Here is a little bit of personal history relevant to the topic in the video. I graduated from college with a major in Latin. During those same 4 years of college, I took 2 semesters of French, and at the end of those 2 semesters of French, I could read the novels of Jules Verne. I was very greatly impressed with my ability to read French after only 2 semesters, when after many semesters of Latin, in high school and college, I could not read Latin, all I could do was decipher it. I realized I was using a different part of my mind when reading French, than what I used when I was deciphering Latin. The part of the mind I was using to decipher Latin was the intellectual part of the mind, which I compare to a crane that can lift 10,000 pounds, but which is extremely slow and clumsy, when used for the work that should be done by many pairs of hands. I decided that I should learn to read Latin, and made some efforts in that regard, but with only limited success. Many decades later, using the wonderful resources of the internet, I tried once again to learn to read Latin, and I would say I have been pretty successful at it. For me, learning Latin without studying grammar would be a nightmare, but I also know that to get fluent in Latin, a person must practice turning off the intellectual part of the mind, and practice using the other part of the mind which is ordinarily used for communication, be it speaking or reading, and which knows nothing about grammar, or cognate words, or other such intellectual concepts. And so what you call "the strange bedfellows" method is the way to go, in my opinion.
@@kentuckyburbon1777I would read a translation first to get the gist. Interlinear texts fool you into thinking your skills are higher than they are and limit progress imo
Honestly this channel is incredible. A Latin teacher that recognizes the reality of language acquisition! I’d really like to hear more on your thought about TPR in a format like this. Thanks for everything.
Thank you for making this. I am the kind of person who hates grammar study, in any language. I have given up studying Latin and German twice because I got caught up in these diligence traps which emphasized grammar based busy work. My last attempt to learn Latin, I was highly motivated and having a great time reading Orberg , until an influencer convinced me I needed to do the dowling method, which in turn convinced me I will never learn a second language. This has given me the confidence to try again.
I took high school French with a friend of mine, Andy, and the textbooks were all-in on the grammar-translation method. We had a few extra reading materials available, but they were far too advanced for us. Andy worked diligently and got all A's through French IV. I got bored by the GT method and only earned C's. (It's possible the teacher took pity on me; I probably deserved a D.) For years, I thought the fault was mine, so I avoided learning another language for a long time, even though I really wanted to learn Latin, Russian, and several other languages. Flash forward a few decades, and neither Andy or I can read French. Andy has tried to learn more beyond the high school material, but he can't grasp phrases and turns of phrase, which, of course, French is famous for. The GT method has basically ruined his opportunity to master a language. But since GT was all I knew, that's how I approached Latin when I began studying during the 2020 lockdown. The GT method didn't work any better in 2020 than it had years earlier. But thanks to Carla and several others, I've changed my approach, and I'm now in Latin's Intermediate Zone. My grasp of Latin after 2.5 years of comprehensible input is higher than my French after 4+ years of GT. I've also used CI with Russian, and the results are the same - faster comprehension with far less boredom. Thanks, Carla!
I understand if someone doesn’t want to use the Ranieri/Dowling method as it is a lot of work up front. But. Seeing as one of THE most fluent Latin speakers in the world (Luke Ranieri) used the method himself, gives it enough credibility to not dismiss it as an effective path to take in learning Latin. Learning the paradigms may seem quite daunting in the very beginning, but patterns quickly become evident, somewhat predictable, and easier to memorize as you progress. *Id like to add, there’s no reason to feel you must write the paradigms 800 times a piece. The point is just that you LEARN them. That can be simply from reading/reciting a selection of them every day.
I really hope that you can put something like this video together for Ancient Greek. This video was incredibly useful and I would love to follow something this straightforward for Greek.
Thank you so much for great content and how to learn Latin! However, I think I do have a little bit to say about language learning (?) I’ve been always learning language the hard way, and potentially think all language learning should be like that, remember everything and test yourself on it. I kinda get it there are much easier and different way to learn which could also aids your speaking as well. However I do think the reason I ‘cannot be accustomed ’ to these method because I can’t find a straightforward process and get direct feedback. For example, when remembering my vocabulary, I could learn them and test myself. Like I immediately know that i know 3 more words today, which kinda keep me motivated for studying more. Also when i think of oh I need more vocab/grammar stuff to help me process the language, I know where to go to learn them. On the other hand, for watching Latin content, I do not know what I’m getting from them. Thus some times I do classified these time as my own time other than studying time, which make me couldn’t continue. And additionally, our study design does not encourage students to speak Latin, which made the other study method more difficult (also this is kinda strange, cuz I felt rude calling teacher with the pronoun You, is this a cultural thing(?) anyway I’m sorry if I’m being rude (?) Mrs.H)
Totally laughed at this. I LOVED! the Dowling method although I did drop down to just 75 times. But also I was watching videos, and reading Legentibus. It didn’t make sense to me that I shouldn’t learn actual Latin while learning the grammar. And yes it totally infused me with confidence. Because, I had tried the side by side Harrius Potter thing. Total fail for me because I couldn’t remember the massive amount of vocabulary. This was an awesome video as it was a history of all the things I have tried and very diligently plowed through. I’m one of those learners that believes in suffering. But I ended up dropping out because I couldn’t form a useful sentence. With just 3 months of Spanish, French and Italian I travelled with easy. I just don’t understand why I can’t master Latin. My newest thing now is visualizing. Reading and re-reading until I can see the text and trying to talk to myself in Latin. I’m finally feeling after all of these years that I’m actually learning it. Grātiās tibi agō magistra! Looking forward to your book.
Thoroughly enjoyable and very interesting. One of your best on this subject. Thank you for bringing so much clarity (and wit) to this (not to mention saving me from the 'diligence trap!)
I think you’re being a bit unfair with the dowling method. For me, I chose to do it because in the long run I thought it would be less frustrating not more frustrating. I figured that if I front loaded the grammar, I wouldn’t have to continuously struggle with endings or tenses for years. I wanted to be able to prime my brain for comprehensible input. And I think it worked. I don’t think I will forget any endings any time soon. You really give no benefit of the doubt to the people who are choosing that method.
Completely agree with this. Besides, perhaps I'm odd, but I actually enjoy memorisation. I hated trying to learn vocabulary while still struggling with all those endings. Why not just memorise the grammar so I could just enjoy reading?
Same here, but I think she is right. Dowling works for a particular type of person. I am not going "full Dowling", so to speak, but I have found it very helpful to draw explanation from. I remember first encountering the relative pronoun in LLPSI Familia Romana and being utterly confused by how many forms it took. It just seemed so daunting. But after giving it a few whirls through some brute memorization it became very easy. So I like doing Natural Method with some Brute Memorization thrown into the mix. This works for me at least.
I think her statements need to be looked at as approaches for teachers of Latin... She is quite clear that any method will work if applied regularly.. what she is recommending is not choosing a method that requires a an extraordinary amount of effort on the part of the student. Some students will thrive in such environments.. but others will easily get distracted because the activity is and of itself rather boring.
Thanks for your list. Have you come across Modern Latin Books One and Two by J.D. Sadler? They may have been the first textbook series after Oberg to emphasize reading vs grammar-translation.
I am so glad you are in the beginner's corner. I never realized that so many beginners could be so hopeful (?) as to believe all the hype around a particular book or method without knowing themselves and how they learn best. Any method that demands absolute devotion is a huge red flag to me. You would think that would be obvious but I guess it isn't. So thank you. You are an awesome teacher and your in-class students must love you.
I see a valuable purpose in exercises - even ones that do not necessarily represent communicative output. When we are dealing with inflection, I see a necessity to practice it until one is able to make the right choices automatically. That is where I see the purpose of exercises, and I don't really see any shortcut to making those automatic right choices that doesn't lead through doing enough exercises to actually produce that effect. And yes, it really does work. I haven't learned Latin yet, but I have learned German, which also has a fair amount of inflection. I remember doing independent study of the second-year course in German over the summer after my first year of secondary school. Among other things, that meant I would be obliged to teach myself German adjective endings. I made sure to do every single exercise with the above-mentioned aim. And to this day, I rarely if ever make mistakes with those endings. And yes, I graduated from high school speaking German well enough that I could have gone to university in Germany immediately without further language preparation :) I later learned Polish, which is even more crazily inflected than Latin. And yes, I did all the exercises. And yes, my Polish grammar was essentially perfect by the end of my first year of full-time study of Polish. I can already read a fair amount of Latin due to having a decent command of three Romance languages and having sung a fair amount of Latin in my time. I've even translated Latin texts that fall within my area of expertise (Christian lyrical texts intended for musical performance). But I do look forward to being able to speak and write Latin fluently and elegantly one day. So I am glad to be able to expose myself to the Latin language on your channel :)
I will probably make a follow up about deliberate practice of case endings. These do tend to be the last things that are acquired and learners usually want to have accurate command of them earlier. We can't control what we acquire from input, but we can control memorisation and drills. There is a social value in getting inflections right because people see it as a reflection of the care and attention given to learning the language. And inflections are a closed set, where no one is coining new inflections, so it is quite possible to memorise them all and be done with the topic.
@@FoundinAntiquity I'm not even just talking about social value. I mean, it is going to affect the comprehensibility of our speech if we don't get the endings right. They are there for a reason, after all. That said, you make a good point that if you are using exercises, you get to control what you are acquiring via your choice of exercises. There is also the matter of being personally satisfied that one's speech and writing in a given language befit a person of one's age and education. In my case, that means: I am a person in my late 50s, so somewhat old-school already, who grew up in a family with Ivy League connections (one professor, one doctoral degree holder) and in due time attended that university myself. This means that the bar is pretty high. I can't be 100% satisfied until my Latin prose rivals that of the finest prose written by native speakers of the language back when that was still a thing, and my speech is correspondingly good. But I don't have any ambitions to write epic poetry. At least that :P
So to be clear, nobody is saying that morphology (forms/endings) isn't important in Latin, or in any other language - obviously they communicate a lot of meaning. The issue is that there's actually no evidence to suggest that if you consume enough words of comprehensible Latin that you won't learn the endings. When you drill endings, what you're doing is learning to produce forms from memory, typically disconnected from any context. This takes vastly more effort than learning to understand the meaning communicated by endings in the context of whatever material you're reading, and what all available evidence shows is that it's through this exposure to comprehensible material that your brain starts to deeply acquire the morphological system so that you can eventually use it flexibly yourself. This has to happen *anyways* even if you do enormous frontloading of memorization. In some cases the memorization may speed up your comprehension of the material you're consuming, but if you are using material like Familia Romana that's graded appropriately, this doesn't even begin to make up for the amount of time and mental energy spent on memorization. All of this has been proven over and over again in decades of 2nd language acquisition research. In my case I only bothered to try memorizing paradigms after I finished reading Familia Romana/Fabulae Syrae/Colloquia Personarum/Fabellae Latinae which is about 100,000 words of Latin. At that point, despite having done zero exercises, I found that I knew almost the entire noun system and much of the verb system intuitively. The memorization I did as a result took way less mental energy and time than if I'd tried to do it before learning Latin, and it's pretty clear to me that if I'd just continued reading more intermediate level Latin at that point I wouldn't have had to bother.
@@Philoglossos I am not talkıng about merely beıng able to read. I can already read a considerable amount of Latin just by virtue of knowing three Romance languages. My ultimate aim is to be able to not only read whatever I like without having to look anything up in the dictionary, but also speak fluently, elegantly and perfectly - just as in any language I might choose to learn. Nor am I talking about memorizing paradigms. You are right that that serves no good purpose. I am talking about practically using grammar. And at the beginning, I would contend that it is useful to practice it in controlled circumstances, where one has a limited number of choices to be made, or perhaps just one variable is isolated for practice purposes (e.g. an exercise on a particular case, say the accusative or the dative, where the variable is the gender of the nouns in question, which impacts the set of endings to be used). Properly constructed exercises do not require a huge amount of mental energy. Yes, they require a certain amount of time, but the idea is to be able to do them faster, as making the proper choices becomes more automatic. But this is no different from practicing an instrument. Either way, the aim is to ensure that the right choices are being made automatically. I am also assuming a situation where I will have taken a quick overview of the grammar - not to memorize the details, but to see how the language works, what functions are available to express various things - before ever seriously starting to acquire the language. This kind of pre-learning makes it almost infinitely easier to acquire the details, as one already has a framework, aone already understands the logic of the language, and all one has to do is insert the details in their proper places - which places one will recognize immediately thanks to that pre-learning. Obviously, one has to then practice using what one has learned in speech and writing. However, getting the details _really right_ is going to happen faster if one does a certain amount of concentrated practice. It may be that my goals are a bit different from most people's. Most people are aiming to be able to communicate. I am aiming for literary-quality perfection. And indeed: there are those who would tell you that I now at C3 (!) level in Polish - despite having only started to acquire it at age 25. Polish was my fifth language. It was during the learning of this language that I became consciously aware of the importance of this kind of pre-learning. During that pre-learning phase, I even acquired the ability to communicate - ungrammatically, but still. However, it was only after I moved to Poland and studied the language full-time for three years, including at the beginning the opportunity for the kind of concentrated practice we are discussing, that I was able to make any significant progress toward actual perfection. By the end of the first year, I was indeed able to speak fluently and correcly. Elegance in speech and writing, however, took a while longer :P
I have a very difficult time with LLPSI as it’s too laborious and time consuming to make sense of the language that my mind doesn’t make the connections as it wants to learn the language quicker naturally
Latin has very sensitive endings, meaningful connections or understanding the function of a word in a sentence is vital, almost to a letter, even a single alphabet at the terminus of a word. A learner likes variety, a promiscuous mix of delectable even strange bedfellows would hold interest, and taedium can be overcome when the way is long and assiduous and feet tend to drag. Your philosophy is sound, psychology didactic.
While not on the same scale, Seumas Macdonald has done a good blog post on autodidact strategies for Ancient Greek: thepatrologist.com/2023/03/08/so-you-want-to-study-ancient-greek-and-dont-want-to-take-a-course-2023-edition/
Dowling Method is excellent if you simplify it: just learn carefully the 5 declination tables and after start with the book Familia Romana. All the rest of grammar is easy to memorize while reading Familia Romana, as you say, but having the 5 tables firm in your head will hugely simplify all the rest.
I think there is a case to be made for doing a simplified, less intense version of Dowling with just the 5 declensions, a pronoun or two, & the verb endings in the active (-o -s -t -mus -tis -nt) and passive (-r -ris -tur -mur -mini -ntur). If it gives you a tool to help comprehend input, it opens up more opportunities to understand more out of texts and understand a broader range of texts. Just like explicitly learning the top 100 most frequent words in a language (or however many you have patience for, with diminishing returns) might be helpful as well.
Hello. Thanks for the answer. I came across an interesting book on the grammar of the Latin language of the late 18th century. In it, each page of the book is divided by a line into two parts, on the one hand there is an explanation of the text in the student's native language, and on the other side, on the contrary, each sentence is duplicated in Latin. The author of the book wrote that in this way he tried to solve two complaints from teachers, one of them complained that those who studied grammar in their native language were too weak in Latin, and others complained that studying grammar in Latin without their native language was too difficult. Two questions for you. Do you see similar books? What do you think about it?
Thank you for your hard work. With all the shortcomings of LLPSI, its main advantage lies in the fact that in the study of Latin using the direct method there is no metalanguage (English or any other), which, wittingly or unwittingly, is an intermediary and distorts part of the information for the student. What do you think about it?
I think that what we're mostly wanting to criticise is inappropriate and excessive focus on grammatical analysis at learner stages - but some metalanguage can be helpful, eg 'verb', 'noun', 'accusative case'. LLPSI does use metalanguage as it does explicitly name those concepts in Latin. I think being able to name what you see can be helpful, it's just when it becomes the focus of assessment it can be possible to know the name of something and answer test questions on it without understanding it.
I haven't had the time to do a deep review of individual textbook series, but Seumas Macdonald has done a good review of Via Latina here on his blog: thepatrologist.com/2022/06/14/via-latina-a-review/
how much reading a day? for instance, do you think it would be productive to read more than one chapter a day from LLPSI alongo with the colloquia? thanks
Thanks very much for this (both the video and the original article) - I really enjoyed it and you've tackled head on so many challenges and debates which I've wrestled with myself as a Latin autodidact for the last few years. I would be interested to know if you have any further thoughts on the use of interlinears and bilingual translations? I create them myself using the (free) YouAlign software (grab the Latin and the English translation - or Google translate - from somewhere) and create line by line bilingual translations - I've found this a really important way of getting into authentic texts (especially complex medieval Latin) that I want to read (particularly for my work). However, I do feel it has taken too much of the struggle out of my learning at times - would you have any recommendations for how to make the best of use of them? (Perhaps by reading the Latin original on its own first? Or repeated rereadings? I find turning to a dictionary each time very time-consuming and soul destroying for these texts, especially when much of the idiosyncratic meaning won't be revealed by the dictionary in any case compared to a good and literal translation)
Interlinears can really help with quickly seeing the meaning of a word, helping you read things otherwise inaccessible or else in greater volume without getting lost. But as you said, if you under challenge yourself by too quickly receiving the answer from the interlinear without giving a shot at working it out and practicing some memory retrieval, language improvement is potentially slower than it could be. I think the best idea I've seen so far is to hide the interlinear somehow, only revealing it when you really need it. In the Legentibus app you can tap a button to hide or unhide the interlinear. On paper you can buy or make a transparency slide with white opaque bars on it that are the same height as the English text on the interlinear, and use that to hide alternate lines. It may be harder when it's reflowable text on an ereader. At that point I'd probably advise switching tabs back and forth between a Latin only edition and a Latin-English interlinear.
GRAMMATICA est tantum adminiculum quoddam docendae et discendae alicujus linguae, cujus plena perfectaque cognitio ex ipsis Auctoribus haurienda est. Quintilian. Lib. 1. cap.9.
Grammar is only part of it for sure, but it is part of the learning process for me and I love it. But then again, at the start of every English grammar class in grade two (age seven), I was the only student smiling (and yes, salivating just a bit) amidst the groans and complaints from my peers. 😂
Yes, the links for the CLC still work. They're just hard to find in search. Here's the online activity thing: www.clc.cambridgescp.com/Array/online-textbooks Here's the webbook: www.clc.cambridgescp.com/Array/online-textbooks
@@FoundinAntiquity It says that the textbooks are now only available at the Elebate platform... I think I need an account for this. Unless I'm mistaken.
I’ll put in my two cents here. First of all, Dowling method is ridiculous, I don’t think anyone who is brand new at Latin should even consider that method. Masochistic return learners, maybe. I think Wheelock’s is still a great place to start. Do Wheelock’s through Perfect tense (Chapter 10ish?), then switch to LLPSI. You should be able to get through a few chapters of LLPSI and it will feel good, validating the work you’ve put in through Wheelock’s method. You’ll also already be familiar with basic paradigms, and likely able to acquire new vocab much quicker. When LLPSI starts introducing Passive voice, start referencing the chapters of Wheelock’s that cover that specific grammar concept. Problem here is that the Exercitationes and Sententiae Antiquae will be full of strange vocabulary and other grammar rules you might have missed, making the Wheelock’s exercises more and more dissimilar to what you’re learning in LLPSI. At this point the Strange Bedfellows starts to get complicated. Perhaps instead of using one to compliment the other, you just use them on their own for their own value, kind of like a domestic partnership? 😂 thanks for the video!
I would never recommend Wheelock for anything except the reference portion in the back of the book. To use the Dowling Method effectively, you *must* write out the declension tables and memorize them, then use a good reader like Familia Romana from LLPSI. I know this is a hard pill for young people to swallow, because the current culture is prejudiced against memorizing anything as a learning technique. But it's absolutely true: once you learn the declensions in the first six months of study, the rest is pretty easy. People just don't want to hear that Latin, as a highly inflected language, has a steep learning curve in the beginning. No pain, no gain!
Is there any actual evidence that memorizing the tables produces superior results to just starting with a reader? "My guru said so" is not a good argument. "Kids these days are too lazy," which is effectively what your comment amounts to, is not a good argument.
@@whitemakesright2177 Eh, I didn't say "my guru said so". Look at how the old British schools used to teach Latin and look at the results, and compare those results to what you see now.
@@rappakalja5295 What an antagonistic response. There's no "moralizing" going on here. Why do you think that the generation of T.S. Eliot and the legions of students educated at Eton College were able to create a world filled with knowledge of Latin literature? Look at the teaching methods they used back then and look at what they were able to accomplish. People nowadays trend against memorization. But to be successful in any field, for instance software engineering, you have to be willing to memorize (algorithms). But when it comes to language learning, all of a sudden people are allergic to memorization!
@danielstoddart Why did rich people who spent every waking hour of their lives studying without worrying about problems 90% of the population had to struggle with succeed in Latin? Wow, geez. How could this be. What could ever be the answer. Once again, you choose to moralize instead of using your brain.
I have absolutely no moral qualms about pirating educational materials. Education being pay-walled is bullshit, and the prices of textbooks is outrageous.
I really really wanted to like Foster's Ossa but it is, to my dismay, unusable for an autodidact, or even an seasoned Latinist. Perhaps a master teacher who was one of Reginald's disciples could use it. So disappointing.
The ideas to word ratio is too low. So despite a huge interest about this topic, it’s impossible to hear those videos … You should try to convey the same ideas in 6 minutes and 6 seconds instead of 61m27seconds. That would be a useful decimation.
Here is a little bit of personal history relevant to the topic in the video. I graduated from college with a major in Latin. During those same 4 years of college, I took 2 semesters of French, and at the end of those 2 semesters of French, I could read the novels of Jules Verne. I was very greatly impressed with my ability to read French after only 2 semesters, when after many semesters of Latin, in high school and college, I could not read Latin, all I could do was decipher it. I realized I was using a different part of my mind when reading French, than what I used when I was deciphering Latin. The part of the mind I was using to decipher Latin was the intellectual part of the mind, which I compare to a crane that can lift 10,000 pounds, but which is extremely slow and clumsy, when used for the work that should be done by many pairs of hands. I decided that I should learn to read Latin, and made some efforts in that regard, but with only limited success. Many decades later, using the wonderful resources of the internet, I tried once again to learn to read Latin, and I would say I have been pretty successful at it. For me, learning Latin without studying grammar would be a nightmare, but I also know that to get fluent in Latin, a person must practice turning off the intellectual part of the mind, and practice using the other part of the mind which is ordinarily used for communication, be it speaking or reading, and which knows nothing about grammar, or cognate words, or other such intellectual concepts. And so what you call "the strange bedfellows" method is the way to go, in my opinion.
Would you recommend interlinear texts? - or perhaps as a supplement? Apprehensive since the sentence is out of order
@@kentuckyburbon1777I would read a translation first to get the gist. Interlinear texts fool you into thinking your skills are higher than they are and limit progress imo
Honestly this channel is incredible. A Latin teacher that recognizes the reality of language acquisition! I’d really like to hear more on your thought about TPR in a format like this. Thanks for everything.
Thank you for making this. I am the kind of person who hates grammar study, in any language. I have given up studying Latin and German twice because I got caught up in these diligence traps which emphasized grammar based busy work. My last attempt to learn Latin, I was highly motivated and having a great time reading Orberg , until an influencer convinced me I needed to do the dowling method, which in turn convinced me I will never learn a second language. This has given me the confidence to try again.
This video was extremely inspirational for me to expand my Latin learning repertoir and definitely deserves more attention!
I took high school French with a friend of mine, Andy, and the textbooks were all-in on the grammar-translation method. We had a few extra reading materials available, but they were far too advanced for us. Andy worked diligently and got all A's through French IV. I got bored by the GT method and only earned C's. (It's possible the teacher took pity on me; I probably deserved a D.)
For years, I thought the fault was mine, so I avoided learning another language for a long time, even though I really wanted to learn Latin, Russian, and several other languages.
Flash forward a few decades, and neither Andy or I can read French. Andy has tried to learn more beyond the high school material, but he can't grasp phrases and turns of phrase, which, of course, French is famous for. The GT method has basically ruined his opportunity to master a language.
But since GT was all I knew, that's how I approached Latin when I began studying during the 2020 lockdown. The GT method didn't work any better in 2020 than it had years earlier.
But thanks to Carla and several others, I've changed my approach, and I'm now in Latin's Intermediate Zone. My grasp of Latin after 2.5 years of comprehensible input is higher than my French after 4+ years of GT. I've also used CI with Russian, and the results are the same - faster comprehension with far less boredom.
Thanks, Carla!
Have you played Latin on Clozemaster application yet?
See u there scott86
What resources did you use to practice comprehensive input for Russian?
Maximas gratias tibi! I read your excellent article, but it was more “delightful” hearing your audio version :)
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed hearing this!
I understand if someone doesn’t want to use the Ranieri/Dowling method as it is a lot of work up front. But. Seeing as one of THE most fluent Latin speakers in the world (Luke Ranieri) used the method himself, gives it enough credibility to not dismiss it as an effective path to take in learning Latin. Learning the paradigms may seem quite daunting in the very beginning, but patterns quickly become evident, somewhat predictable, and easier to memorize as you progress.
*Id like to add, there’s no reason to feel you must write the paradigms 800 times a piece. The point is just that you LEARN them. That can be simply from reading/reciting a selection of them every day.
I really hope that you can put something like this video together for Ancient Greek. This video was incredibly useful and I would love to follow something this straightforward for Greek.
Thank you so much for great content and how to learn Latin!
However, I think I do have a little bit to say about language learning (?) I’ve been always learning language the hard way, and potentially think all language learning should be like that, remember everything and test yourself on it. I kinda get it there are much easier and different way to learn which could also aids your speaking as well.
However I do think the reason I ‘cannot be accustomed ’ to these method because I can’t find a straightforward process and get direct feedback. For example, when remembering my vocabulary, I could learn them and test myself. Like I immediately know that i know 3 more words today, which kinda keep me motivated for studying more. Also when i think of oh I need more vocab/grammar stuff to help me process the language, I know where to go to learn them.
On the other hand, for watching Latin content, I do not know what I’m getting from them. Thus some times I do classified these time as my own time other than studying time, which make me couldn’t continue. And additionally, our study design does not encourage students to speak Latin, which made the other study method more difficult
(also this is kinda strange, cuz I felt rude calling teacher with the pronoun You, is this a cultural thing(?) anyway I’m sorry if I’m being rude (?) Mrs.H)
Totally laughed at this. I LOVED! the Dowling method although I did drop down to just 75 times. But also I was watching videos, and reading Legentibus. It didn’t make sense to me that I shouldn’t learn actual Latin while learning the grammar. And yes it totally infused me with confidence. Because, I had tried the side by side Harrius Potter thing. Total fail for me because I couldn’t remember the massive amount of vocabulary. This was an awesome video as it was a history of all the things I have tried and very diligently plowed through. I’m one of those learners that believes in suffering. But I ended up dropping out because I couldn’t form a useful sentence. With just 3 months of Spanish, French and Italian I travelled with easy. I just don’t understand why I can’t master Latin. My newest thing now is visualizing. Reading and re-reading until I can see the text and trying to talk to myself in Latin. I’m finally feeling after all of these years that I’m actually learning it. Grātiās tibi agō magistra! Looking forward to your book.
I love your eplanation of the dilligence trap. I think the concept can apply to a wide variety of disciplines.
Awesome video!
Thoroughly enjoyable and very interesting. One of your best on this subject. Thank you for bringing so much clarity (and wit) to this (not to mention saving me from the 'diligence trap!)
I think you’re being a bit unfair with the dowling method. For me, I chose to do it because in the long run I thought it would be less frustrating not more frustrating. I figured that if I front loaded the grammar, I wouldn’t have to continuously struggle with endings or tenses for years. I wanted to be able to prime my brain for comprehensible input. And I think it worked. I don’t think I will forget any endings any time soon. You really give no benefit of the doubt to the people who are choosing that method.
Completely agree with this. Besides, perhaps I'm odd, but I actually enjoy memorisation. I hated trying to learn vocabulary while still struggling with all those endings. Why not just memorise the grammar so I could just enjoy reading?
Same here, but I think she is right. Dowling works for a particular type of person. I am not going "full Dowling", so to speak, but I have found it very helpful to draw explanation from.
I remember first encountering the relative pronoun in LLPSI Familia Romana and being utterly confused by how many forms it took. It just seemed so daunting. But after giving it a few whirls through some brute memorization it became very easy. So I like doing Natural Method with some Brute Memorization thrown into the mix. This works for me at least.
I think her statements need to be looked at as approaches for teachers of Latin... She is quite clear that any method will work if applied regularly.. what she is recommending is not choosing a method that requires a an extraordinary amount of effort on the part of the student. Some students will thrive in such environments.. but others will easily get distracted because the activity is and of itself rather boring.
Great video and thanks for the shout out. Hopefully your video will help bring Latin learning out of the 19th century and into the 21st. 🙂
Thank you for making all that content around the reading lists and documenting your journey!
Thanks for your list. Have you come across Modern Latin Books One and Two by J.D. Sadler? They may have been the first textbook series after Oberg to emphasize reading vs grammar-translation.
Thanks, this was helpful, including the ideas for free content
I like the way you pronounce LLPSI.
I am so glad you are in the beginner's corner. I never realized that so many beginners could be so hopeful (?) as to believe all the hype around a particular book or method without knowing themselves and how they learn best. Any method that demands absolute devotion is a huge red flag to me. You would think that would be obvious but I guess it isn't. So thank you. You are an awesome teacher and your in-class students must love you.
Thank you so much! I'm glad this is helpful to beginners.
She is an awesome teacher and we do love her very very much(from in class students(?))
@@bettyzao2377 enjoy!
What is your opinion on AJATT type learning?
I see a valuable purpose in exercises - even ones that do not necessarily represent communicative output. When we are dealing with inflection, I see a necessity to practice it until one is able to make the right choices automatically. That is where I see the purpose of exercises, and I don't really see any shortcut to making those automatic right choices that doesn't lead through doing enough exercises to actually produce that effect.
And yes, it really does work. I haven't learned Latin yet, but I have learned German, which also has a fair amount of inflection. I remember doing independent study of the second-year course in German over the summer after my first year of secondary school. Among other things, that meant I would be obliged to teach myself German adjective endings. I made sure to do every single exercise with the above-mentioned aim. And to this day, I rarely if ever make mistakes with those endings. And yes, I graduated from high school speaking German well enough that I could have gone to university in Germany immediately without further language preparation :)
I later learned Polish, which is even more crazily inflected than Latin. And yes, I did all the exercises. And yes, my Polish grammar was essentially perfect by the end of my first year of full-time study of Polish.
I can already read a fair amount of Latin due to having a decent command of three Romance languages and having sung a fair amount of Latin in my time. I've even translated Latin texts that fall within my area of expertise (Christian lyrical texts intended for musical performance). But I do look forward to being able to speak and write Latin fluently and elegantly one day. So I am glad to be able to expose myself to the Latin language on your channel :)
I will probably make a follow up about deliberate practice of case endings. These do tend to be the last things that are acquired and learners usually want to have accurate command of them earlier. We can't control what we acquire from input, but we can control memorisation and drills. There is a social value in getting inflections right because people see it as a reflection of the care and attention given to learning the language. And inflections are a closed set, where no one is coining new inflections, so it is quite possible to memorise them all and be done with the topic.
@@FoundinAntiquity I'm not even just talking about social value. I mean, it is going to affect the comprehensibility of our speech if we don't get the endings right. They are there for a reason, after all. That said, you make a good point that if you are using exercises, you get to control what you are acquiring via your choice of exercises.
There is also the matter of being personally satisfied that one's speech and writing in a given language befit a person of one's age and education. In my case, that means: I am a person in my late 50s, so somewhat old-school already, who grew up in a family with Ivy League connections (one professor, one doctoral degree holder) and in due time attended that university myself.
This means that the bar is pretty high. I can't be 100% satisfied until my Latin prose rivals that of the finest prose written by native speakers of the language back when that was still a thing, and my speech is correspondingly good. But I don't have any ambitions to write epic poetry. At least that :P
So to be clear, nobody is saying that morphology (forms/endings) isn't important in Latin, or in any other language - obviously they communicate a lot of meaning. The issue is that there's actually no evidence to suggest that if you consume enough words of comprehensible Latin that you won't learn the endings. When you drill endings, what you're doing is learning to produce forms from memory, typically disconnected from any context. This takes vastly more effort than learning to understand the meaning communicated by endings in the context of whatever material you're reading, and what all available evidence shows is that it's through this exposure to comprehensible material that your brain starts to deeply acquire the morphological system so that you can eventually use it flexibly yourself. This has to happen *anyways* even if you do enormous frontloading of memorization. In some cases the memorization may speed up your comprehension of the material you're consuming, but if you are using material like Familia Romana that's graded appropriately, this doesn't even begin to make up for the amount of time and mental energy spent on memorization. All of this has been proven over and over again in decades of 2nd language acquisition research. In my case I only bothered to try memorizing paradigms after I finished reading Familia Romana/Fabulae Syrae/Colloquia Personarum/Fabellae Latinae which is about 100,000 words of Latin. At that point, despite having done zero exercises, I found that I knew almost the entire noun system and much of the verb system intuitively. The memorization I did as a result took way less mental energy and time than if I'd tried to do it before learning Latin, and it's pretty clear to me that if I'd just continued reading more intermediate level Latin at that point I wouldn't have had to bother.
@@Philoglossos I am not talkıng about merely beıng able to read. I can already read a considerable amount of Latin just by virtue of knowing three Romance languages. My ultimate aim is to be able to not only read whatever I like without having to look anything up in the dictionary, but also speak fluently, elegantly and perfectly - just as in any language I might choose to learn.
Nor am I talking about memorizing paradigms. You are right that that serves no good purpose. I am talking about practically using grammar. And at the beginning, I would contend that it is useful to practice it in controlled circumstances, where one has a limited number of choices to be made, or perhaps just one variable is isolated for practice purposes (e.g. an exercise on a particular case, say the accusative or the dative, where the variable is the gender of the nouns in question, which impacts the set of endings to be used).
Properly constructed exercises do not require a huge amount of mental energy. Yes, they require a certain amount of time, but the idea is to be able to do them faster, as making the proper choices becomes more automatic. But this is no different from practicing an instrument. Either way, the aim is to ensure that the right choices are being made automatically.
I am also assuming a situation where I will have taken a quick overview of the grammar - not to memorize the details, but to see how the language works, what functions are available to express various things - before ever seriously starting to acquire the language.
This kind of pre-learning makes it almost infinitely easier to acquire the details, as one already has a framework, aone already understands the logic of the language, and all one has to do is insert the details in their proper places - which places one will recognize immediately thanks to that pre-learning.
Obviously, one has to then practice using what one has learned in speech and writing. However, getting the details _really right_ is going to happen faster if one does a certain amount of concentrated practice.
It may be that my goals are a bit different from most people's. Most people are aiming to be able to communicate. I am aiming for literary-quality perfection. And indeed: there are those who would tell you that I now at C3 (!) level in Polish - despite having only started to acquire it at age 25.
Polish was my fifth language. It was during the learning of this language that I became consciously aware of the importance of this kind of pre-learning. During that pre-learning phase, I even acquired the ability to communicate - ungrammatically, but still. However, it was only after I moved to Poland and studied the language full-time for three years, including at the beginning the opportunity for the kind of concentrated practice we are discussing, that I was able to make any significant progress toward actual perfection.
By the end of the first year, I was indeed able to speak fluently and correcly. Elegance in speech and writing, however, took a while longer :P
I have a very difficult time with LLPSI as it’s too laborious and time consuming to make sense of the language that my mind doesn’t make the connections as it wants to learn the language quicker naturally
Latin has very sensitive endings, meaningful connections or understanding the function of a word in a sentence is vital, almost to a letter, even a single alphabet at the terminus of a word. A learner likes variety, a promiscuous mix of delectable even strange bedfellows would hold interest, and taedium can be overcome when the way is long and assiduous and feet tend to drag. Your philosophy is sound, psychology didactic.
Think that you can write a similar essay about learning ancient Greek as an autodidact?
While not on the same scale, Seumas Macdonald has done a good blog post on autodidact strategies for Ancient Greek: thepatrologist.com/2023/03/08/so-you-want-to-study-ancient-greek-and-dont-want-to-take-a-course-2023-edition/
Dowling Method is excellent if you simplify it: just learn carefully the 5 declination tables and after start with the book Familia Romana. All the rest of grammar is easy to memorize while reading Familia Romana, as you say, but having the 5 tables firm in your head will hugely simplify all the rest.
I think there is a case to be made for doing a simplified, less intense version of Dowling with just the 5 declensions, a pronoun or two, & the verb endings in the active (-o -s -t -mus -tis -nt) and passive (-r -ris -tur -mur -mini -ntur). If it gives you a tool to help comprehend input, it opens up more opportunities to understand more out of texts and understand a broader range of texts. Just like explicitly learning the top 100 most frequent words in a language (or however many you have patience for, with diminishing returns) might be helpful as well.
@@FoundinAntiquity Agree, that's what I meant
Excellent, magistra!
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Hello. Thanks for the answer. I came across an interesting book on the grammar of the Latin language of the late 18th century. In it, each page of the book is divided by a line into two parts, on the one hand there is an explanation of the text in the student's native language, and on the other side, on the contrary, each sentence is duplicated in Latin. The author of the book wrote that in this way he tried to solve two complaints from teachers, one of them complained that those who studied grammar in their native language were too weak in Latin, and others complained that studying grammar in Latin without their native language was too difficult. Two questions for you. Do you see similar books? What do you think about it?
Hello what do you think about learning esperanto first and then latin? Is it faster than the other way around?
Love the earrings. Its all about the prophecies & all about Him.
Thank you for your hard work. With all the shortcomings of LLPSI, its main advantage lies in the fact that in the study of Latin using the direct method there is no metalanguage (English or any other), which, wittingly or unwittingly, is an intermediary and distorts part of the information for the student. What do you think about it?
I think that what we're mostly wanting to criticise is inappropriate and excessive focus on grammatical analysis at learner stages - but some metalanguage can be helpful, eg 'verb', 'noun', 'accusative case'. LLPSI does use metalanguage as it does explicitly name those concepts in Latin. I think being able to name what you see can be helpful, it's just when it becomes the focus of assessment it can be possible to know the name of something and answer test questions on it without understanding it.
Salve. Gratia!
In the photo for the video intro, I saw the book Via Latina. When are you going to review it?)
I haven't had the time to do a deep review of individual textbook series, but Seumas Macdonald has done a good review of Via Latina here on his blog: thepatrologist.com/2022/06/14/via-latina-a-review/
Cool. A little Aussie kid. 👍👍
how much reading a day? for instance, do you think it would be productive to read more than one chapter a day from LLPSI alongo with the colloquia?
thanks
Thanks very much for this (both the video and the original article) - I really enjoyed it and you've tackled head on so many challenges and debates which I've wrestled with myself as a Latin autodidact for the last few years. I would be interested to know if you have any further thoughts on the use of interlinears and bilingual translations? I create them myself using the (free) YouAlign software (grab the Latin and the English translation - or Google translate - from somewhere) and create line by line bilingual translations - I've found this a really important way of getting into authentic texts (especially complex medieval Latin) that I want to read (particularly for my work). However, I do feel it has taken too much of the struggle out of my learning at times - would you have any recommendations for how to make the best of use of them? (Perhaps by reading the Latin original on its own first? Or repeated rereadings? I find turning to a dictionary each time very time-consuming and soul destroying for these texts, especially when much of the idiosyncratic meaning won't be revealed by the dictionary in any case compared to a good and literal translation)
Interlinears can really help with quickly seeing the meaning of a word, helping you read things otherwise inaccessible or else in greater volume without getting lost. But as you said, if you under challenge yourself by too quickly receiving the answer from the interlinear without giving a shot at working it out and practicing some memory retrieval, language improvement is potentially slower than it could be. I think the best idea I've seen so far is to hide the interlinear somehow, only revealing it when you really need it. In the Legentibus app you can tap a button to hide or unhide the interlinear. On paper you can buy or make a transparency slide with white opaque bars on it that are the same height as the English text on the interlinear, and use that to hide alternate lines. It may be harder when it's reflowable text on an ereader. At that point I'd probably advise switching tabs back and forth between a Latin only edition and a Latin-English interlinear.
@@FoundinAntiquity That is a good idea! Thanks again!
GRAMMATICA est tantum adminiculum
quoddam docendae et discendae alicujus linguae, cujus plena perfectaque cognitio ex ipsis Auctoribus haurienda est. Quintilian. Lib. 1. cap.9.
Bene inter nos convenit.
Grammar is only part of it for sure, but it is part of the learning process for me and I love it. But then again, at the start of every English grammar class in grade two (age seven), I was the only student smiling (and yes, salivating just a bit) amidst the groans and complaints from my peers. 😂
mihi quoque placet grammatica!
Are the Cambridge links still working? I'm not able to find the books online.
Yes, the links for the CLC still work. They're just hard to find in search. Here's the online activity thing: www.clc.cambridgescp.com/Array/online-textbooks Here's the webbook: www.clc.cambridgescp.com/Array/online-textbooks
@@FoundinAntiquity It says that the textbooks are now only available at the Elebate platform... I think I need an account for this. Unless I'm mistaken.
@@andromilk2634 Weird, I can open the webbooks on my phone. Maybe it's a region locked thing now?
I’ll put in my two cents here. First of all, Dowling method is ridiculous, I don’t think anyone who is brand new at Latin should even consider that method. Masochistic return learners, maybe. I think Wheelock’s is still a great place to start. Do Wheelock’s through Perfect tense (Chapter 10ish?), then switch to LLPSI. You should be able to get through a few chapters of LLPSI and it will feel good, validating the work you’ve put in through Wheelock’s method. You’ll also already be familiar with basic paradigms, and likely able to acquire new vocab much quicker. When LLPSI starts introducing Passive voice, start referencing the chapters of Wheelock’s that cover that specific grammar concept. Problem here is that the Exercitationes and Sententiae Antiquae will be full of strange vocabulary and other grammar rules you might have missed, making the Wheelock’s exercises more and more dissimilar to what you’re learning in LLPSI. At this point the Strange Bedfellows starts to get complicated. Perhaps instead of using one to compliment the other, you just use them on their own for their own value, kind of like a domestic partnership? 😂 thanks for the video!
Melior quam Familia Romana est liber medieval Calila et Dimna, quem iam legi plus quam 15 vices.
I would never recommend Wheelock for anything except the reference portion in the back of the book. To use the Dowling Method effectively, you *must* write out the declension tables and memorize them, then use a good reader like Familia Romana from LLPSI. I know this is a hard pill for young people to swallow, because the current culture is prejudiced against memorizing anything as a learning technique. But it's absolutely true: once you learn the declensions in the first six months of study, the rest is pretty easy. People just don't want to hear that Latin, as a highly inflected language, has a steep learning curve in the beginning. No pain, no gain!
Is there any actual evidence that memorizing the tables produces superior results to just starting with a reader? "My guru said so" is not a good argument. "Kids these days are too lazy," which is effectively what your comment amounts to, is not a good argument.
Do you have any actual evidence for your claims or do you just regurgitate moralizing?
@@whitemakesright2177 Eh, I didn't say "my guru said so". Look at how the old British schools used to teach Latin and look at the results, and compare those results to what you see now.
@@rappakalja5295 What an antagonistic response. There's no "moralizing" going on here. Why do you think that the generation of T.S. Eliot and the legions of students educated at Eton College were able to create a world filled with knowledge of Latin literature? Look at the teaching methods they used back then and look at what they were able to accomplish. People nowadays trend against memorization. But to be successful in any field, for instance software engineering, you have to be willing to memorize (algorithms). But when it comes to language learning, all of a sudden people are allergic to memorization!
@danielstoddart Why did rich people who spent every waking hour of their lives studying without worrying about problems 90% of the population had to struggle with succeed in Latin? Wow, geez. How could this be. What could ever be the answer.
Once again, you choose to moralize instead of using your brain.
I have absolutely no moral qualms about pirating educational materials. Education being pay-walled is bullshit, and the prices of textbooks is outrageous.
I really really wanted to like Foster's Ossa but it is, to my dismay, unusable for an autodidact, or even an seasoned Latinist. Perhaps a master teacher who was one of Reginald's disciples could use it. So disappointing.
sapiens es supra annos tuos.
The ideas to word ratio is too low. So despite a huge interest about this topic, it’s impossible to hear those videos … You should try to convey the same ideas in 6 minutes and 6 seconds instead of 61m27seconds. That would be a useful decimation.