Talk:Latin

Untitled
It is always SO exciting to see people working on a project. This work will be the basis of many people learning about this subject ... We leave behind a legacy with every bit of work. Thank you, welcome, and good luck with your efforts. Any questions ask me or one of the oldtimers .. --Karl Wick

Introduction Completed
After going over things many, many times, I think I have completed the Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 pages (which are both counted now by me as 'Introduction').

I have merged the nominative and accusative lessons in one, because I think it is important to learn both cases at the same time, and I think it offers a better introduction to the meaning of the the suffixes, and it allows students to construct real sentences not just 'he is good' etc. at the very beginning.

Also, I might just show students all the 5 cases at the very beginning. I don't think it will overwhelm them because what we are doing is starting from the two basic cases (nominative and accusative) and gradually building up to all 6 and at the end touch on locative.

Also, who is in favour of using instead of 'present, future, imperfect and perfect, future perfect, pluperfect' rather Present Imperfect, Future Imperfect, Past Imperfect, Present Perfect, Future Perfect, Past Perfect.

And from there students can use the planned 'Advance Latin Course', to be used for later years. It is to be a course for students who know a little latin and want to build their knowledge. Anyway, it will start from ground zero, and will assume the student knows nothing, but the student must be intelligent, and very dedicated. It will go through all aspects of the language, and won't offer exercises, because the student is expected to simply to take notes.

Some thoughts...
I like the ideas put forth so far, and would love to help out on this project. I'll also touch on the ideas you presented with my own - we agree on a good deal of the points:

As we learn different parts of speech and noun constructions at different times in our natural English educations, I think a similarly-presented Latin lesson plan is appropriate. What I'm suggesting is to mention all the cases and their most basic usages (with respect to English constructions) up front: Nominative is for subjects, Accusative is for direct object, etc.

Then, start with basic sentences involving the Present Imperfect of esse, subjects, predicate nominatives, and prepositions taken with the Ablative - Pueri in campo sunt. Toss in some possessives - Ciceronis frater miles est. Obviously the vocab. in that last example was a bit steep as it would be wise to start with just the first or second declension. The point of this is just to teach Latin in the same manner English was taught. Certainly in English we learned how to say "I kicked the ball in the field" (place where) before learning to say "I kicked the ball in the field with amazing vigor" (manner) or "I kicked the ball in the field with my foot" (means).

While it certainly is neat (and very viable) to have students constructing real (i.e., substantial) sentences by the end of the first lesson, I worry about how many students may be turned off by such a rapid approach.

As for your verb tense naming scheme, I think the latter name scheme provides better insight into what the tenses actually imply, so my vote goes for that option. It took me the longest time as a student to make the distinction between Imperfect and Perfect with regards to the action's "completeness."

I'd be more than happy to make whatever contributions I can to this thing, just let me know what I can do to help! Cheers!

C. Seth Lester (http://www.sethlester.com/)

Systematic Approach
The problem is I want a systematic approach for latin.

As you can see I have a table for all the cases in Lesson 1 or 2. The first two lessons, as I had arranged it give a complete introduction into the terminology used. And in the 3rd lesson (which is quite a mess) you start to apply it to real Latin, starting with the Nominative and Accusative cases. I think it is important to start off comparing nominative and accusative, and getting students to recognize the forms as once you can do that, it is all a matter of memorizing suffixes (only nominative and accusative for lesson 3).

Also I think it would be appropriate to give simple rules to the suffixes and stem changes in the third declension so by the end of lesson 3 you would be able to:

Decline (only nominative and accusative) 1st declen, 2nd declen., 3rd declen, 4th declen. and 5th declen. including adjectives.

Pronouns will be introduced on the last lesson on nouns, also the effect of dropping the subject noun.

1st and 2nd persons will not be dealt with until we start learning to conjugate verbs which will be quite later down the track (I think nouns (which include substantives, adjectives and pronouns) are the MOST important things to get out of the way.

Constructions with the 3rd persons of to be (est, sunt, erit, erunt, erat, erant, fuit, fuerunt, fuerit, fuerit, fuerat, fuerant) can be learnt but it must be emphasized that these verbs take the NOMINATIVE.

If you wish, you can drop me an email at daniel_canaris@yahoo.com.au

Latin Dictionary...
I have been reading some of Des Cartes writings (which is in latin), and he employs peculiar Latin. Namely due to the fact that Latin "evolved" somewhat, but I have no clue what he is saying. If anyone has a philosopher Latin-English dictionary, or a link to an online one, that would be supper to put on! Cheers! Pablo

If we can find a good link on it, the one on www.perseus.tufts.edu would be the best. It includes all the classics and all the philosophers and all the big dictionaries (except the OLD.)

Formatting.
I try to help as much as I can, but unfortunately, since I'm actually using this book to learn Latin, I can't contribute in that manner. However, I can contribute by fixing / formatting tables, removing typos or tags that show though the page, and things like that.

That brings me to my question: is there some kind of set formatting that's been agreed upon? I've just been alternating the rows with grey and white where appropriate, but I'm not sure if I should do anything with the heading or use different colors.

Like I said, I'm trying to help, but I can't help if I don't know what to do.

Also, is there going to be a non-introductory Latin course? If not, then each of the parts (Part 1, Part 2, etc.) can be made into a header and the "Introductory Latin Course" header can be removed. This will make sure that the table of contents works correctly, although I'm not particularly sure that it's necessary to have a table of contents for a table of contents.

On the front page, a note has been added by someone asking for macrons to be used to indicate vowel length. I see that there is no need for such a thing, because there different ways in which latin can be pronounced.

'''This is true, however the macron must be used for the ablative singular (otherwise it gets confusied with the nominative pluaral. --source of "Note". It is also best used for the acc. to distingush for novices between the English plural -s and the 1st declension accusative plural since English has a much broader concept of plural which doesn't always depend on case. So I just made sure to point to people how to do this. (Technical skills are also covered in many textbooks.) I struggled to figure out how to do it.

I am also learning Latin through this text, and Latin via Ovid.

Speaking Latin???
There is now an enormous online audio course for spoken Latin, with many thousands of users. This is Latinum, and it is delivered by podcast. There are also a huge number of colloquies, dialogues etc that were written for beginners to learn colloquial Latin (heavily influenced by Terence and Plautus,of course ). A google search for Latinum, or 'latin podcast' will bring up the Latinum podcast, which is free. There is also a community of Latin speakers who communicate regularly through Schola.ning.com.

Hi,

I ´m wondering if it is reasonable to make a section for speaking Latin. I would like to work upon this section, altough I am not that experienced in spoken Latin. But I think some might be interested in basic speaking exercises and phrases you may use some time. So I think, actually speaking Latin is not taught at school neither at University, so maybe it could be an interesting thing for (advanced) Latin learners. Tell me your opinon upon this please.

Sincerely,

Kay Lorenz
 * There are universities that teach spoken classical Latin, and definitely a lot of religious schools that teach "church latin." And, despite what anyone says, we do know a lot about colloquial Latin, how things were pronounced, colloquialisms and slang, etc.  So yes, at least pronunciation and at most a steady stream of spoken Latin should be inected into this book.  --Mrcolj 04:55, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I just saw this: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Spoken_Latin --Mrcolj 05:28, 14 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I am fluent in spoken Latin and let me tell you that it is used more then just in university courses on in the Church. Not to be hostile but I also take exception to the characterization of Church Latin as somehow being different, wierd or bad.  This may not have been your intention but it came across to me that you meant that by putting it in "quotes".  The kind of Church Latin that you find in the liturgy or in set prayers like the Our Father is an idiom of Latin that is different but not significantly different from everyday Latin or the Latin used for formal meetings.  We know that Issac Newton, regardless of what you think of him, didn't write in the idiom of Latin used in the liturgy but he did write in the common Latin idiom of his time that was intelligible to almost all litterate people of that time.  Just like Biblical Greek is different from Ancient Greek due to the inclusion of and direct translations from Hebrew and other Semetic languages, they were both used in the Church, one for the liturgy and bible and the other for everyday communication.  The modern version of Latin that exist and is decended from the Latin that Newton and his peers used is not only used by the Church but by anyone that respects the language enough to allow it to grow and start to include new words and used new letters like the now demonized letter J.  Much of this has come about by teachers that want to teach very specifically Classical Latin.  I respect their decision to teach Classical Latin as it is an important idiom of the Language that is important form many people to learn but I do take issue when people begin to say that ONLY Classical Latin is correct.  They start to want to expunge books of the letter J, accent marks and any words not used by Cicero or Ceasar.  Keep in mind that Classical Latin only existed for about 100 to 200 years.  Anything else is simply an immitation of it.  Latin has a 3000 year history and mother tounge speaker living in a very wide area that used slightly different vobaculary and had local idioms.  Are we to tell them that they are all wrong, us who come to Latin as a second Language, tell the ancients who were Native speakers and maybe didn't even know any other language that they are wrong.  Certainly not.  There is more to Latin then just the simple form of Classical Latin or the very complicated form of Liturgical Latin.  Latin is a full and complete language and one should never be afraid or embarassed to learn to speak it.

Exercises
I have realised how little thought has been put into the exercises even many points of existing grammar. I believe we should pick passages for every page which relate to the grammatical concepts introduced in the chapter in addition to revised exercises. I shall spend quite some time this week revising pages and making additional entries.

Comments from a Latin Student
I have a number of comments on how everything is done - and, I want people to keep in mind, I mean it in a good way. It seems to me that at certain points some things are introduced far too soon - subjunctive, for example, and declining adjectives (although that should be fine as long as we stick to first and second declension!) - while other things are brought up too slowly. For example, I think we could teach all the cases at once, which I realize the author is considering - maybe leave out the Vocative, as it's not particularly useful and not technically a case - or something to that extent.

Just a thought; it seems to me that the way some of it is organized is inconsistent, which can make it hard to follow.

Some things also don't make sense to me - for example, how can an adjective be a noun? Something can't modify itself. I just have a bunch of little nitpicks; however, I'm not a professional, just a student, so feel free to correct me!

Awesome work, though - a really tough project! Hope I can help out too.

--Chiyo

PS - My vote goes to the former system, as in the one with Pluperfect, but that's only because that's what I was taught and it's what I'm the most used to. Don't care much either way, though.

- Reply: I agree many things need to be improved in layout and presentation. Please feel free to make changes as you see fit.

Now concerning the 'Noun'. Latin grammarians, like Donatus, considered the adjectives, pronouns and substantives to all be 'nouns'. And in fact, many of the older grammar also do this as well. Nouns to the ancient grammarians were words which were declined which include adjectives, pronouns and substantives. - Daniel Canaris

What are those two new additions on the title page? What are they there for?

declensions and cases
I'm using your text to learn latin, not very hard at any rate. As a person who is more or less oblivious this crazy Latin grammar, I find you explain most of it well enough, although it may be a little technical. Declension is the part that gets me. I see that the nouns are modified depending on their use in the sentence, but what's with the 5 declensions? I think this is something that needs clarification. I'm assuming the different declensions just mean you decline differently, like conjugating verbs differently in spanish depending on the ending? Also, the different cases could use a little clarification, I get the feeling that everything but nominative and accusative has some pretty complex nuances. It seems pretty good for being a work in progress, albeit a bit complicated for a new latin student (or just me?). Just trying to give you a learner's perspective.

- REPLY

Your assumption is right.

Don't worry about 'nuances' at the beginning. Datives are used more than just 'giving', genitives more than just origin etc. but don't worry about it. You'll learn it gradually.

The final vowel (or consonent) of the stem of the noun determines what declension a noun is. From analysing the different declensions and the case endings you can see that each case ending of one declension shares something in common with another. A 'm' sound is typical for singular accusatives (like Greek) and 'um' for genitive plurals (like the greek on). Different indo-european languages also share common case endings. The endings though become corrupted and certain elisions occur dependant on the final vowel or consonent. All the nouns with the vowel 'a' as the final vowel of the stem fall under the catagory of 1st declension nouns. 'o' nouns are the second declension, 'consonents or i' 3rd declension, u 4th declension and 'e' 5th declension. By reading a bit of basic linguistics it's not hard to see how this occurs.

In Spanish you have verb conjugations, and the concept is not dissimilar.

hablo hablas habla hablamos hablaís hablan

and other 'a' verbs conjugate like this in spanish

form the 'a' conjugation which all conjugate alike (the a conjugation in Spanish is very regular, which is to do with the vowel 'a', because in Latin the 'a' nouns and verbs are the most stable as well)

amo amas amat amamus amatis amant

and other 'a' verbs conjugate like this in english.

'a' nouns in Latin nearly all decline like 'puella' (puella, puellam, puellae, puellae, puella, puellae, puellas, puellarum, puellis, puellis) 'o' nouns in Latin nearly all decline like 'servus' 'consonent' and 'i' nouns in Latin nearly all decline like 'civis' or 'rex' 'u' nouns nearly all decline like cornus 'e' nouns decline like 'res'.

Imperatives
I have noticed that there is not a section on imperatives. Imperatives are rather simply as far as I recall from school. Imperatives are commands!

First Conjuagtion

S Ama = (You) Love! P Amate = (You) Love!

Second Conjugation

S Mone = (You)Advise! P Monete = (You) Advise!

Third Conjugation

S Rege = (You) Rule! P Regite = (You) Rule!

Except for: (Mnemonic "Dick had a Duck with fur on its face")

- Dic Dicite - Duc Ducite - Fer Ferte - Fac Facite

Fourth Conjugation

S Audi = (You) Hear! P Audite = (You) Hear!

-- Reply to Reply

An easier way to remember the declensions, and the way in which I was taught, being a Latin student myself, is to have a song that you can sing to yourself that identifies them. For example, I was taught "One is -o, -are; Two is -eo, -ere; Three is -o, -ere; Four is -io, -ire; and Third -io is -io, -ere." I was taught that the "fourth declension" here was the "third -io" and the "fifth" was the "fourth," which may or may not be confusing to you... The numbers in the song are the declensions, and the first ending is the first-person nominative singular form, whereas the second ending is the ending for the infinitive. When you look up a word in almost any Latin/English dictionary, only the first- person nominative singular form and the infinitive form will be listed, so if you look in a Latin/ English dictionary, or you happen to know these two forms of the word, you will be able to identify the declension of that word. Hope this was helpful!!!

68.107.196.191 23:47, 17 December 2006 (UTC)Natsirk

Answers To Exercises
I think the answers for all of the exercises should be given somewhere, otherwise it defeats the purposes of the exercises. I would go ahead and add them, but I am student and am not very confident with the accuracy of my answers.

Advanced
perhaps after all the basic grammatical bases have been covered there could be added an introduction to Latin meter and where it is used?

Learning unused languages
It is always suggested that people practice the language they are learning by using it. The problem: no one speaks languages like Latin or Greek anymore (two that I would like to learn). This is a huge obsticale to learning. Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions on how to practice with people? I am thinking the best way is to find a friend that also wants to learn, and learn at the same time. --Loplin 02:46, 18 October 2005 (UTC)


 * See William Harris' excellent essay the Sin of Silent Reading for some trenchant views on learning Latin. It might be hard to find another student but you can always read out loud.  --kwhitefoot 15:40, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Just a comment and I don't mean to be snide but I am pretty sure people still speak Greek in Greece as it is the only official language. Modern Greek is a little different form Ancient Greek but learning it would help you a lot to learn to speak Ancient Greek. Many people do still use Latin and many people still speak Latin but the problem is that modern writers or speakers of Latin are painted as strange, religious fanatics by people that support ONLY Classical Latin.

Long Vowels
I looked over this Latin course and I noticed that you didn't use long vowels (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū). They are necessary to correctly determine stress, so should they be added? Gandalf1491 15:29, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Added long vowels up to Lesson 10. Gandalf1491 16:13, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Hard Going
Although I can understand this course, I have a nagging suspicion that I can only understand because I learned it all years ago. I think that some simpler explanations would help, perhaps it would be useful to have some explanations on linked pages. What do people think? Gaius Calvus 13:28, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Amen to that. 216.178.90.41 02:17, 2 May 2006 (UTC)TC

Missing Stuff
I have noticed that a certain construction is missing. Where is the ablative absolute? The ablative absolute is probably the bane of anyone learning to translate latin. An example would be caesare in absentia which would be translated as When/While Caesar was absent.--IKnowNothing 00:39, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry another clause strung to mind the Double Dative. The soldiers were for a hinderance to Hannibal. --IKnowNothing 00:52, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Naming policy
To avoid confusion, all pages of the book called Latin should start with the word Latin. The majority of the pages already do this, but I suggest a move of Spoken Latin and other such pages. I might attempt to move the pages myself. --Kernigh 04:43, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi Kernigh. Changed your tag to a merge tag as I couldn't see any incorrectly named pages in the Latin book which needed fixing. Cheers Ad --AdRiley 12:03, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Comments from a different Latin student
As far as I can see, there are a few organizational problems. I think that all five cases should be introduced at once, or at least very quickly. After all, what good is the nominative by itself? The way I was taught (which worked well) was to introduce all five cases quickly, but do the declensions less quickly. It isn't that difficult to come up with sentences using only first declension.

Also, I think that there should at least be an introduction to verbs in the first or second lesson (maybe just present tense). This way, the student can practice with simple sentences and thoroughly memorize 1st declension, which is absolutely necessary. After that, 2nd declension is not that different from 1st, and imperfect isn't that different from present, etc.

More extensive selected vocabulary would also be nice, because dictionaries are a little bit intimidating, especially if you don't know what priciple parts are, etc. Also, just knowing what to learn is a setback. People just being introduced don't have to know arbitrary words such as orca, orcae, f. -- a pot with a large belly.

e.g. my original vocab consisted of: illa, hic, agricola, fabula, familia, femina, fenestra, ferula, filia, ianua, mensa, patria, pictura, poeta, provincia, puella, regina, sella, silva, tabula, terra, via, villa, vita, murus, pavimentum, puer, stilus, in, cum, amo, habito, laudo, narro, voco, sum, and et. Memorizing basic words such as these makes learning latin a lot easier when it is at first taught with simple words.

Did I miss the section on deponent verbs?

Tables of irregular verbs would be nice. Sum, Fero, Volo, Nolo, Malo, etc.

So far, it's pretty good, though, despite my criticism.

216.178.90.41 02:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)TC

And another student..
It's rather difficult to navigate my way around this site, so forgive me if I missed this earlier on somewhere else..

As a person who has no prior knowledge of Latin whatsoever, it is difficult to grasp some of the things presented here. For me, at least, it would help a great deal if somebody could include a brief table or something that defined (translated) all the terms/phrases used in any give lesson. It would make a great deal more sense to me, as I can understand grammatically what it being explained sometimes, but I am unsure still of what exactly is being said.

As the person before me mentioned, I would greatly appreciate it if somebody could do up an appendix that is linked from the first page of basic vocab in one tense, just so I could at a very minimal level get started with simple phrases and sentences, and build up from there.

All in all, though, it is a formidable undertaking to learn a language from a textbook, and all the more daunting to teach one. I greatly applaud all the effort gone into the work so far, and eagerly await the completion of this text.


 * While this course is under construction, try the free courses I created at . Junesun 19:14, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Orphans
These pages are not linked to from anywhere in this book. Please either incorporate them into the text or mark them for deletion with delete.


 * Latin/Appendix A
 * Latin/Appendix B
 * Latin/Appendix E
 * Latin/Index II
 * Spoken Latin

Thanks! --hagindaz 01:29, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Ideas for Revisions
Currently my biggest issue with the book, besides some inaccuracies I've been fixing, is the order of chapters. Students learn the vocative and ablative absolute before they can say "pater est bonus."

As it is, I'm going to make some revisions to the order. If this is disliked, a revert will fix that immediately!

My plans are to subdivide the course into grades. That is grade 1 would have the basics, nominative, accusative, and present tense verbs, as well as the first few declensions of nouns, and a basic overview of verbs, adjectives, and so forth.

As an update, I have done that which I hoped to do to make the book more understandable and useful for the beginner. Unfortunately, I think I may have butchered the formating from earlier times into an irrecoverable state. For that I apologize greatly. Nonetheless, I have tried to simplify some complicated topics(such as the imperfect and future, genative and dative, etc. all being one topic instead of two or more, and invite anyone to help with this. Also, many of the perfects are completely, for lack of a better word, wrong. I think help with that would also be great.

Again, apologizing, --Asv 20:00, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Thinking of Helping
I am a Latin teacher and have developed an iterestin way of teaching Latin that I find works very well. However, I teach Latin generally and I teach students to use what I call the easy pronunciation where C and G change before an EE type sound. It looks to me that the kind of Latin being taught here and the Latin that I teach are incompatible with each other. Many people make arguement about Classical Latin and I certainly have no problem with people teaching Classical Latin but let us remember that the Classical Idiom is but one of the many idioms that existed and it only existed for a small time period when compared to the whole of the language. I teach Latin as a complete language and I would hope that my students could read Classical, pre Classical, post Classical or any other type of Latin you could throw at them. To get to the point I don't suppose you would be willing to reconsider your policies regarding the other idioms of Latin. If not them I would suggest with all humility that this particular module be rename Classical Latin so that it could be more accurate and advertise exactly what is being taught here and open up the more general name of Latin for those of us who want to teach all of Latin.--Billiot 10:32, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Pre/Suffixes
Could any of you tell me in which part of this book I could write a section or two on prefixes and suffixes? They obviously aren't a large part of latin that your everyday student would need to learn to be able to translate a latin text, but there isn't a lot in Wikiland about these. I'm writing about the diminutive suffix in latin at Vicipaedia, but I'm sure that the page won't be done justice there. --Harris Morgan 18:23, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

An alternative book
I was thinking about making an alternative Latin book. Now before you kill me, I want you to look at some other language books and see what they teach first and what the emphasise; they teach "greeting people" and "conversing" first, learning how to introduce oneself. They don't slap a bunch of declension and conjugation tables in your face. Therefore I propose we create another lesson, which teaches Latin in order to make the student good at "speaking" Latin. To say how much something costs, to say which way to the bank and to order a hamburger. Sure some might say "why learn that? you don't need to order hamburgers in Latin", well why not? Some people who have learned Latin for many years don't know how to say "my name is xxx", and only know how to say "sic transit gloria mundi" and something like that. Now what do you say? I personally don't think that this would make it too complex for the students, and that it only make learning more fun. Then later, when people have mastered some helpful phrases and sentences (not "the girls carry the water"), we can teach them about the cases and grammar. I think this will make many kids aspire to learn Latin; "hey guess how you say "fuck you" in Latin??". Hilarity ensues! --BiT 16:34, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Why do u want to teach people to order hamburgers in latin sorry? my view is the crowd for studying latin don't learn it to speak it they learn it to be able to translate and appreciate such writers like Virgil or Horace. To read that stuff, you'll need to know your tables solid from the beginning. I see where your coming from, its a nice hook maybe to get people in, but you might be wasting your time writing more than a few chapters for the crowd you'll get though. 220.253.21.32 10:14, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Wow!
I just want to congratulate and thank all the fabulous people who have worked on and continue to work on this wikibook. It is simply outstanding, and I can already see myself making leaps and bounds in my latin thanks to you.

Spoken Latin
You know, casual Classic Latin.

Diagramming
Shouldn't we include diagramming somewhere around here? It is highly essential to a through understanding of Latin grammar. Also, is Henle Latin included as a resource? Thanks, Laleena (talk) 01:30, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikijunior
The Latin Wikijunior article needs a bit of help to make it to publishable status. Could some please help? Laleena (talk) 19:45, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Serious lack of example sentences
There is something very frustrating about seeing someone try to create useful material without knowing what a student really needs.
 * As a matter of fact, I am studying Latin myself using the Memoria Press curriculum. (Prima Latina, then Latina Christiana, and so on.) You could say that these people know what a student needs-plenty of review, a new list of vocab/grammar every week, and continual review. I can read some Latin and write the same (Maria occupat mensarum ex Romam, which means "Mary seizes tables out of Rome"). Thoughts? Laleena (talk) 14:00, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Chapter five
why are all the chapter five links going to places that their name doesn't imply?

Translation Translate a passage from Catullus.

Exercises Review of subjunctive forms.

Exercises Review of passive forms.

Translation

Revision  Ideas and memory tools for language patterns in conjugation and declining.

things labled 'translation' go to grammer exercises, and none of the things labled as grammar exercises match their titles. Is this deliberate? if so it is very confusing. Storeye (talk) 03:10, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Orphaned page
Latin/Introduction to Nouns (L1) is not linked to by this book. Please link to it, merge it into another page and mark it with, or if it is not needed mark it with. Thanks. -- Adrignola talk contribs 02:11, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Clarifications
I think that we should explain everything, like where sentences come from and such, right from the start. I think the best way to do this would be to make a new page under the first chapter. I'm a very new memberand am not sure of how to do this.

Major revisions and restructuring needed
This book needs some fundamental restructuring and fixes. For example, i have found that it is incredibly difficult to learn without the presence of macrons, especially for first-time students with no prior knowledge of Latin whatsoever. Additionally, all of the cases should be introduced at once, not over a series of lessons. The page on the uses of the subjunctive is severely lacking. Use of linguistic terms in articles without defining them can confuse first-time foreign language learners. Frankly, this book is not of featured quality, in my opinion. It is incomplete and needs serious improvements.

Please offer your opinions. If I receive no feedback to the contrary within the next three days, I will begin a massive restructuring to the likes of that which I have described above. Thank you. Cuine (discuss • contribs) 01:05, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * OMG, yes. I found the structure of the book perplexing, the sentences inconsistent, the vocabulary choices strange (I'd start with English-like ones first, and include English words derived from the Latin to make memorization easier), and the amount of information in the first parts overwhelming. I only say this because I've been studying Latin formally for three years, and have seen many, many examples of Latin grammars. --Robert.Baruch (discuss • contribs) 19:53, 14 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Perhaps rather than a major restructuring, a new book should be written? --Robert.Baruch (discuss • contribs) 13:17, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Latin Mottos and Phrases
I think that the list of mottos / phrases should be expanded and that for each motto there should be a reference to who it has been attributed to (e.g. veni, vidi, vici to Caius Julius Caesar, etc.); if a motto has no clear author then it should be marked as popular wisdom or something like that. Ade56facc (discuss • contribs) 15:04, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

First section: Note: relevant image?
In section Note, what is that image on the right about?

It does not look like to be the cover of a latin book.

Besides this there is almost no description, only "1490".

Can it be fixed?

UPDATE: I have just looked for that image at common.wikimedia and the original description is: "Formulario di epistole" (it), (a collection of letters about prayers, etc.) and 1490 is probably the year of first publication. I think that it should be replaced with something about latin, not italian. The embarassing fact is that that image has been associated to latin topic in tens of other pages in various languages. Ade56facc (discuss • contribs) 18:24, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
 * UPDATE: as in the article/book main page there are incomplete/broken links and as it looks like that in the last 9..10 years only a couple of minor changes have been done, I have decided to proceed with the replacement of the image of the cover book above named. NOTE: IMHO Latin page should be updated and completed in a few sections, mostly in "Appendixes" section.Ade56facc (discuss • contribs) 12:38, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

TODO
This book has not been completed, there are several parts that should be added, completed and/or verified.
 * 1) First book part Introduction to the origins and structure of Latin has confusing / misleading titles / contents; content should be categorized and expanded, you should not mix in the same page too different topics such as "how to learn a language" and "the origins and structure of latin".
 * 2) Not all sub-chapters listed in main page of Latin book have a description in italics like: The Imperfect Tense The imperfect tense, working in the past.
 * 3) Tables in most pages:
 * 4) there are a few pages that use pre-formatted text blocks instead of using tables;
 * 5) not all tables have the same style (some have double line borders, others one line borders, others no border;
 * 6) a few tables are too wide to fit in an A4 PDF document, maybe they could narrowed a bit.
 * 7) Exercises (see the various lessons):
 * 8) several "Exercises" are not using exercise template (work in progress);
 * 9) there are many answers in "Solutions" that are missing or not quite right (both latin / english translations); a few of them have been checked and fixed but not all of them.
 * 10) There is an "Orphaned page" about nouns, what to do about it?
 * 11) There is a separate chapter "Spoken Latin" that looks like a trial / a test that has been only partly written.
 * 12) Items in Appendixes should be reordered, right now they look like to appear in casual order without a logic.
 * 13) A few items in Appendixes have been linked to main page but they do not exist yet:
 * 14) Morphology of Latin
 * 15) Ecclesiastical & Medieval Latin
 * 16) Library of Graded Latin Texts for Translation
 * 17) Prefixes and Suffixes
 * 18) A few items in Appendixes look like to be links to other wiki books, maybe they should be put in a separate section (done).

Surely there are other little details to be reviewed / improved. Ade56facc (discuss • contribs) 17:18, 13 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Some of the declension tables vary in ordering, also; I think the default is NGDAA; but there are also NAGDA tables, even within the same page. JimKillock (discuss • contribs) 17:35, 15 August 2023 (UTC)