13 Apr 2022 (Last Modified 01 Mar 2026)
Learning Latin
I took Latin in high school. To channel Paul Simon, it’s a wonder I learned anything at all. I got a 3 on both AP Latin exams while thinking that ekphrasis meant that Vulcan gave a shield to Aeneas, missing the allusion to Achilles’ shield in the Iliad, the importance of the images on the shield, and their relationship to Dido’s mural. During college I studied Latin fitfully on the side. I never gained enough fluency to read or comment on ancient texts without a dictionary and extensive commentary. In 2009 I found Evan Millner’s Latinum and listened (still fitfully) to his audio recordings of Adler’s grammar. My oral comprehension improved, but that’s not oral production, prose composition or reading fluency.
I’ve also used Saturna Lanx’s programs.
TODO: Describe them.
Project: A Better Latinum.
I respect Evan’s work. His work galvanized, mea sententia, the modern Living Latin movement. But, his websites are not navigable except to retrieve data. Not that other ones are (Forcellini, Index Lingorum). One of my research interests is making information computable. (I would say that current methods mostly make information merely discoverable or retrievable.)
- I begin by making a computable version of the Janua Linguarum.
Neo-Latin
- Johannes Kepler: The Music of the Spheres
- Giordano Bruno: The Infinite Poet
- Galileo Galilei: The “Starry Messenger”
- Plutarch wrote a dialogue On the Face in the Moon, Galileo used sketches and shadows to prove the Moon was “rough and uneven” like Earth, shattering the Aristotelian idea of “perfect” celestial spheres.
Resources
- Corpus Corporum. A repository of links to Latin texts online.
- Latinum
- Janua Linguarum
-
Arnold’s Copious English-Latin Lexicon. And it
is copious. Also, a digitized version. - Arnold’s Latin Prose Composition. And anotherintroductory composition book.
- Tacitii opera in Ad usum Delphinum.
- Doderlein’s List of Latin Synonyms.
- De Sermonis Quotidianis Veterum Roamanorum. gBooks
- Latino Vivente found via Saturna Lanx’s YPLC.
- A Latin Reading List
Roadmap for LLPSI
