Some of your readers might be interested in picking up a bit of colloquial conversational Latin.
The Latinum podcast offers a unique, free, course in conversational Classical Latin.This course has the complete Adler text online in audio, formatted so that it can be used independently of the textbook. Each lesson ( of which there are 96) is composed of several episodes comprising:
a. grammar
b. English-Latin conversational dialogue (question and answer)
c. Repetition of the same short dialogues in Latin only, first with
pauses, then again more quickly.
There are already thousands of regular users of the lessons, located all over the world. The clickable map on Latinum's home page gives an insight into where in the world people are studying and listening to Living Latin.
If you cannot attend an actual Latin class, (and even if you can) then Latinum's lessons, and extensive vocabulary learning resources, classical text readings, etc, will be an invaluable resource.
Many established Latin programmes, including schools and universities, are also now directing their students to it.
With over 3,700,000 lessons downloaded to date, this is the largest single Latin programme available.
http://latinum.mypodcast.com
Thursday 26 March 2009
Tuesday 24 March 2009
Learn to speak Latin
Latinum's Latin Language Course is comprehensive.
About Latin
RRP: £00.00
Our Price: £00.00 - it is free!
Where does Latin come from?
Latin has been in existence for some 2500 years. Latin is an Italic-Indo European language, the ancestor of modern Romance languages which was originally spoken as a local dialect in a small village on the Tiber river in Italy. It spread throughout the Mediterranean world with the expansion of the Roman empire. It was used throughout Europe as a scholar's language, until the 1700's.
Latinum's Latin Course Details
This is an excitingly different language learning series. Latinum provides what is most important in language learning - exposure to a huge number of variations on simple sentence patterns.
Latinum is popular, with millions of lessons having been downloaded.
The course, while aimed at adults, can be used effectively by children as well. As you advance, the amount of materials available increase, including stories and songs in Latin.
Customer Testimonials
"This is the best course I found on the internet. I use MP3 to learn a lot and don't try to catch anything while listening in the background. I listen to the course in the car and remember automatically, almost without effort. That's just how the brain works, I think, at least mine! You speak very clearly and pronounce very well - it's easy to follow."
"I really appreciate your podcast. It definitely helped me prepare for a spoken Latin seminar I went to at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.
Most of the attendees were teachers and professors. There was also a classics graduate student who attended. There were two days of preparation sessions which consisted of about 6 hours of classes each day. Then 7 days of the conference with about 4 hours of classes and an outing each day. We went to places like museums, an aquarium, a zoo, parks, and on a hike in the mountains. It was really fun and I learned a lot.
I have taken less than two years of Latin but I was able to understand what was going on as well as the graduate student who has much more experience with Latin than I do.
I believe that was because I spent a lot of time listening to your Latin podcast and the graduate student's experience was only with reading Latin.
I really believe that listening and speaking are very important in learning a language.
"
Tuesday 17 March 2009
Saturday 14 March 2009
Sunday 8 March 2009
Sunday 1 March 2009
Latin Immersion
Latin Immersion
The other day, in a comment at Aspiring Polyglot, Unzum of SoYouWantToLearnALanguage, noted some under-appreciated podcasts. One of them was the Latinum podcast. I'd seen this podcast listed at Unzum's site before, but hadn't gone to visit.
What a wealth of stuff! The core of the Latinum podcasts is an audio version of a Latin textbook by Adler designed to teach conversational Latin. In addition, there are Latin stories, poems, etc. Yes, the site can be a bit tricky to navigate, and mypodcast.com can run a little slow sometimes. But it's worth the trouble for the gems to be found.
The creator of Latinum says you need 2 hours a day for 3 years - at a minimum! - to become fluent in Latin. That could be a bit discouraging unless there is some really important long term reason for you to speak Latin fluently. Of course, there is one reason to speak Latin fluently - so that you can read the classics with a Roman ear. Learning enough Latin to decipher Ovid and Vergil may open you up to the greatness of their craft and the versatility of Latin, but it won't move you. It's more like understanding the humor of a joke after it's been explained to you. You may enjoy it and even retell it for its cleverness, but your experience of it won't include the shock of spontaneous discovery.
One of the features of the podcasts is lessons where Latin phrases are introduced interspersed with either French or German translation. It's a bit odd, but a nice brushup for a polyglot. What's best, however, is that this program, by extended listening, causes Latin to seep into your brain. The first lesson includes a lot of question forms. While I've looked at Latin off and on for years, I never really got the hang of things like tacking a "ne" on the verb to form a question. After 45 minutes listening, the "habesne"s and "estne"s come almost as easily as tossing est-ce que onto the front of a question in French.
If you're serious about knowing Latin, not just knowing about it, be sure to check this out.
What a wealth of stuff! The core of the Latinum podcasts is an audio version of a Latin textbook by Adler designed to teach conversational Latin. In addition, there are Latin stories, poems, etc. Yes, the site can be a bit tricky to navigate, and mypodcast.com can run a little slow sometimes. But it's worth the trouble for the gems to be found.
The creator of Latinum says you need 2 hours a day for 3 years - at a minimum! - to become fluent in Latin. That could be a bit discouraging unless there is some really important long term reason for you to speak Latin fluently. Of course, there is one reason to speak Latin fluently - so that you can read the classics with a Roman ear. Learning enough Latin to decipher Ovid and Vergil may open you up to the greatness of their craft and the versatility of Latin, but it won't move you. It's more like understanding the humor of a joke after it's been explained to you. You may enjoy it and even retell it for its cleverness, but your experience of it won't include the shock of spontaneous discovery.
One of the features of the podcasts is lessons where Latin phrases are introduced interspersed with either French or German translation. It's a bit odd, but a nice brushup for a polyglot. What's best, however, is that this program, by extended listening, causes Latin to seep into your brain. The first lesson includes a lot of question forms. While I've looked at Latin off and on for years, I never really got the hang of things like tacking a "ne" on the verb to form a question. After 45 minutes listening, the "habesne"s and "estne"s come almost as easily as tossing est-ce que onto the front of a question in French.
If you're serious about knowing Latin, not just knowing about it, be sure to check this out.
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