LINGUA LATINA

In December 2015 I decided to start learning Latin and have studied almost daily since. 

Why would I want to do that?

Twenty years ago I would probably have had the same feelings towards Latin as most : a dead language reeking of posh schools and draconian teaching methods.

Some years ago I became fascinated with Roman history and read my way through the original sources (in English translation), a journey of discovery that branched out into poetry, plays and other forms of literature I'd previously eschewed.

I found that this material wasn't the dull, dry fare most people imagine it to be. 

The logical step was therefore to learn Latin and read these works in the original. But how to do this? Three years ago I'd tried it with the most popular textbook out there, Wheelock's Latin. I gave up after a few weeks. Why?

This textbook contains forty units each of which contains an explanation of a grammatical point with accompanying rules to be memorised, then a list of new vocabulary, likewise to be committed to memory, then some sentences to be translated from and into Latin. Finally, right at the end, a small reading passage of about six lines.

As a professional teacher of language, I realised that this technique goes against all pedagogical theory. It encourages translation, rather than reading. The two are completely different things. When we read naturally we don't analyse and label each word according to a paradigm ("Ah, that's a third person active subjunctive..."), we use context and intuition to extract meaning. When we read naturally in a foreign language we don't translate it in our heads as we go, we understand it directly without interference from our mother tongue.

I remember when I was eighteen and wanted to learn German one summer. I bought an old-fashioned textbook which started out by stating that the prospective learner had to memorize declensions before proceeding. My instincts balked at this and I gave up. Five or six years later, and I could speak fairly fluent German, a skill I acquired by becoming saturated with the language and mimicking the patterns I was hearing. I never did memorize those declensions - I didn’t need to. 

So how can we apply this natural approach to Latin? The answer is, extensive reading. The reverse of Wheelock. 

Enter Hans Ørberg's 'Lingua Latina' series. These two volumes take you from a complete beginner through to an intermediate level where you begin to tackle Latin authors, all without recourse to a word of English. How does it work?

Each unit presents you with an engaging reading passage of six to ten pages in length. In the margins are pictures and helpful notes in Latin. After that comes the grammatical point, again explained solely in Latin. Then there are some comprehension questions, of course in Latin. Even the opening unit, which assumes no prior knowledge of the language, follows this form. You simply read the text repeatedly until it gels and you can comprehend it naturally as you would a text in your mother tongue.

It might sound scary, but the method works brilliantly, and appeals to the idea of ‘learning by doing.’ How do you learn to ride a bicycle? You don’t peruse blueprints detailing the construction of the bicycle, or commit to memory the physics equations behind the principals of converting energy into movement. You get on the bike and ride it. Slowly and carefully at first, but with repeated practice it becomes second nature. And so it is with the natural method of learning a language.

However, because you can circumvent the tedium of memorizing abstract tables of grammatical endings, it doesn’t mean that this method is easy. It takes time, determination and will power. You need to read a little every day. The key is extensive reading - the more you read, the quicker the patterns become etched into your brain. You only resort to the dictionary when you can’t get a word’s meaning from the context, and only resort to an analytical approach when a tricky sentence bogs you down. 

It’s truly magical when it all comes together and you find yourself effortlessly moving across the page, fully comprehending the material.

For learning Latin, ‘Lingua Latina’ is without a doubt, the way to go. My only regret is that I didn’t discover it earlier.