Friday

London Latin Course

Latinum, the home of the Adler Latin audio course, moved its extensive audio catalogue to Patreon on the 14th of April 2017.


Firstly - why Patreon? 

Patreon allows me to offer you, for a small monthly subscription (which you are not locked in to - you can cancel at any time), access my entire back catalogue of course material.

Think this is expensive? Check out my Price Comparison page.

What do you get if you become a patron (subscriber) of Latinum?
Every patron (subscriber) can  access and stream hundreds of hours of quality Latin audiobooks and other audio resources from the streaming catalogue, for a very low monthly subscription. 

Higher reward tier patrons are offered an incredible deal - the ability to download a large catalogue of audiobooks as zip files.     

Please visit the main website of LATINUM at
http://latinum.org.uk

The London Latin Course is finally in production.

I am publishing this new intensive Latin course as an audio- visual only course released on YouTube.

Stream or Download this on Patreon

33 comments:

  1. This is really great. I am beginning to get a feel for the language instead of translating it.
    It think it probably works better without the visual. With the audio visual I found myself looking away from the screen often.

    Lesson 40 ibis, ibo probably better to say "will go".
    You back in your chrysalis again :-)
    Plus ultra Jim

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  2. This is really great. I am beginning to get a feel for the language instead of translating it.
    It think it probably works better without the visual. With the audio visual I found myself looking away from the screen often.

    You back in your chrysalis again :-)
    Plus ultra Jim

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  3. Hi Jim - I've made the small adjustment to steps 40 and 47 you suggested - better to make the grammar explicit in the English - something I am trying to do as much as possible. New edition is being uploaded today.

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  4. Really enjoying the course, the steps are short and manageable and they introduce words and sentences steadily.
    mark

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    Replies
    1. Hi Mark,
      Pleased you are enjoying it. I am trying hard to make sure that progress is always seamless, so the process of acquiring the language seems relatively effortless.

      Delete
  5. Really enjoyed listening to the new Latin course, it felt much more natural an approach than other methods.
    New vocabulary and grammar is set out logically, so it is easy to follow. Concepts of noun cases and gender are explained naturally and gradually. Soon you start constructing simple sentences, and then conversations.
    It's great way of becoming familiar with the fundamentals of grammar and syntax.

    I think at some point visual reinforcement will be helpful- maybe a simple chart of the five declensions and cases could be included.

    Great work ! ,
    Nate

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    Replies
    1. Hello Nate,
      There is an accompanying workbook and teacher's manual. It is taking time to edit ( All those pesky formatting issues). When it is ready, I will make the first 50 steps available as a pdf.

      Delete
  6. It would be helpful to have the colloguia avaliabe separately. (The excercises are very repetitive, so there is really no need to go back and repeat them, because they will be repeated in the next exercise (this is good).
    It is good that the colloquia are in the lesson, but it would also be helpful to able to practice several of them when walking etc. Jim

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  7. Step 44 and 45
    Mark: "Salvete omnes"
    Pointing at "him" "Salvete et vos"
    Yes many people are speaking, but they are all speaking to one person. So they all say (omnes dicunt) "Salve et tu"?

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  8. Hi, The Narrator is speaking ( in my mind, when I wrote this,on behalf of the small company of actors in this mini-play),and the audience are replying to everyone on stage.

    If it were as you describe it, and they , conceivably, were replying to the Narrator alone, they would say salve et tu. Then indeed the reply would be in the singular. As the reply is in the plural, many people are being addressed.
    ;)

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    Replies
    1. So does mean "Greet" so "You also greet him!"? instead of "Salvete"="Good Day"=hi etc?

      Delete
    2. Variations on a colloquia is a really cool idea. It works realy well. I didn't even notice that you weren't translating every phrase.

      These comments aren't for keeping, I'm just trying to give feed back as I go along. So you know if a learner could misunderstand what's going on :-)Jim

      Delete
  9. "Salve" means something along the lines of "I hope you are well", or "God Save You" or some such greeting - it is hard to translate literally. 'Greetings' or 'Hello' are adequate translations.
    The reply "Salve et tu" is idiomatic. I assume the word 'quoque'(also) is understood, but not said, as it is found in a longer form of reply. "Tu quoque Salve". The reply can also be "Et tu", or "Tu quoque", or simply, "Salve". Salvete is plural.

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  10. I just got the workbook and teacher's manual. It is very helpful to see the words in print, and it is also set up so you read the narrator's question, and then respond to them. Thank, keep up the good work :-)
    Jim65

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  11. Dear Evan,

    Firstly I would like to say thank you for all of the effort that you put into your courses - I have found them really useful as I am currently in my second year of a Classics degree having transferred from Ancient History where I did my first year of Latin and have managed to get a level equivalent to those who have had 7 or more years of Latin but I have found that I am not reading Latin fluently but rather piecing together grammatical constructions that I have learned and attempting to apply them to the Latin which I find frustrating and so I am really grateful for the potential to gain spoken fluency in the language - especially as I wish to teach the language in the future.

    I have followed along with Comenius' Vestibulum and the Orbis Sensualium Pictis and was using Adler as my grammatical backup as suggested. Would you recommend using your new course instead of Adler in this respect?

    I was also wondering how long it will be for the complete course to be released.

    The other thing I was wondering is where to get hold of some of the Renaissance texts that you read from on your YouTube Channel, I have managed to find some of them on google books but some of the others I have found elusive.

    Sorry for so many questions.

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  12. The problem you are having with Latin is a biological problem - recent MRI studies have shown that essentially English speakers need to grow new neural networks to process inflected language patterns, which are processed in a different area of the brain. This is why Latin usually takes time to learn.
    This process can be speeded up immensely by increasing the amount of input - reading and listening.
    I would keep on with Adler if you already have some background. I still listen to my Adler recordings, as his syntax is very thorough,and no other textbook provides enough comprehensible input to build the structure of the language so that it can become intuitive.

    The new course will be vastly superior......but it does begin right at the beginning, and the pace is slower than Adler's. I view the course
    somewhat like a book of musical scales, but for language. I am working on it steadily.....but it will be a very large text by the time it is
    finished - I think it will take me a year or two to complete, at the current rate of progress - I am working pretty steadily on it.

    If there is a particular text you cannot find, simply email me, or use the contact form at latinum.org.uk and I will send you a link. Most will be at either Archive.org, Google,
    Europeana,or the Philological Museum.

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  13. Salve Evan,

    I am eager to continue in the new course, and to get the textbook.
    I'll be interested to see how you use verbal nouns to introduce nouns primarily, and then if you will
    teach participles first or the present indicative conjugations. (I could see exercises using the present
    active participle being useful as an introduction to verbal vocabulary.)

    Tandem, gratias tibi ago propter omnia utilissima dictata!

    I do appreciate your work.

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  14. I have quite a bit of experience with Latin and read it fluently (I'm a Latin teacher), but speaking... Your Adler recording has helped immensely with Latin, as I don't have to think as much while speaking. To be more specific, saying 'estne tibi penna' and 'pennam habeo' all those hundreds of times helped me 'feel' the concept more, though I already understood it perfectly --- and so helped me mis-speak less frequently. Thanks, and good luck with this!

    E.

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  15. Hello E.
    Just got your comment in my inbox. You've hit on something here - the difference between knowing 'about' something, and knowing it. Most students of traditional Latin courses know an awful lot 'about' Latin. But they still have to hunt for the verb to translate a sentence, or think really hard before opening their mouths to speak a word of the language. Their reading speeds are painfully slow. My method teaches grammar in great detail - at the same time as developing intuitive knowledge. It is an essentially oral method - although much progress can be made by writing out the exercises as well.

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  16. It is really important to write out the responses in the student's workbook. Now I see that I misunderstood some things. And very helpful notes in the teachers material.
    Jim65

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  17. I suspect you have a number of subscribers with backgrounds similar to mine... having considerable background in passive Latin, but with essentially zero exposure to the active type. Such people may not remember all of the declensions and conjugations, but that is actually the smallest challenge. For us, I suspect the principal challenges are threefold:

    - learning to hear words which we had previously only read
    - filling in the blanks of everyday vocabulary which was either missing from our schooling or long since forgotten
    - making our substantial passive vocabulary active

    Certainly no Latin teacher of mine every taught me terms like "it'ast" or even "sic etiam". Nor as I recall did we get much exposure to the type of descriptive terms used in neolatin phraseology, for example terms like "ruga", "villus" used in medical descriptions. In my case I suppose I have a certain advantage being a native speaker of both Italian and the more highly inflected German, but still, I would guess there are a lot of people out there at a similar level.

    Thanks for everything you have made available.
    R.

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  18. Your Serial and Oral course is just what I've been looking for, Evan, and I'm looking forward to more in the future. I'm also working through Adler to really drum in Latin.

    A couple of questions if you have the time -

    i) Adler p.20 D. "....when the substantive is a monosyllable, the adjective always comes last."
    But in the key to Exercise 8 we are given: "Num ego bonum Francogalli mel habeo?"; am I missing something ?

    ii) Have you any plans to revive the Ancient Greek course ? The nearest to your Serial and Oral method which I've found is Le Grec Ancien from Assimil, but it doesn't have the same sort of structured repetition, and I don't speak French.

    Captain Thunderbolt.

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  19. Yes....mel bonum Francogalli would be better. I can 'hear' why Adler wrote this though, as Francogalli interposes.
    Bonum mel would sound wrong.
    Mel bonum sounds right.
    Mel Francogalli by itself also sounds better.
    However, bonum Francogalli mel .... strictly speaking, he is playing a bit fast and loose. Few of these rules apply 100% of the time.

    The Ancient Greek course is on my to-do list. I'm afraid the Latin course is taking up all my spare time - writing it, proof reading it ( I hate doing that) and then recording it.

    I don't know of any other course that has as much structured repetition as my course. Perhaps Pimsleur approaches it in methodology, but Manesca's method,developed near the end of the 1700's/ early 1800's , which I am applying here, predates Pimsleur.

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    Replies
    1. I've used Pimsleur for Modern Greek, but I think even their more extended courses only cover the basic basics, and leave you in the lurch just when things start to get interesting.

      Thanks for your help !

      C.T.

      Delete
    2. PS
      I also followed the Michel Thomas Modern Greek course, which might be closer to the Oral & Serial method (it includes clear explanations of grammar). I found the Thomas method a lot better than that of Pimsleur because I had a much better understanding of what I was listening to and speaking.

      Delete
  20. Step 61 de cane

    Cujus canis est hoc?
    Meus canis est (hoc).
    Quod nomen cani est?
    "Jupiter" cani nomen est.

    I thought of the ideas "and the words just came without thinking about the grammar!" That's almost speaking Latin! This is great material. Jim65

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  21. Salve Evan!

    Love the Oral & Serial course - Now you are up to lesson 200 how many lessons do you think the whole course will take - and what level will it ultimately take a student to?

    Also do you have any thoughts on Claude Dessard's old Assimil course as a companion - it has recently been re-recorded by Italians in Restored Classic Latin and, despite being written in a French base looks like a great compliment to you sterling effort.

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  22. Evan, thank you a thousand times over for this. I studied Latin in high school a thousand years ago and am delighted to find an opportunity to learn it again the right way.

    A question: I've been listening to your recordings of Adler, but I'd like to try out the textbook you're working on yourself. If I've gotten up through Adler's lesson 9, where do you think would be a good place to start in your book/recordings?

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  23. The first 100 steps take you approximately to Adler lesson 10, but much other material is introduced along the way....and the structure is much better presented than Adler.
    I am not following Adler exactly, however, and the next sections differ in that I deal extensively with approaches to the nomen verbi, gerund and gerundive...before moving on to the verb in more detail.

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  24. I'm on lesson 170. How are those lessons after 200 coming along :-)
    Jim65

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  25. The verb charts in step 164 are really great. The way most books teach you the subjunctive doesn't work (may, might etc). They are most often just verbs that are joined under the main idea of the sentence. Jim65

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  26. Encouragement
    Evan,
    This is such a great way to learn (or re-learn Latin).
    1. You introduced the Locative and Vocative early, naturally, with no big drama, and you keep using them. (In High School I lost the plot when they finally intorduced these, just more cases).
    2. You introduced aliquis relatively early. In high school I couldn't read the dictionary because I wasn't familiar with aliquis used in the definitions of verbs.
    3. Loquor. You have called the the second from of verbs instead of deponents verbs. That way you are not introducing both new forms and the passive (which isn't used all that much in English).
    4. You introduce new vocabulary so well, and constantly use it in later stages that I usually don't need to make flash cards (I had to for times, heri, cras etc).
    5 And of course the whole verb chart is wonderful. And only using the singular is really helpful too.
    6. And you have introduced the various pronouns, hic, ille, quis, etc and a nice steady pace. And including hic when we decline a new words is really helpful.
    Thank you so much
    Jim65

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  27. Encouragement
    7 Reading, not translating. In the past if I didn't know one word in a sentence, I could not translate that sentence. I was reading Maxy Cornelia chp 22. There are a number of words I don't know, but I knew understood the sentence, and I was pretty sure what the unfamiliar words meant from their context.(Cornelia is pretty easy Latin, it wouldn't work if I didn't know lots of words in the sentence :-)
    Evan you have been helping us to read not translate by the very dialogues, etc which often have words we don't know, but are obvious from the context.
    Jim65

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