volume of his series, following Familia Romana. These texts bring the best of Latin texts to intermediate readers in an enjoyable and reasonable pace, using only Latin to clarify Latin. After reading lots of student material, students are ready to move towards reading the authors. And these volumes provide the intermediate step for them.

What Is Class Like?

After we recite our class catechism, class time includes narrating previous readings, reading new texts, taking dictation (an old-fashioned but highly effective technique for learning a language), answering questions, acting out illustrated stories, and playing games using Latin.

Homework

In brief, during the week students are expected to

• recite their catechism,
• read aloud a section (or a few) from one of the texts,
• write out a scriptorium (dictation) of portion of the text from class,
• complete an exercise or two from Ørberg’s materials, and
• spend a half-hour in voluntary free reading.