Classical Latin: Beginners Level 2 (original) (raw)
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Learning Latin the Ancient Way (CUP 2016)
2016
What did Greek speakers in the Roman empire do when they wanted to learn Latin? They used Latin-learning materials containing authentic, enjoyable vignettes about daily life in the ancient world – shopping, bank- ing, going to the baths, having fights, being scolded, making excuses – very much like the dialogues in some of today’s foreign-language textbooks. These stories provide priceless insight into daily life in the Roman empire, as well as into how Latin was learned at that period, and they were all written by Romans in Latin that was designed to be easy for beginners to understand. Learners also used special beginners’ versions of great Latin authors includ- ing Virgil and Cicero, and dictionaries, grammars, texts in Greek transliter- ation, etc. All these materials are now available for the first time to today’s students, in a book designed to complement modern textbooks and enrich the Latin-learning experience.
Greece and Rome, 2022
The second volume of Harm Pinkster's Oxford Latin Syntax is a stunning achievement and an admirably thorough account of the Latin ‘complex sentence and discourse’. Far from restricting itself to classical prose, the work covers Latin texts from c. 200 bc to c. ad 450, in both poetry and prose. Overall, I was struck by the good balance that Pinkster maintains between presenting Latin syntax in a systematic and well-structured way and leaving enough room for the portrayal of the Latin language as a dynamic phenomenon, in which the frequency of and predilection for certain linguistic constructions keeps changing and the ‘correctness’ of certain expressions is a matter of time and context. Equally salutary are Pinkster's reminders of the role that intonation must have played in the production and reception of Latin – and of what we lose by no longer having access to it. Throughout, Pinkster gives due consideration to the fact that it is often hard to securely classify a grammati...
A simple Latin acceleration reader for beginning and intermediate students, with pari passu translation. The format assists understanding by phrases in sequence. The 2024 edition is available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV1KTZ4X. A digital version is also available. Word count: 52,000+. Continuous Latin text included. This work presents major Latin persons and events, ending with Augustus's death.
Intensive Basic Latin: A Grammar and Workbook comprises a dynamic reference grammar and related exercises in a single volume. The book presents forty individual grammar points, covering the core material which students would expect to encounter in their fi rst year of learning Latin. Grammar points are followed by contextualized examples and exercises which allow students to reinforce and consolidate their learning. There is a particular emphasis throughout on familiarizing students with real, unadulterated Latin and the task of teasing information from the Latin via translations. To this end, there are matching exercises with unedited Latin excerpts and rough English translations in the chapters, encouraging students to take a hands-on approach in their learning. In addition to this, a short reading relating to the adventures of Hercules is presented at the end of almost every chapter; these readings, which become progressively more complex, give the course a strong sense of narrative cohesion and interest and provide students with opportunities to develop their comprehension and translation skills. Key features include: • Clear, accessible format and jargon-free explanations of grammar • Many useful language examples • Abundant and varied exercises with full answer key • Controlled usage of vocabulary throughout, allowing students to concentrate on building up their grammatical knowledge • Review sections at intervals throughout the text, providing exercises specially designed to consolidate knowledge of language points covered • Useful English-Latin and Latin-English dictionaries at the back of the book. Written by an experienced instructor, Intensive Basic Latin: A Grammar and Workbook is an ideal resource for beginning students of Latin. It can be used as a textbook, grammar reference and practice resource and is suitable both for class use and independent study.
In the intervening years since I wrote this review in 1989, Oxford University Press has revised this text and has produced some different editions. In addition, I have actually had the opportunity to use some of the volumes of this course in my own university classes. As a result, I no longer share the opinions of the Oxford Latin Course expressed in this review. In fact, I have found this course to be excellent in teaching university students Latin and in inspiring them to learn the language by structuring the learning activities around an engaging narrative that covers some of the important events of Horace's life. I can therefore recommend this text for instructors and learners of the Latin language based upon my own experience.
Wilson, A. I. (2023). ‘Latin, literacy, and the Roman economy’, in A. Mullen (ed.), Transformations of the Roman West: Social Factors in Latinization (Oxford Studies in Ancient Documents). Oxford, 78–98., 2023
This chapter examines economic structures and activities that helped spread the use of Latin, and of literacy, across the Roman West. Latin was spread to the provinces by the movement of people—settlers and colonists; the army; some kinds of mobile craftsmen (principally miners and potters); traders; and slaves—and also by the movement of documents, inscribed objects, and the practice of inscribing things in Latin. Slaves, if they were not brought up speaking Latin, had to learn it to survive. Traders learned it for commercial advantage, in preference to using interpreters. The evidence for professional interpreters is largely limited to military contexts or to the imperial court. Language learning lowered transaction costs when trading across different linguistic spheres—which long-distance trade in the Empire was bound to do. Craftsmen migrating from core provinces towards the periphery in search of economic opportunity brought their Latin with them. These processes occurred alongside, and sometimes independently of, any impetus from the army or the administrative apparatus of the state to use or learn Latin. But the spread of Latin, and literacy, arguably also helped the growth of the Roman economy: the development of a lingua franca lowered transaction costs in all areas of commerce and trade, while a larger-scale and more complex economy functioned better with written records, and with the investment in human capital that even basic education represented.