Latin I
Salvēte omnēs!
These beginners Wikiversity lessons form a non-traditional, informal course aimed at speaking and writing as well as reading. The lessons are supported by practice in words and sentences available on Memrise and AI prompts. The AI prompts give you practice with translation and writing Latin. There are also short readings to help you practice, focusing on everyday situations and the situations, good, bad and stupid, that people get themselves in.
There are three parts, Latin I, Latin II and Latin III. Latin IV is in development.
Who this course is for
[edit | edit source]Latin I is a beginners' course, covering what most people learn in the first year of Latin classes. It is a gently paced but thorough course, and requires no specialized knowledge of grammar to begin. From the first lesson you will learn simple sentences in Latin, with just enough grammar explanation to cover the concepts taught in each lesson. It is suitable for independent learners with good English reading skills.
How to use the course
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You should first read the lesson, and then use the lesson practices on Memrise to reinforce what you have learnt. If you are an absolute beginner, you should:
- Read the lesson;
- Practice the "words" course on Memrise for the lesson you've read; then
- Practice with the "sentence" course on Memrise for the lesson you've read
Important: reading the lessons but not practising writing and memorising the sentences is unlikely to work. Languages take practice and usage to learn, so please don't expect to just read the Wikiversity lessons and magically understand Latin!
Errors
[edit | edit source]Please let us know on the talk pages if you spot anything. Links to the original lessons can be found on the discussion page here.
Supporting materials
[edit | edit source]These Memrise courses can be ported to Open Source tools. For now, though, you can find them here:
Please note that the sentence course can sometimes trip up, especially with word order variations which are correct but it does not recognise. Most combinations are there, but sometimes you may find correct answers being thrown out as wrong. Our advice is to just roll with it!
Other free resources
[edit | edit source]There is a nearly complete formal course on Wikibooks which could provide a useful second way of looking at Latin grammar and gaining practice. It contains exercises as well as explanations.
Supplementing your study
[edit | edit source]When you learn any language, you should try different ways of using and practising the language. Typically, this will include a lot of reading, suitable to your current level. There is also audio and video available at different levels of Latin which you can use to practice. You can also try conversational Latin, either in person, via Skype chats, or through chatrooms.
Course lessons
[edit | edit source]Course credit
[edit | edit source]The lessons were originally written by CarpeLanam to help beginners who lacked a Latin course on a free online language tool. We are very grateful for her kind permission to reproduce them under a cc-by-sa licence. zsocipuszmak added the sentence course on Memrise.