Classical Languages Resources

[LostintheCosmos]

There are a growing number of resources out there for studying classical languages, many inspired by modern research in second language acquisition, that I don't see mentioned among homeschoolers much, so I thought I would start a thread to highlight some and maybe discuss how to use them - I have lots of ideas but am still working on getting them into regular routines and habits. My goal is for us to spend some time reading, speaking, hearing, and writing each language every day. I've been particularly inspired by the methods of Alexander Arguelles; he is a largely self-taught polyglot with a lot of useful advice for studying languages outside a traditional classroom or tutoring setting.

Textbooks

Lots of neat vintage Latin textbooks online these days. We use Oerburg as our primary textbook, but I also like Latin by the Natural Method and Waldo Sweet's pre-Artes Latinae books. 

Seumus Macdonald is working on a Greek textbook in the spirit of Oerburg: Lingua Graeca Per Se Illustrata. While that gets written, we are mostly using the Italian edition of Athenaze (it has far more reading material than the English edition). I also like the look of Alexandros. 

Reading

Many intrepid Latin teachers are out there writing simple Latin books to use for extensive reading, and a few Greek teachers are doing the same. These are not great literature and you want to be a little cautious because some are of questionable Latinity and have content that is not appropriate for all ages, but you could think about their purpose similarly to decodable readers in teaching a child to read English. In our house, I have a shelf of these along with some other Latin reading options (vintage Latin readers and textbooks with longer passages, the Vulgate, a few novels translated into Latin, etc), and my Latin student is required to read something from the shelf for a set period of time everyday. 

Fr. Pavur has an ever-growing number of ebooks, many of them with interlinear or facing-page translations, which makes them perfect for Arguelles' methods. 

Audio

Evan der Millner has been around for a while and has so much Latin audio at this point, including on his youtube channel.

Luke Ranieri has various Latin and Greek audio and a whole course for LLPSI Roma Aeterna - there's a lot of free stuff on his youtube channel also, including audio for all of Familia Romana and Athenaze.

David Ring has a lot of Greek on his patreon and curated on his youtube channel.  

We've enjoyed Magister Craft's videos.

We are also experimenting with creating our own recordings. DS12 is really enjoying this.

Here is our general routine: my student has a section each of Familia Romana and Athenaze assigned for the week. Every day, he reads the section and listens to it read by Luke Ranieri on youtube. Once a week, he sits with me and I make sure he understands it - I am looking for accurate comprehension, not ability to parse and explain all aspects of the grammar. He also has copywork, dictation, or composition in each language daily. He also has an "FVR" (free voluntary reading) period in both languages.

As a family, so with kids ages 3-12, we also do some TPR (Andrew Campbell's Latine Loquor is an easy to use resource that can get you started with this, and the Polis Institute's Polis and Forum books have some helpful TPR material), sing sea shanties in Greek and Latin, have some Latin read alouds, and attend liturgies in Latin. 

It took me a while to figure out this routine, but now we are in Cap. XVII of Familia Romana, and I am really pleased with my 12yo's reading comprehension at this point. Cap. XX marks a bit of a jump in the difficulty of the material in FR, though, so I anticipate having to make some changes to our routine at that point. 

We are also studying grammar along a separate track. DS enjoys taking the NLE, so we follow their syllabi for our grammar studies. We've made use of a lot of mnemonic songs (credit for these goes to old boardie tranquility7, who inspired me to think outside the workbook for classical languages), and also exercises suggested by Fr. Reggie Foster and Fr. Paul Distler. In short, we spend a lot more time transforming noun forms into different cases, or changing verbs' number, tense, and person than we do translating from Latin to English or vice versa. DS keeps grammar notebooks for each language, kind of along the lines described by the Bluedorns in an article somewhere, of course I can't find it now! But basically he's building his own grammar reference book as we go along.

Lately, I have been researching more about the role composition used to play in Latin and Greek studies. Fr. Donnelly alluded to this in his book about Jesuit pedagogy, but it has taken me several years to track down old books that actually seem to have the kinds of exercises he might have been talking about. Here's an example for a beginning student: First Latin Writer. And here's an example of where this sort of thing goes once you start reading "real" Latin: Nepos with Imitative Exercises. Well designed exercises of this type seem like an excellent way to get at issues of idiom and style that are not given much attention in current classical language programs.

DS12 has been my very good-natured guinea pig through all this. His sister, aged 10, will start her formal Latin studies in the fall, and I'm hoping to bring all these resources that I've so far been using in a fairly haphazard way, together into a more coherent and efficient plan with schedules and everything on my second time through with her. 

I hope something in there might be of use to someone else! I'd love to hear about it if anyone else is using some out-of-the-box resource for Latin or Greek!

Edited April 16, 2021 by LostCove

[caffeineandbooks]

Wow, what a lot of links!  I'll play: for Latin, though not so much for Greek, there are translations of a number of picture books available.  Note that I am not in a position to evaluate how accurate they might be - though I have high hopes for the James Rumford one at least, based on his glorious picture books.  I've seen, on Amazon and Book Depository:

Green Eggs and Ham / Virent Ova! Viret Perna! (there are other Seuss titles too)

Velveteen Rabbit / Velvetinus Cuniculus (translated and illustrated by James Rumford)

 Where the Wild Things Are / Ubi Fera Sunt

 Winnie Ille Pu

 I also like this site, which has a bunch more: Latini Libri: 10 Latin translations of beloved English classics ~ Good Books for Catholic Kids - even Harry Potter and the Hobbit for those who are well beyond picture books.

[LostintheCosmos]

On 4/16/2021 at 9:00 PM, caffeineandbooks said:

Velveteen Rabbit / Velvetinus Cuniculus (translated and illustrated by James Rumford)

Oh, I'd not seen this one before! Thank you!

[LauraClark]

I am excited to look through those-thank you. This isn't quite a child's resource, but I have been enjoying Luke Ranieri's youtube channel Polymathy. He talks about Latin pronunciation and I find it fascinating. He has another channel ScorpioMartianus where he only talks in Latin in most videos. I haven't looked at that channel yet (I don't know enough Latin quite yet to enjoy these), but I see things like songs from Nightmare Before Christmas-those might be really fun.

[Emily ZL]

This is a very cool list. I am especially intrigued by the picture book translations. So far, we have just been using Song School Latin, Latin for Children, Greek Code Cracker, and Hey Andrew Teach Me Some Greek! I do like having a grammatical pedagogy, but I haven't had a lot of experience with "non traditional" options. (Translation: this sounds like a lot more work for me, lol.) I heard a woman on one of the Pam Barnhill podcasts saying she likes Minimus and other little Latin readers, so I bought it, and I thought it was just so difficult to try to glean meaning from pictures and context. I have studied several languages and definitely have a head for language learning, but I hated it when I didn't have any idea what they were saying and was just supposed to be absorbing it through osmosis. And my child would say "what does this word mean?" And I would have to say I didn't know, and the child is like, "well what the heck am I supposed to do with it if you don't know either?" So I get doing exercises, learning vocab and grammar etc. I get learning prayers and hymns and listening to them. I don't really get reading it or listening to it when it is full of words they don't know. If there's not a direct translation, how are they getting anything? My kids used to watch Madeleine in Spanish and would confidently tell me that "yolak" was hello (what they heard instead of Hola) so I am not sure it wouldn't be counterproductive.. What is the theory, I guess, or is it kind of a "kitchen sink" approach? How much time do you give to this, and do you prioritize it over everything else?

[LauraClark]

56 minutes ago, Emily ZL said:

This is a very cool list. I am especially intrigued by the picture book translations. So far, we have just been using Song School Latin, Latin for Children, Greek Code Cracker, and Hey Andrew Teach Me Some Greek! I do like having a grammatical pedagogy, but I haven't had a lot of experience with "non traditional" options. (Translation: this sounds like a lot more work for me, lol.) I heard a woman on one of the Pam Barnhill podcasts saying she likes Minimus and other little Latin readers, so I bought it, and I thought it was just so difficult to try to glean meaning from pictures and context. I have studied several languages and definitely have a head for language learning, but I hated it when I didn't have any idea what they were saying and was just supposed to be absorbing it through osmosis. And my child would say "what does this word mean?" And I would have to say I didn't know, and the child is like, "well what the heck am I supposed to do with it if you don't know either?" So I get doing exercises, learning vocab and grammar etc. I get learning prayers and hymns and listening to them. I don't really get reading it or listening to it when it is full of words they don't know. If there's not a direct translation, how are they getting anything? My kids used to watch Madeleine in Spanish and would confidently tell me that "yolak" was hello (what they heard instead of Hola) so I am not sure it wouldn't be counterproductive.. What is the theory, I guess, or is it kind of a "kitchen sink" approach? How much time do you give to this, and do you prioritize it over everything else?

I'll be curious to hear what others say. I haven't used picture books yet-I'm like you and the approach you describe would frustrate me and my kids. I thought it might be a fun add on after we get further along in Latin.  I found "Latin History Reader for use with Latin For Children, Primer A" in a stash of books generously given to us. I thought about using it next year for a few weeks as a break from our regular curriculum.  It has a glossary, though.

[Emily ZL]

13 minutes ago, LauraClark said:

I thought about using it next year for a few weeks as a break from our regular curriculum.  It has a glossary, though.

Maybe they all do? Maybe I just don't know how to use these things?

[LauraClark]

Just now, Emily ZL said:

Maybe they all do? Maybe I just don't know how to use these things?

Oh, that's true. I've never actually looked at one. I still would never use them as an actual teaching curriculum tool, but maybe a fun supplement.

[Emily ZL]

12 hours ago, LauraClark said:

I am excited to look through those-thank you. This isn't quite a child's resource, but I have been enjoying Luke Ranieri's youtube channel Polymathy. He talks about Latin pronunciation and I find it fascinating. He has another channel ScorpioMartianus where he only talks in Latin in most videos. I haven't looked at that channel yet (I don't know enough Latin quite yet to enjoy these), but I see things like songs from Nightmare Before Christmas-those might be really fun.

But here's another issue -- which pronunciation? The perennial question. Modern Greek, spoken, is nothing at all like koine Greek. Classical Latin is an 1800s model based on what they could glean from ancient poetry. If you want to go far in Latin in college it's the best, the gold standard. But Ecclesiastical Latin is the only one being really used today, and it's still highly in use in the Church if you're Catholic, and if you're into the Latin mass or even the Novus Ordo in Latin you might be using it daily or weekly. I wonder what all the conversational options are in. 

[LostintheCosmos]

3 hours ago, Emily ZL said:

But here's another issue -- which pronunciation?

I don't think you need to stress about this - the differences really aren't that great. Among Latin speakers, other than some Catholics, everyone pretty much uses classical. In our family, my son tends to use ecclesiastical because he's used to it from serving the Latin mass, but I'm used to classical, so that's what I use! The thing that's most important for future reading ability is getting a sense for the accents and vowel length - listening to a lot of audio by some who is particular about their accent and pronunciation is the best way to get a feel for this. But in speaking, most people are not as particular about their pronunciation as Luke Ranieri!

5 hours ago, Emily ZL said:

If there's not a direct translation, how are they getting anything? My kids used to watch Madeleine in Spanish and would confidently tell me that "yolak" was hello (what they heard instead of Hola) so I am not sure it wouldn't be counterproductive.. What is the theory, I guess, or is it kind of a "kitchen sink" approach? How much time do you give to this, and do you prioritize it over everything else?

The theory of "comprehensible input" (CI) is that you acquire language (this is considered to be a different cognitive process from learning or studying the grammar of another language) through many, many, many "comprehensible" messages over time which gradually build up your mental model of the language. It is really an unconscious process, more similar to how we learned our mother tongue than how we generally think of learning a second language. A comprehensible message is one in which the recipient understands what it means - he doesn't have to understand why or explain the grammar or translate it word for word for it to "count." Most of the picture books mentioned in this thread would not be simple enough to be comprehensible input for a beginner - you have to start really simple!

Here is a playlist from Luke Ranieri that would be appropriate CI for a new Latin student, and here is one for Greek. The Paideia Institute also has some videos demonstrating how this method can look, for example this one. And this is a pretty thorough article applying the idea of comprehensible input to Latin in greater detail if you are interested in more about the specifics of the theory. 

I've done some study of ancient Greek via this method and it works! But it takes A LOT of input. And it definitely felt very different from how I learned Latin in high school. I do prioritize it in our homeschool, and it does take more effort on my part - there is not a pre-made program that does this effectively. Given my goals, I believe it has been worth it. But I definitely don't think it has to be all or nothing! Even a little bit can be a fun and useful supplement to a more conventional Latin program. 

[LauraClark]

11 hours ago, Emily ZL said:

But here's another issue -- which pronunciation? The perennial question. Modern Greek, spoken, is nothing at all like koine Greek. Classical Latin is an 1800s model based on what they could glean from ancient poetry. If you want to go far in Latin in college it's the best, the gold standard. But Ecclesiastical Latin is the only one being really used today, and it's still highly in use in the Church if you're Catholic, and if you're into the Latin mass or even the Novus Ordo in Latin you might be using it daily or weekly. I wonder what all the conversational options are in. 

Luke Ranieri would say either Latin pronunciation is fine-Ecclesiastical or Classical. He speaks a lot of Latin and goes to conventions of Latin and says he has no trouble understanding either pronunciation-kind of like how is we're from the Midwest we have no trouble understanding someone with a southern accent and vice-versa. 

[Emily ZL]

This makes sense! I think you are all very right about the pronunciation. I always thought it was much ado about nothing. 

I like the idea of supplementing and I need to check these ideas out. Hearing it spoken definitely gives you a feel for the language that isn't just "decoding."

I'm just musing out loud now, but... any time you are talking about learning Latin, I think there is an unspoken question as to "Why??" in the background, and depending on how a family or teacher answers that, it may really impact how you teach. If it's for vocab/word roots and test prep, or as an extended brain-training/logical exercise, or because it's what classical educators did for 1800 years, or to make learning other romance languages easier, or to be able to speak and read fluently, or because you just love it. 

[Lawyer&Mom]

Here is a link to additional Latin Readers that are in the public domain:

http://hiberna-cr.wikidot.com/reading-material

I found this adorable beginning reader on his list:

https://archive.org/details/MN40039ucmf_6/page/n18/mode/1up

Who doesn’t want to practice Latin by reading about a little American girl named Cornelia?

50 pages of story with pictures, comprehension questions (in Latin!), and a full vocabulary in the back.  Free for the cost of printing.  There is an textbook by the same author that also uses a reading approach.

 

 

 

[LauraClark]

On 4/16/2021 at 10:36 AM, LostCove said:

There are a growing number of resources out there for studying classical languages, many inspired by modern research in second language acquisition, that I don't see mentioned among homeschoolers much, so I thought I would start a thread to highlight some and maybe discuss how to use them - I have lots of ideas but am still working on getting them into regular routines and habits. My goal is for us to spend some time reading, speaking, hearing, and writing each language every day. I've been particularly inspired by the methods of Alexander Arguelles; he is a largely self-taught polyglot with a lot of useful advice for studying languages outside a traditional classroom or tutoring setting.

Textbooks

Lots of neat vintage Latin textbooks online these days. We use Oerburg as our primary textbook, but I also like Latin by the Natural Method and Waldo Sweet's pre-Artes Latinae books. 

Seumus Macdonald is working on a Greek textbook in the spirit of Oerburg: Lingua Graeca Per Se Illustrata. While that gets written, we are mostly using the Italian edition of Athenaze (it has far more reading material than the English edition). I also like the look of Alexandros. 

Reading

Many intrepid Latin teachers are out there writing simple Latin books to use for extensive reading, and a few Greek teachers are doing the same. These are not great literature and you want to be a little cautious because some are of questionable Latinity and have content that is not appropriate for all ages, but you could think about their purpose similarly to decodable readers in teaching a child to read English. In our house, I have a shelf of these along with some other Latin reading options (vintage Latin readers and textbooks with longer passages, the Vulgate, a few novels translated into Latin, etc), and my Latin student is required to read something from the shelf for a set period of time everyday. 

Fr. Pavur has an ever-growing number of ebooks, many of them with interlinear or facing-page translations, which makes them perfect for Arguelles' methods. 

Audio

Evan der Millner has been around for a while and has so much Latin audio at this point, including on his youtube channel.

Luke Ranieri has various Latin and Greek audio and a whole course for LLPSI Roma Aeterna - there's a lot of free stuff on his youtube channel also, including audio for all of Familia Romana and Athenaze.

David Ring has a lot of Greek on his patreon and curated on his youtube channel.  

We've enjoyed Magister Craft's videos.

We are also experimenting with creating our own recordings. DS12 is really enjoying this.

Here is our general routine: my student has a section each of Familia Romana and Athenaze assigned for the week. Every day, he reads the section and listens to it read by Luke Ranieri on youtube. Once a week, he sits with me and I make sure he understands it - I am looking for accurate comprehension, not ability to parse and explain all aspects of the grammar. He also has copywork, dictation, or composition in each language daily. He also has an "FVR" (free voluntary reading) period in both languages.

As a family, so with kids ages 3-12, we also do some TPR (Andrew Campbell's Latine Loquor is an easy to use resource that can get you started with this, and the Polis Institute's Polis and Forum books have some helpful TPR material), sing sea shanties in Greek and Latin, have some Latin read alouds, and attend liturgies in Latin. 

It took me a while to figure out this routine, but now we are in Cap. XVII of Familia Romana, and I am really pleased with my 12yo's reading comprehension at this point. Cap. XX marks a bit of a jump in the difficulty of the material in FR, though, so I anticipate having to make some changes to our routine at that point. 

We are also studying grammar along a separate track. DS enjoys taking the NLE, so we follow their syllabi for our grammar studies. We've made use of a lot of mnemonic songs (credit for these goes to old boardie tranquility7, who inspired me to think outside the workbook for classical languages), and also exercises suggested by Fr. Reggie Foster and Fr. Paul Distler. In short, we spend a lot more time transforming noun forms into different cases, or changing verbs' number, tense, and person than we do translating from Latin to English or vice versa. DS keeps grammar notebooks for each language, kind of along the lines described by the Bluedorns in an article somewhere, of course I can't find it now! But basically he's building his own grammar reference book as we go along.

Lately, I have been researching more about the role composition used to play in Latin and Greek studies. Fr. Donnelly alluded to this in his book about Jesuit pedagogy, but it has taken me several years to track down old books that actually seem to have the kinds of exercises he might have been talking about. Here's an example for a beginning student: First Latin Writer. And here's an example of where this sort of thing goes once you start reading "real" Latin: Nepos with Imitative Exercises. Well designed exercises of this type seem like an excellent way to get at issues of idiom and style that are not given much attention in current classical language programs.

DS12 has been my very good-natured guinea pig through all this. His sister, aged 10, will start her formal Latin studies in the fall, and I'm hoping to bring all these resources that I've so far been using in a fairly haphazard way, together into a more coherent and efficient plan with schedules and everything on my second time through with her. 

I hope something in there might be of use to someone else! I'd love to hear about it if anyone else is using some out-of-the-box resource for Latin or Greek!

Now that I've had a chance to look through these I see you also mentioned Luke Ranieri's videos - oops, sorry to duplicate that!

I've been interested in doing Familia Romana for myself and I like the idea of listening to Luke Ranieri read it. I love to listen to his Latin, it is very inspiring to me.  

Explain how Athenaze works. I am never able to navigate Oxford University Press.  How can I see a sample?

A lot of these links are very much over my head - tell me there's hope for me in the future - ha!  @LostCove: do you have a Latin background?  I'm just learning as I go with ds9 and we just started last year.  I would love to know your full plan for dd10 when you have it figured out.  How long do your son's Latin and Greek studies take a day?

[LauraClark]

7 hours ago, Lawyer&Mom said:

Here is a link to additional Latin Readers that are in the public domain:

http://hiberna-cr.wikidot.com/reading-material

I found this adorable beginning reader on his list:

https://archive.org/details/MN40039ucmf_6/page/n18/mode/1up

Who doesn’t want to practice Latin by reading about a little American girl named Cornelia?

50 pages of story with pictures, comprehension questions (in Latin!), and a full vocabulary in the back.  Free for the cost of printing.  There is an textbook by the same author that also uses a reading approach.

 

 

 

How fun are these!  I can almost read Cornelia!!!!  And I don't even have much Latin knowledge. That is very exciting. I will definitely be doing these as supplements next year.

[LostintheCosmos]

15 hours ago, LauraClark said:

Now that I've had a chance to look through these I see you also mentioned Luke Ranieri's videos - oops, sorry to duplicate that!

I've been interested in doing Familia Romana for myself and I like the idea of listening to Luke Ranieri read it. I love to listen to his Latin, it is very inspiring to me.  

Explain how Athenaze works. I am never able to navigate Oxford University Press.  How can I see a sample?

A lot of these links are very much over my head - tell me there's hope for me in the future - ha!  @LostCove: do you have a Latin background?  I'm just learning as I go with ds9 and we just started last year.  I would love to know your full plan for dd10 when you have it figured out.  How long do your son's Latin and Greek studies take a day?

I'm glad you linked to his Polymathy channel, too - there's some neat stuff there. I liked this video about using extensive reading to study any language. 

Athenaze is probably the closest complete text out there to Familia Romana for Greek, although it's still not that close and has conventional grammar discussions. The Italian version, which you can order via amazon.it, has the disadvantage that all the grammar explanations and the glossary are in Italian, of course, but the advantage is they have further "Orberg-ized" the text, by adding helpful marginal notes along the lines of Familia Romana and by adding quite a bit more reading material. Ranieri's Athenaze videos show the pages from the Italian edition. I can try to take some pictures of my OUP edition later for you to compare. 

I did study Latin in high school, and a little bit in college, but Greek is new to me. DS12 spends roughly an hour a day on each language, plus his free reading time, which right now is another 30 minutes. I kind of dream of putting together lesson plans for some of these resources that would make them more accessible to homeschoolers, but I probably need to practice on a few more of my own kids first. 

On 4/20/2021 at 11:10 AM, Emily ZL said:

I'm just musing out loud now, but... any time you are talking about learning Latin, I think there is an unspoken question as to "Why??" in the background, and depending on how a family or teacher answers that, it may really impact how you teach. If it's for vocab/word roots and test prep, or as an extended brain-training/logical exercise, or because it's what classical educators did for 1800 years, or to make learning other romance languages easier, or to be able to speak and read fluently, or because you just love it. 

This is so true! There are lots of good reasons to study classical languages, and being clear about your "why" helps you select your method and materials with confidence. 

Edited April 21, 2021 by LostCove