A language learners’ forum

Old but interesting article "Efficiency in Teaching Latin Inflections" in which the author analyses Latin texts from textbooks statistically in order to find the most frequent grammar forms: For instance:

Although more than 64 per cent of all nouns appear either as accusative or ablative, yet we almost invariably list cases so that two most important ones are listed last.

The teaching of verb inflections in their entire largest waste of effort in high-school Latin. school text during three semesters teaches about for each of five conjugations besides a lesser irregular types. This is justifiable if all or most be needed in translating Latin. The truth is that them are never used in any Latin that the av read. The reason for this is easily seen when practically all verbs in narrative and historical writing must be in the third person and in the present or past tense.

Approximately 91 per cent of all verbs in second-year Latin are third person.

I wonder if someone else have tried to replicate the same approach but using larger corpora of real Latin. I know from personal experience that certain forms of writing indeed favor specific grammar forms (and Most and Ølberg seem to take that into account in their 'natural' approach to Latin) which, sadly, are usually introduced in textbooks at the very end (yes, subjunctive, I'm looking at you!). As a result, you don't have enough practice with forms, not to mention the fact that you have to postpone your forays into the world of unadapted literature.

UPD https://www.jstor.org/stable/43938849?s ... b_contents

I have really enjoyed TY's Complete Old English. I like the format and the free audio.

I was so happy to get an email a couple days ago about TY's new Complete Old Norse course. Can't. Wait. (Yes, I pre-ordered it.)

Does the Teach Yourself Old Norse have audio? I couldn’t see any mentioned in the description.

RyanSmallwood wrote:Does the Teach Yourself Old Norse have audio? I couldn’t see any mentioned in the description.

Unsure. I'll tell you in November when I get my copy.

I ordered this thing back in December 9, 2019. I'm glad it's finally coming out.
I can't wait to see what it looks like.
In my eternal drift through languages, I'm about to drift back into Norse and Old English, I think...

I'm gonna be a bit pessimistic and guess it won't have audio, as it isn't mentioned and doesn't seem to be standard for all Teach Yourself courses to have audio for historical languages (but there are a few examples that do), but if I'm wrong I'd certainly be delighted, especially if its in reconstructed pronunciation.

Not planning to start Old Norse anytime soon, but so far I've been pretty disappointed trying to find extensive Old Norse audio in reconstructed pronunciation (I think I mentioned previously, the most extensive examples I know of are Jackson Crawford's recordings, which I think amount to little over an hour, possibly a bit more if you include his readings with english commentary). I don't think vocabulary would pose a big difficulty as there's lots of resources for Modern Icelandic, and I think audiobooks for a lot of sagas (not sure if they're in Modern Icelandic translation, or the original texts, probably with modern Icelandic pronunciation), so at least getting meaning from the literature shouldn't be too much of an issue.

RyanSmallwood wrote: (not sure if they're in Modern Icelandic translation.

I doubt there is such a thing - they just use modern spelling in their publications, no need for further translation

Ah okay, I saw websites like this that let you switch between Icelandic and Old Norse, I assumed there might be small changes in wording, but it seems like its mostly word for word, so it may just be spelling only. Don't know enough about reading conventions if Icelandic speakers would read both texts the same way or not.

I made it through the first half of LLPSI and was unpleasantly surprised with the speed Ølberg introduces new verb tenses and forms. I decided to google suggestions for some supplementary readings and materials at this stage, but instead I discovered this.

What’s wrong with LLPSI:
1. Replicating Roman Ideologies.
2. Centering of Roman elites
3. Violence
4. The sexist portrayal of women.
5. Everyone depicted as “white”
6. Christian overtones

Tell me I'm dreaming. I mean, we have a real pedagogical masterpiece but instead of thinking how can we replicate it, or expand it by adding more graded readers we need to be worried about this. So, all other problems with Latin language pedagogy have been fixed long time ago?

were you looking for this?
https://www.reddit.com/r/latin/comments ... pplements/