The Latinum Course is an online multi-level and multi-media Latin course, that has been growing steadily since I started building it  in early 2007.

It is not  the only, nor is it necessarily the best, method for learning Latin - however, I believe the general principle of learning through immersion to be more productive of expertise in a language, than by diverting one's efforts by learning the complex machinery of grammatical terminology - at least in the beginning. That is more 'learning ABOUT Latin' than 'Learning Latin'.

I also think one needs to 'fire on all cylinders' - to make as many neural connections as possible - this must involve reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Few formal Latin courses spend much time on the latter two, which, to my mind, are the most important of the four, especially for a beginner. Also, classroom based language courses simply cannot provide the intensive exposure needed, and the hours of tuition required, to master a language quickly.

Why did I make Latinum? I made the course, because I could find no free modern-language type course online for learning Classical Latin to an advanced level. I  wanted  to provide a course that students, or those without financial means, could access. I also wanted a course for myself, and couldn't find one.

The course - and the site - is now, admittedly,  a bit complex, and will take you some time to find your way around ; I have worked on it almost every day since 2007, and have put many hundreds of hours of my free time into building it up.
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If you are a complete beginner, then the following materials will be useful:

1.The Adler audio course (lesson 1-20 here)
2. Vocabulary Building.
3. The Orbis Sensualim Pictus of Comenius (Audio in Latin and google book editions with various languages), and with a Latin-English audio version also available.
4. The readers on Tar Heel Reader
5. The Rudimenta on YouTube - basic introductory grammar.
6. Comenius' Vestibulum in Latin and English Audio.



If you are intermediate or advanced, Adler and Comenius will still be useful. Even if you have formally studied Latin before, it is unlikely you will have developed the range of vocabulary dealt with by Comenius.

In addition, you might want to listen to the Fabulae Faciles, Dialogues, and read booklets on the Tarheel Reader site, and build your vocabulary., and listen to various Latin-English audio files, such as the important series of colloquia by Corderius, also available in Latin-English, and Latin only versions.

If you still are more advanced, then original texts in Latin may be of interest, along with Adler, and Comenius' Grammatica Januae Linguarum. Adler introduces many fine points of grammar not covered in standard modern textbooks. Vocabulary building might also be useful for you.


About Adler's text:

The introductory textbook, by George Adler, teaches Latin via conversational, colloquial Latin. The Adler course will take you around 3 - 5 years to finish, maybe faster if you really work at it.

You can read a review of this textbook here.
You can buy the textbook here
You can buy the answer book (Latin Dictata) here.

The goal of this course is to give you fluency in reading and listening to Latin, which will eventually lead to skill in writing and speaking.

The main textbook used by the podcast, is George Adler's " A Practical Grammar of the Latin Language for Speaking and Writing Latin", one of the most comprehensive textbooks for learning  Latin ever written - and possibly one of the most advanced and practical Latin textbooks ever written. The approach of this textbook is conversational Latin, so the bulk of the examples are short question and answer sequences. The goal is proficiency. As the book advances, a complete old-fashioned formal Latin Syntax, using thousands of examples from Classical texts, is introduced. 

The Latinum Course is founded on the idea that language learning needs to be fun, as stress free as possible, and IMMERSIVE. You need to eat, sleep and breathe a language in order to master it. Where possible, you need to use it and interact with it as much as you can.

 Latinum gives you the tools to do this, offering the Adler Course, in addition to a wealth of vital subsidiary materials:
* Comenius material
* Fabulae Faciles - stories read in simple Latin.
* Colloquia, or Latin Dialogues.
* Elementary Illustrated Readers on Tarheelreader.org
* Videos on YouTube
*A   'Classified Vocabulary' - a unique  audio  resource
* A Visual Vocabulary (on Schola in the Photolexicon, with over 3 000 images)


HOW DO I USE THE COURSE?

This course demands an extensive amount of exposure - i.e. TIME - if you are as serious about being fluent in Latin as a Renaissance Scholar was, you will need 2 - 4 hours minimum per day, more if you can manage it, for a period of 3 - 5 years. Try to give yourself entire days of Latin, if you can manage it. Go to sleep with the Latin playing, and wake up with it. Walk with it. Wash the dishes with it. Go to the gym with it. You get the idea.....Learning Latin is not hard, but it takes dedication.

It is essentially up to you how you structure your learning - but what is important with language learnng, is quantity. You need to get as much Latin through your head every day as you can manage.

You may possibly also find it useful to engage in the following activities to be successful quickly using this course material.

1. Writing and transcription of the Latin in each chapter: Read each Latin sentence aloud. Write it down slowly and neatly, repeating each word aloud as you do this. Read the completed sentence out loud a second time.
2. Listening to the chapter's grammar section, both before and after you have done this.
   
3. Reading and listening to recorded books in Latin.
   
4. Grammatical study and practice.
5. Shadowing = listening to the recorded material and repeating it out loud as soon as you hear it - speaking 'over the voice' you are listening to. Doing this while walking or moving about is good. It will be hard to do in the beginning.
   

 
There is a grave problem approaching - a looming shortage of Latin teachers across the world, as Latin is increasing in popularity, while most Latin teachers are "of a certain age". Even now, many schools cannot find teachers, and the problem will only get worse. So, in 3 or 5 years time, if you complete this course with due diligence, and can open your mouth and speak Latin and write it, and read it, you should be able to land a job teaching Latin. Actually, the sad reality is that very few Latin teachers at secondary and tertiary level can actually speak Latin at all, most cannot write in the language either, so you'll probably have a higher level of fluency than just about any Latin teacher you encounter, if you complete this course. The Latinum podcast is in part trying to address this astonishing situation.

WHERE CAN I PURCHASE THE TEXTBOOK?

Note: Latinum makes no money from textbook sales.

You can buy the textbook here
You can buy the answer book (Latin Dictata) here.

New: Riddle's English-Latin dictionary is now available as a reprint, either as a single volume hardcover, or two softcovers. I have an original of this dictionary, and it is wonderful. Many thanks to Yaakov at public domain reprints.


HOW DO I NAVIGATE THE SITE?


HOW DO I DOWNLOAD ALL THE 1000+ EPISODES AT ONCE? (Yes, there are over 1000 episodes)


HOW ARE THE ADLER LESSONS STRUCTURED?

Open up the archive week that holds the first Adler lessons, and begin from lesson one. Then work your way through the Adler lessons in order. You might want to read the chapter in the textbook, before you listen to the lesson for that chapter. In the first lessons I read very slowly, and greatly exaggerate the length of the long vowels, to help you learn correct quantity. Gradually, as the course progresses, my pace quickens.

If you are already a fluent reader, then you may find Adler of interest to get you up to speed on spoken Latin, and of more specific interest, our various readings from classical texts. If you are still 'hunting for the verb', the Adler course will cure of this, and give you a more natural way of accessing the language.

Even if you know a lot of Latin, Adler's discussions of Latin grammar are very comprehensive. 



VOCABULARY LEARNING WITH LATINUM

Latinum offers a unique audio vocabulary learning resource, with the potential to add tens of thousands of words to your vocabulary. These are based on Walter Ripman's little known, but very useful, Classified Latin Vocabulary.

We also offer vocab flashcard movies on our You Tube site - these are geared towards conversational Latin.

The vocabulary building  files need to be listened to many times - they are quite stressful to listen to intially, and the material runs by, seemingly too fast to catch - however, each time you listen, you will grab more and more words, and, eventually, the files will begin to sound too slow. Great care is taken with quantity in reading these files, so you will learn correct quantity at the same time as you learn your vocabulary.

There are tens of thousands of words in our classified vocabulary, (i.e. words are grouped by topic)  and even very advanced students can benefit from studying these sounds files. The Classified Vocabulary is geared towards Classical texts.

In addition, we offer specialised GCSE Latin Vocabulary and a section called 'Latin Suffixes', which some users have found useful.

Download the two Adler textbooks, the main book, and the key, from google books.  There are links to these on the FAQ below, and new links have been posted on the Latinum website.
The lessons follow the chapter numbers in the textbook. The Dictata follow the exercise numbers in the textbook.
The recorded lessons from the book do NOT start with chapter one, but with chapter two, as the first chapter is about a type of pronunciation I'm not using.
Although you download all the episodes at once from itunes, you can listen to each episode individually. You may need to update your  JAVA to download the sound files from the Latinum website.
 The Adler lessons are accessed from the links on right hand column of the main webpage. If you have a slow internet connection, you may find the pages take a long time to load. 

Adler calls the  chapters in the main textbook by the name of Pensum.
The English exercises in the main textbook, which go along with each chapter, are simply called exercises.
The Latin translations of these exercises, which are found in the smaller "Key to the Grammar", are called Dictata. 

Yes, Adler's textbook is very thorough, and covers the full range of Latin Grammar. Once you have completed the course, you should be able to read any Latin text with ease, with only the need for a dictionary for new vocabulary.

The section called  'Learn from the Masters' is useful for beginners.  It is a good idea to start to memorise Latin poetry and short examples of masterful prose, even before you fully understand the material, as this gives your brain a store of embedded grammatical patterns. Also, if someone asks you to speak some Latin, you will have something impressive ready to recite. Memorising Latin poetry is the easiest way to get to grips with it. Studying the complex rules for reading it correctly is tedious. So much easier to simply listen, and learn how to read it well by example. The Fabulae Faciles are useful for beginners as well.

Almost all the Latin you will find on the podcast is in Restored Classical Pronunciation. This is a reconstruction of how Latin was spoken on the Palatine Hill, Rome, at the time of the Caesars. In the working class areas of Rome a different accent prevailed, and outside Rome, the rustic and provincial accents would have been different yet again. The evidence we have for this type of Latin is discussed here.  Regarding my pronunciation, the following points should be noted: I have made the decision to use the tonal accents.

I also frequently use the informal hicce, haecce, hocce, hujusce, etc when saying hic  haec hoc and even hujus. I follow Allen's 'Vox Latina'  by doubling the final consonant of hic and hoc before a word beginning with a vowel, e.g. hic est becomes hic cest. This is the correct classical pronunciation of hic [hicc], which has a short vowel.

I have also chosen a slightly ante-classical pronunciation of cui, and render it according to its earlier spelling, quoi in lessons prior to lesson 51. After lesson 51, you will find I have adopted the pronunciation recommended by Sturtevant, where the word is pronounced more or less as it is spelled, with a decending grave accent.

Yes, you certainly can help -  If your Latin is improving because of your use of the lessons, write about it online. Tell your friends, and your teachers about the site. The more links a site has to other sites, the higher up the list it goes on search engines such as the great Google, and the easier it gets for users to find the site.  Any and all web exposure is good, even if you only provide a simple link, or even simply mention the podcast by name without a link.

Also, when you next visit iTunes, please remember to log in and give Latinum a rating. Simply search the store for 'latinum'.

Yes. Each lesson does have a grammar part, (Part A) but you can advance quite well by listening to part B and part C of each lesson, while avoiding the part A sections, which focus on grammar. You will never learn to speak Latin from learning grammar alone. Rather, you need to listen to Latin, and interact with it as much as possible, and try to write it. Participation in Schola, or a group like it, is very important if you are ever to truly command the language as a fluent speaker and writer.
The original methodology of Ollendorff, which Adler uses,  had almost no grammar, only lots and lots of sample sentences, which slowly built up grammatical knowledge intuitively. Adler added the grammar sections into the text, giving lots of illustrative examples. If you plan to approach the lessons in a 'grammar free' way, then  you will need to become very familiar with the sample sentences. 
If you are  a primary school student, you might find the grammar parts too difficult - so just ignore them, and get on with learning the model sentences in part B and C of each Chapter. Once you notice that you have the language well and truly under your belt, so that it starts to feel natural to you, you should go back, and study the grammar sections. You might also find my notes for learning declensions and adjectives are useful.

The Latinum Podcast is published by Evan Millner (Artium Baccalaureus, (Cantuar)  et Artium Magister, (in Collegio Judaeorum Londinensi) , who lives in London, UK.  Evan also produced the IMAGINUM VOCABULARIUM LATINUM ( now incorporated into the photographiae section of Schola) and founded the SCHOLA Latin language social networking site, the only site of its kind online.

You are encouraged to write Latin as well, by joining and actively contributing to SCHOLA. No-one will comment on your grammar at Schola unless you ask for comments. The idea is to produce Latin, errors (hopefully not too many!) and all. Only through writing and speaking the language will you progress rapidly, and get total command of it.  If you are using the Latinum podcast, then please do join Schola, even if you're not ready to write yet. If nothing else, you will learn an enormous amount of vocabulary from the resource of labelled photographs available on Schola.

   Evan is always happy to hear from users, so do drop a line.