LATINUM, the name of the Latin language learning podcast offered
on mypodcast.com
. The Free Online Language Course and Repository of Audio Files.
FAQ
I AM NEW TO LATIN, WHERE DO I START?
I would listen to the first
beginners lessons, which are the oldest
episodes on the podcast. There are four lessons. Don't spend
time on these, just listen to them once - they give you a general idea
of how Latin works as a language.
Then, open up the archive week that holds the first Adler lessons, and
begin from these
lessons.Then
work your way through the Adler lessons in order. I am also working on
a vocabulary
learning website, which uses images and words only.This is, like
the
podcast, a work in progress. You might also benefit from joining the User Network.
I AM A MORE ADVANCED STUDENT, WHAT IS THERE FOR ME ON LATINUM?
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. These have been
contributed from a variety of Academic sources - mostly lecturers and
grad students with an interest in spoken Latin using versions of the
restored Classical Pronunciation. There is a general text
collection, a reasonably large corpus of Horace,
and a growing collection of Catullus.
Here you will also find the recordings from SORGLL, available in
downloadable mp3 format. There is also some advanced miscellaneous
material in the Entertainment
section, such as the Harvard Salutatory Address, &c. You might
also find the vocabulary
building files useful.
I STILL CAN'T FIND THE ADLER LESSONS, HELP!
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.
WHAT ABOUT PENSUM AND DICTATA?
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.
HOW DO I DOWNLOAD ALL THE EPISODES AT ONCE?
You can do this by using itunes. The podcast is available as a free
download via itunes. Search for 'latinum'. I'm not sure they let you
download all the lessons, you might have to return to
the mypodcast website and download the first 20 or so manually
from the archive for week 24.
IS THE PODCAST FREE?
The podcast is free, but you are kindly encouraged to send a donation
that reflects how useful you think the podcast has been for you. :)
There are a couple of yellow bottons for donations directly to me via
PayPal on the
bottom right on the main podcast page. So far I have received a
couple of hundred pounds, which at least have covered the cost of my
microphone and partly reimbursed the computer upgrade that I had to
make so that I could record sound files of reasonable quality. Many
thanks for those of you who have sent donations, and special thanks for
the £100 pound donation I received recently.
LATINUM DONORS 2007 - 2008
Matthew Hart
Anonymous - M.T. - £40
Anonymous E.R. - £10
Anonymous -A.R. - £10
Anonymous A.M. - £100
Anonymous S.M. £10
Adam King £20
Anonymous A.M. £10
HOW ARE THE ADLER LESSONS STRUCTURED?
Each Adler lesson starts with a grammar discussion.(Part A) Then the
examples
are given in English and Latin. (Part B) They are repeated again
in Latin only. (Part C)
Finally, an episode with only questions in Latin, which you are
expected to answer in any possible way, is given. The intention is to
get you speaking in Latin. Not all episodes have this question episode
yet.
DOES ADLER COVER ALL OF LATIN GRAMMAR?
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.
CAN I BUY A HARDCOPY OF THE ADLER TEXTBOOK?
Used copies of the textbook are very (very very) rare. Even I have not
been able to find one, and believe you me, I've looked hard. You can,
however, download
the pdf from google books.
You can then save it to a CD or put it on a pen drive, and take it down
to a THESIS BINDER, or printer, who will print it up for you, and bind
it. My copy was made like this, and it has a fine red cloth binding
with gold lettering on the spine. There is also a key to the
exercises in Adler's textbook.
WHAT ELSE IS ON THE WEBSITE FOR BEGINNERS?
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.
WHAT PRONUNCIATION OF LATIN IS USED ON THE PODCAST?
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.
One note: Some material on the podcast does not use classical
pronunciation, such as the Latin vocabulary in the verses by Coleridge,
which use a variant of the old English pronunciation of Latin. So, if
you are using Coleridge's poems to help with vocabulary, keep in mind
the sound of the words are not correct by classical standards..
IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO TO HELP LATINUM?
Yes, you certainly can help - please, if you are an Itunes user, log
into the itunes store, search for latinum, and please write a short
review on the itunes site -
and if you have a page on facebook or
wherever, or a blog, or some other web presence, such a forum you
visit, then writing a short paragraph about the podcast, and your
experience of it, with a link to
it, will be very helpful. The more links a site has to other sites,the
higher up the list it goes on search engines such as the great Google.
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. You could also
visit delicious
and "save" the Latinum Podcast, helping it rise up the ranks on
delicious. If you have some time, you might want to assist with the Latinum Wiki.
I AM TERRIBLE AT GRAMMAR, CAN I STILL LEARN LATIN?
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.
IS THERE ANYTHING ON LATINUM TO HELP WITH VOCABULARY LEARNING?
Yes, Latinum has a section dedicated to vocabulary learning. These are
the sections called "Vocabulary Building" and "Latin Suffixes".
In the vocabulary building section are very useful audio files where
the words are arranged by broad subject matter (semantic fields) for
example, you will find words and short phrases about the body in one
section, words and short phrases connected to homes and houses in
another, and so on. There will be 50 of these sections when this
vocabulary is completed. This unique system reduces the vocabulary to
manageable chunks, and helps with memorisation. If you listen to these
over and over, you will be surprised at how much vocabulary you pick
up. The advantage of learning vocabulary by listening, is that you
learn the quantity of the words at the same time. If you apply yourself
to learning these words, you will have a formidable Latin vocabulary of
tens of thousands of words.
Sarah Coleridge's poems also offer some light relief as a way of
aquiring some vocabulary, but these do not use Restored Classical
pronunciation. I will re-record them one day with better pronunciation
of Latin, although they won't rhyme so nicely then.....
WHO PRODUCES THE LATINUM PODCAST?
The Latinum Podcast is published by Evan Millner, who lives in
London, UK. Evan also produces the IMAGINUM VOCABULARIUM LATINUM
and the SCHOLA website.
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.
The Imaginum Vocabularium contains two main sources of info for
vocabulary building - an extensive photographic collection, and also a
version of Comenius' Orbis Sensualium Pictus, which is excellent for
vocabulary revision once you have learned the words using the
photographs. The Comenius entries are clearly labelled.
Evan estimates that it will take about another
year to complete the Adler lessons, after which he has plans to record
a series of easy Latin stories for beginners, and advanced texts. Evan
is always happy to hear from
users, so do drop a line.
Latinum Journal
On
Vowel Quantity
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