Classical Languages - Study Group

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RyanSmallwood
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Re: Classical Languages - Study Group

Postby RyanSmallwood » Wed Oct 13, 2021 2:49 am

einzelne wrote:
I'm sure that I'm not the first one who had this idea. So, can anyone suggest a textbook with such drills?


Not sure if its exactly what you're looking for since there's a good chance you already know about it, but just in case the Adler textbook is probably the most extensive resource for Latin grammar drills similar to the FSI style with lots of simple sentences illustrating different features. Not really interesting or compelling material though.
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Re: Classical Languages - Study Group

Postby guyome » Wed Oct 13, 2021 7:16 am

einzelne wrote:I'm sure that I'm not the first one who had this idea. So, can anyone suggest a textbook with such drills?
I can't think of a textbook that does exactly this but here are two courses that may come quite close (lots of drills with short, similar enough sentences):
- Pecket & Munday, Principia (1949) and Pseudolus noster (1950)
- Crawford, Elementary Latin (1963). You can read about it in my log here and there.




Other than that, there are quite a few books that provide easy, step-by-step texts with a lot of repetition:
- Juanes, Lingua Latin - Moderna Methodus (1964)


- the Chicago Latin Series : Carolus et Maria, Cornelia, A New Latin Primer (1930s)




- Reed, Julia (1923)
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Re: Classical Languages - Study Group

Postby einzelne » Wed Oct 13, 2021 1:16 pm

RyanSmallwood wrote:the Adler textbook is probably the most extensive resource for Latin grammar drills similar to the FSI style with lots of simple sentences illustrating different features. Not really interesting or compelling material though.


Yes, I know about Adler. This is not exactly what I'm looking for. What I had in mind is a short reference material (ideally audio) with all major grammar forms (nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs etc) on the basis of very limited vocabulary.

What I have in mind is extensive reading of simple adaptive texts like LLPSI but also more targeted review of grammar tables which contextualized in short sentences. I found that when I run through such drills, it's easier for me to remember the endings and, when I read texts like LLPSI, I can immediately connect these grammar points with the new words I come while reading.

guyome wrote:I can't think of a textbook that does exactly this but here are two courses that may come quite close


Thank you! I already have some of them but some of them are new. This is not exactly what I'm looking for but it still will be useful for my extensive reading sessions.
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Re: Classical Languages - Study Group

Postby daegga » Wed Oct 13, 2021 7:37 pm

einzelne wrote:Question: has anyone come across some meaningful Latin drills? By meaningful I mean not the usual cramming like (puella, puellae, pulllam, puellae, puellā) but a series super short sentences which run through the whole of declension table. For instance:

N. Puella amica est.
Acc. Puellam video.
G. Labra puellae pulchra sunt.
D. Puellae osculum dō.
Abl. Cum puellā rīdeō.

The same thing can be done with

Apologies for this silly example but you get the idea. I personally find that running through such short mini-stories is quite effective in internalizing case endings. You can add new grammar structures by using this one as a base (introducing, for instance adjectives, adjectives haec or ille, or run it with pronouns: Ea amica est. Eam video. etc.)

Running through such sample sentences by using a limited amount of words is way more effective when you just repeat out loud or write down declension and conjugation tables (I'm looking at you, Prof. Dowling!). Comprehensive input in this case is tricky, since, to make a story at least somewhat interesting, you need to combine lots of grammatical structures even in adapted texts. The strength of the drills showed above is that they target one specific grammar point by adding at the same time some minimal context.

I'm sure that I'm not the first one who had this idea. So, can anyone suggest a textbook with such drills?


Lingua Latina ex efef (e forma - e functione)
Intensivkurs Latinum
Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch
publisher: Klett

DSC_0052min1.png
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Re: Classical Languages - Study Group

Postby IronMike » Thu Oct 14, 2021 12:56 am

Glyphstudy is starting a new iteration of Middle Egyptian, if anyone is interested. Starts 1 November. Anyone going to sign up?

This is an introductory study section in Hieroglyphic ancient Egyptian suitable for complete beginners. We will be using How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs: a Step-by-step Guide to Teach Yourself by Mark Collier and Bill Manley as our textbook. We will spend about 12 months working our way through the book doing every exercise in addition to some additional materials which the moderator will give.

The book concentrates on variations of the offering formula and self-presentation texts found on middle-kingdom funerary stele. Most examples and exercises are from items in the British Museum. You will learn by translating actual ancient texts and not just artificial made-up exercises. The book’s treatment of grammar is limited to these types of texts. And while this section is not a substitute for a more complete grammar study like Hoch or Allen, it is an excellent preparation for those more advanced sections.
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David1917
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Re: Classical Languages - Study Group

Postby David1917 » Thu Oct 14, 2021 2:30 pm

Happy to report that it does look like the last delay of TYS Old Norse, which pushed it back to November of this year, is still on track.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Old-Nor ... 757&sr=8-3

Amazon lists November 19 as the release date and guaranteed pre-order delivery date.
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Re: Classical Languages - Study Group

Postby guyome » Thu Oct 14, 2021 6:39 pm

einzelne wrote:Question: has anyone come across some meaningful Latin drills? (...) The strength of the drills showed above is that they target one specific grammar point by adding at the same time some minimal context.
I looked around and found Bell's Latin Course for the First Year, in three parts by Marchant & Spencer (1902). The drills may not always be in the "right" order (Nom, Acc,...; 1st person, 2nd,...) but they generally try to offer meaningful, easy, and connected sentences in the exercises (a bit clunky at first, of course).

For instance, after six exercises introducing various cases, Exercise VII recaps the whole first declension thus:
Aquil-a est magna.
Aquil-am sagitta vulnerat.
Aquil-ae praeda est columba.
Aquil-ae cara est columba.
Aquil-ā digna est praeda.

Aquil-ae multas columbas vulnerant.
Aquil-ās columbae non amant.
Aquil-ārum patria est magna silva.
Aquil-īs noxiae sunt sagittae.
Aquil-īs plenae sunt insulae.

Further down the way, Exercise XXIX illustrates the past tense of sum:
A Letter to a Friend
Litterae tuae mihi gratae fuerunt.
Ego nuper in Italiā fui. Ubi tu tum eras?
Si tu et amicus tuus in Britanniā fuistis, magnum fuit gaudium tuum.
Sunt et fuerunt et erunt multae historiae Romani populi.
Si nunquam in Italia fuisti, historia Romana memoriā digna est.
Roma antiqua monumentis et templis plena fuit.
In viis fori Romani multae statue fuerunt.
Multa bella perniciosa ornamentis oppidi fuerunt.
In bonā et pulchrā tabernā fuimus.
Multi Britanni et Galli in tabernā fuerunt.
The letter is continued in Exercise XXX, which introduces the pluperfect of sum:
Diu in tabernā Romanā fueramus.
Tum in oppido Pompeiis fuimus.
Mirum fuit oppidum et dignum memoriā.
Ubi fuerant multi incolae, iam muri sine fenestris, sine portis fuerunt.
Incendia Vesuvii oppido perniciosa fuerunt.
In muris oppidi adhuc pulchrae tabellae fuerunt.
Diu in oppido Pompeiis fueramus; tum in insulā Capreis fuimus.
In insulā multa et pulchra templa templa fuerant.
Iam parvae ruinae fuerunt, ubi magna tecta fuerant.
Iam in patriā nostrā sumus et memoria Italiae semper grata erit.

Book II, Exercise IV, introduces 3rd declension nouns ending in -er (using carcer as a model):
The Capitol
Romani carcerem prope Forum aedificaverunt.
In carcere captivos vinculis onerabant.
Carceris vincula dura et severa erant.
Captivi multi in carcere sub terra erant.
Prope Forum et carcerem erat Capitolium.
Praeclarum Iovis templum in Capitolio erat.
Galli quondam Capitolium et aggeres vicinos oppugnabant.
Forte in Capitolio anseres multi deae magnae sacri erant.
Galli aggeres et muros paene expugnaverant.
Anseres forte vigilabant et clangore magno Capitolium servaverunt.

Book III, Exercises VI and VII deal with the present infinitive with a dialogue between children:
Dialogue on the Choice of a Game.
Puer 1. Tempus est ludere. De genere lusus iam consultare possumus.
Puer 2. Ego vestras sententias audire opto.
Puer 3. Ego pila ludere studeo. Ita enim omnes corporis partes exercere poterimus.
Puer 4. Iucundum est certare cursu. Difficile est omnibus placere.
Puer 5. Omnes contendere saltu possumus, sed media aestate currere non potestis.
Puer 6. Non possumus te audire. Tu si consilio vincere non potueris, fraude superare poteris.
Puer 1. Sententiam tuam rogare necesse non est. Semper monere, nunquam parere, potes.
Pueri multi. Nos omnes cursu certare optamus. Necesse erit properare aut certamen finire non poterimus.
Puer 2. Cursu certare paene omnes studemus. Necesse est stadium designare.

Dialogue (continued).
Puer 1. Properare necesse est, si lusum ante tenebras finire studemus.
Puer 2. Necesse est praemia victori dare.
Puer 3. Nonne sine praemiis contendere poteritis ?
Puer 4. Stulti est pro pecunia eertare.
Puer 5. Sapientis est pro gloria modo contendere.
Puer 6. Satis erit victorem corona, honoris causa, ornare.
Puer 7. Ego virtute, non fraude, superare studeo.
Puer 1. Humanum est errare. Stulti est ante proelium gaudere.
Puer 2. Virtutem habere non satis est, sed exercere necesse est.
Puer 3. Necesse erit a me victoriam reportare.
Puer 4. Facile est te arte superare.
Puer 5. Tempus est ad urbem properare. Necesse erit cras certamen finire.
Magister 1. Puerorum est tempus contentione consumere.
Magister 2. Facile est pueros monere, difficile regere.
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einzelne
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Re: Classical Languages - Study Group

Postby einzelne » Thu Oct 14, 2021 9:19 pm

guyome wrote:For instance, after six exercises introducing various cases, Exercise VII recaps the whole first declension thus:


Thank you! It looks like what I was looking for (although I started to compose silly sentences by myself.)

Btw gerardgreco.free.fr is down. Do you happen to know any other websites which mirror its juxta editions?
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Re: Classical Languages - Study Group

Postby Alvarus » Fri Oct 15, 2021 12:55 pm

The Russian philologist Mikhail Gasparov writes somewhere about his experience with Latin and Greek: "I learnt quite early on to read Latin without a dictionary but I can read Greek only with a dictionary". So, even if a trained classicist struggles with Greek, we, pure mortals, should abandon all hopes (or set our goals accordingly).


Ι think one of the most important questions regarding the matter of Ancient Greek is that, for many people, from the start, it is all about reading the authors. Which is praiseworthy and my end as well, but I don't think we can do that by reading the authors alone. Because it was either their mother tongue, or they were for the most part rhetoricians or at least trained in rhetoric, etc, so they were not writing for us, learners. They are in the summit, we are in the base camp. And since there are not intermediate texts (because we want to read, and not actually practice the language), the way in between is a stone wall hundreds of meters high.

So only experts can climb that and many people will despair at the very sight of trying to climb that wall (How do you become an expert when there is no climbing learning options? well...). There are no steps, there is no gentle slope, only difficulties.

This finally leads to a circular argument: since we want to read, we do not care about intermediate things (they would feel fake, an we want the real thing; and we do not care about audios; and, since we only want to read, we do not create them. Also, since we want to read, we do not write about things of our everyday life, which could help us in grasping the grammar and vocabulary. So we get stuck and think it is impossible, and again, that we should only strive to read.

But this hasn't been historically like these and we know people has been able to write and understand and speak in Greek (I am thinking about some humanists). What we lack, actually, is the mental framework which allows us to break ourselves from this and start learning the language in a far more active way. Dialogues? Fables? Audios would be ideal, in order to create the automatisms necessary and, most notably, to help us fix vocabulary and grammar constructions in a way that mere reading or analysis can't do.

In sum: I believe we confuse the ends (reading authors) with the means available (reading, but also other things like practicing actively, using the language for ordinary things which are known to us and thus, easier to grasp.

So this becomes sadly true, but it's more of our mindset, that of the difficulty of the language. The only-reading mindset prevents and has prevented people from writing intermediate textbooks (again, they would feel fake, and so on, but that is in our mind, it is not an ineluctable consequence of the language):
And lower-intermediate level is completely useless (no news to listen to, no podcasts, no easy non-fiction and secondary literature, no undemanding Krimis). So why bother? In case of Ancient Greek, there’s no 5k, 10k runs, only a marathon.


[There are news (at least written) in ancient Greek, in the AKWN (Akropolis World News), updated by a Spanish professor at Saint Andrews, I think.]

Actually now that I think about it, my climbing metaphor is just the same us your marathon metaphor. But what do we have so we can practice? only long texts (marathons). How can we start by making longer and longer runs and more difficult ones? We lack intermediate materials, (the equivalent to the 1k, 2k, 5k, 10, 20k runs, or whatever) with which we can practice in order to get to the marathon.

But do remember the New Testament - it might be slightly different, but much of it is more in the 5-10k range than marathon. Even if you aren't interested in it directly, it's a great first text. Then there's the obvious extra reading in the Italian Athenaze (with recordings from Ranieri), Reading Greek, and Lingua Graeca per se Illustrata.


Yes! I have recently come to the New Testament as a tool for this. Plus, there are recordings on Youtube, although with modern Greek pronuntiation.

I don't see Æsop's fables mentioned very often, but I believe they can be an invaluable resource. They are short (so they can be studied everyday without becoming cumbersome and long texts), they can be easily recorded, they are hundreds, so they may provide a vocabulary of a few thousand words. Also, we know many of them because of the fables from our childhood, and many are very easily to find in translation. I believe these fables are a resource we tend to neglect but could help us improve our level and make us more independent and get used to the language. I thinkg Bedwere recorded all of them, I found them pretious.
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Re: Classical Languages - Study Group

Postby guyome » Fri Oct 15, 2021 4:28 pm

Alvarus wrote:This finally leads to a circular argument: since we want to read, we do not care about intermediate things (they would feel fake, an we want the real thing; and we do not care about audios; and, since we only want to read, we do not create them. Also, since we want to read, we do not write about things of our everyday life, which could help us in grasping the grammar and vocabulary. So we get stuck and think it is impossible, and again, that we should only strive to read.
Just after reading your post, I saw this on Reddit :D
Hot take. I want to read Cicero, Vergil, Homer and Plato. I don't need to talk about, how the weather, where I'm from, what my favorite color is, or where I went on vacation. Grammar instruction and Lesebücher is a very good way and efficient. The problem is that hours and therefor reading were cut more and more.
I know everyone learns differently and is interested in different things, but to me it looks a lot like these people are working very hard to remove any help they could get to reach their goal. I see two problems with this line of thought:
- thinking that topics like the weather, colors, etc., are of no use when reading Cicero, Virgil, Homer or Plato
- thinking that the conversational approach for Latin/Greek is useless because of the topics it covers, whereas its interest lies in no small part in the automatisms it can help you develop, regardless of what you're speaking/writing/listening/reading about. Living Latin/Greek may not be the panacea their proponents make them to be but, even if the topics were absolutely Antiquity-incompatible, it still wouldn't mean the workout you get is not useful preparation towards reading Classical authors. To me it sounds a lot like refusing to hit the gym because your goal is boxing, so you'll spend 100% of your time on the ring and none doing squats, cycling or running.
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