All Those Latin Endings!

Many people are aware of Paul Diederich's Word Frequency count and the Whitaker's Words dictionary web applet that has been built upon it. Diederich also did an Ending Frequency, which includes a list of Eighteen Common Endings as well as a set of Rules Governing Variable Endings, plus The Twenty Two Rare Endings and some Penultimate Signs. If you are having trouble getting all those inflections straight in your head, you might want to take a look at The Frquency of Latin Words and Their Endings.

Practice Your Declensions!

The Latin Library has a simple online quizlet for practicing the five Latin declensions.

Colonial American Latin Curriculum

Cheever's Accidence was an elementary Latin grammar, studied by students at Boston Latin School in the early colonial period. According to John A. Nietz, in his book The Evolution of American Secondary School Textbooks, students also studied forms and syntax in more depth in Lily's Latin Grammar, practiced spoken Latin from Corderius' Colloquies and read Aesop's Fables in Latin. You can find a copy of Cheever's Accidence at the Stepping Heavenward blog.

View some sample curricula from the early American period.

The Classics Department at Holy Cross College has an extensive website, Latin in Early America, describing how the Classics were taught in the 17th and 18th centuries in America.

Memoria Press First Form Latin

Memoria Press has just published a new Latin curriculum, First Form Latin. Known for their adherence to "grammar-first" principles, this program will eventually add a DVD component as well. A follow-up volume, Second Form Latin, is planned as well. See sample pages from their student textbook and workbook as well as the teacher's manual, plus examine a sample First Form Recitation at Memoria Press.

Teaching Latin Efficiently

Thomas M. Hayes shares a fascinating article on his wiki, Ut Discamus Omnes, entitled "Skinning the Latin Cat." This is a fascinating discussion regarding the two concepts of "disambiguation" and "economy" in teaching Latin morphology, which is a very fancy way of saying "Which endings do we concentrate most of our energy teaching to our students so that they can read and understand Latin efficiently and quickly?" Hayes compares the huge collection of grammatical endings in Latin to a big hardware store full of tools, some that are more likely to be used than others. It's a fascinating article and he discusses some experimentation he has done in the classroom as well as the ramifications of an approach that considers the "bottom line" when teaching forms.

Classis, Autumn 2009, Volume XVI, No. 3 on the Teaching of Latin

Thanks to Karen Moore's Latin Alive! blog for pointing this journal out!

The Autumn 2009 issue of Classis, the quarterly journal of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, Volume XVI, No. 3, is a special edition featuring articles focusing on the teaching of Latin.

The issue opens with an excerpt from Dorothy Sayer's "Lost Tools of Learning" followed by six articles on Latin pedagogy:

1) Latin: Training Skilled Communicators (Patch Blakey, ACCS)
2) Latin: Beyond the SAT Score (Peter H. Vande Brake, North Hills Classical Academy)
3) The Best Way to Improve Any Latin Class (Timothy L. Griffith, New St. Andrews College)
4) Latin III at Westminster Academy (Michael Johnson, Westminster Academy)
5) Interdisciplinary Measures: the Integration of Latin (Ginny Kent, Covenant Classical Christian School)
6) How 'Bout Them Apples (Eric Indgjerd, The Oaks: A Classical Christian Academy)

"The Best Way to Improve Any Latin Class" is particularly interesting: "The first and most important task of a Latin teacher is to learn Latin himself." Mr. Griffith gives suggestions for a program of study for Latin teachers which includes rigorous attention to grammar and vocabulary, daily reading, and attendance at a Conventiculum.

"How 'Bout Them Apples" sings the praises of Hans Oerberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, as a text that enables teachers to teach and students to learn "Latin Latinly in the classroom." Mr. Indgjerd sympathizes with Dorothy Sayers, who grieved that classical Latin remained puzzling even after nearly two decades of study and suggests that if she had been able to use Oerberg's method, she would have found her studies more fruitful.

(Escondido Tutorial Service has the full text of Sayer's Lost Tools of Learning online.)

Does Grammar Help Shape How We Experience the World?

Listen to the most recent broadcast of National Public Radio's Krulwich on Science ("Shakespeare Had Roses All Wrong," April 6, 2009) for a fascinating discussion of how grammar affects how we experience the world. Do speakers of languages with grammatical gender may perceive their environment differently depending upon the gender assigned to specific words? You'll have to listen to the broadcast to find out the answer.

Felicem festum diem anniversarium, Strunk and White!

Gaudeamus, Grammar Geeks! (Let's party, Word Nerds!) This April marks the 50th anniversary of the college classic Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White!

Remembering the Present Subjunctive

In a recent Latinteach discussion, teachers shared the following memory tricks for remember the signature vowels used for the present subjunctive (E, EA, A, and IA):

• shE wEArs A dIAmond...
• hE hEArs A pIAno...
• wE fEAr All lIArs...
• wE fEAr A lIAr... (used in Wheelock's Latin)
• lEt's bEAt thAt gIAnt... (used in Latin for Americans)
• lEt's EAt cAvIAr...
• wE EAt cAvIAr...
• wE fEAr A trIAl...
  
• wE bEAt All lIArs...
• hE chEAts A lIAr...
  
• wE bEAt A frIAr...
• shE rEAds A dIAry
• shE wEArs A tIAra...
• clEm StEAms ClAms in SIAm ...
• wE bEAt A gIAnt lIAr...(All the rest take into account the 3rd-io conjugation.)
• shE wEArs A dIAmond tIAra...
  
• shE wEArs A gIAnt dIAmond...
  
• lEt's bEAt thAt gIAnt gIAnt... (And these two are hortatory subjunctive sentences.)
  
• lEt's bEAt A lIAr, frIAr...
  

Review your Latin Grammar in Song!

The energetic teachers and students at Somerset Hills School District in Bernardsville, New Jersey, have put together a wonderful collection of Latin language resources! Included you will find helpful noun and verb charts and some clever songs to make it easier for you to remember noun and verb endings!

Latin Declension and Conjugation Review Sheets

Homeschooling mom Angelina from Louisiana has posted a schedule of lesson plans for the Latina Christiana curriculum as well as some handy declension and conjugation review sheets on her blog Permanent Things.

New Games at FreeRice!

FreeRice.com, in partnership with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the United Nations World Food Program, is an educational website that donates rice to the UN Program to End World Hunger. The way it works is that everytime you answer a question correctly, FreeRice's sponsors donate 20 grains of rice to help feed the starving and hungry.

FreeRice has been around for a while and started out with only an English vocabulary game. Recently, more games have been added: art, chemistry, geography, and math, English grammar, and language learning (French, German, Italian and Spanish.) Unfortunately, there's no Latin game yet, but your knowledge of Latin grammar and vocabulary will definitely help you with the English grammar and vocabulary games!

What's the Word?

Those who are just starting out learning Latin often want to know what vocabulary is most important to learn. Every textbook uses a different list.

Here are a few sites with high-frequency word lists for Latin students.

• Latin Teaching Materials at St. Louis University An incredible site that you will want to bookmark and refer to often. You'll find a list of high frequency Latin word forms, organized vocabulary grids correlated to Wheelock's Latin, advice for learning and retaining vocabulary, and much, much more. There are also loads of grammar and syntax charts, diagrams, synopses and exercises, elementary readers, timelines, essays, and even some software. Designed and maintained by Claude Pavur.
• Anne Mahoney's Two Hundred Essential Latin Words An organized list of the most important words to learn in Latin, accounting for nearly 50% of the words in a typical prose text. Also see Anne's list of Resources for Students of Latin which includes acompilation of the 1000 Core Latin Words (created using the Perseus Latin Vocabulary tool described below) and her method for using flashcards to organize words.
  
• The Latinum Podcast On Latinum you will find a section labelled 'GCSE', which is the vocabulary for the UK GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) Latin exam. This is a vocab of around 350 words, and is a good starting place. The words are presented in audio format, so the students learn correct quantity from the word go.
• OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations) maintains vocabulary lists for students seeking qualifications in Latin.
• Professor Robert W. Ulery of Wake Forest has several vocabulary lists of words everyone should know.
• Professor Emerita C.A.E. Luschnig's Vocabula Course in Vocabulary Building Organized in 5 parts including basic vocabulary, prefixes, verb formation, noun formation, adjective formation and review.
• The Latin Library has a wonderful collection of Vocabulary (and Grammar) handouts. Particularly useful vocabulary lists include compilations of Verba Parva et Difficilia, prepositions and the "Q" words. There are also vocabulary lists keyed to specific curricula.
• The Independent Schools Examination Board administers the Common Entrance exam, which is an examination taken by British students at the ages of 11+ to 13+ for the purpose of placement into independent schools. See the Classics syllabus for the required Latin and Classical Greek grammar, syntax as well as vocabulary lists.

Don't forget the Perseus Vocabulary Tool which allows you to make tables and comma-delimited files of vocabulary words in selected Latin texts. You can sort in alphabetical order or by frequency or make key term lists. There are all sorts of things the Perseus Vocabulary Tool can do!

Of course, the best tool for learning vocabulary is a good Latin dictionary. If you have a lot of spare change and plan a career as a Classicist, the Oxford Latin Dictionary is highly recommended. However, at nearly ten pounds, it's not exactly portable. C.T. Lewis' Elementary Latin Dictionary, at about 1.8 pounds, is a bit lighter, but still not a book you'd want to carry around in a backpack or briefcase. The Bantam New College Latin and English Dictionary, by John Traupman is in its third edition and is a very nice, mass-market sized paperback dictionary that I use all the time. You can generally find it in most bookstores for about six dollars.

Some More Mnemonics

Not sure how this got missed previously, but here are some great memory chants from Kentucky Educational Television Distance Learning to to help students remember some of the more confusing points of Latin grammar!

More Latin Study Materials

Have you seen Baylor University's Department of Classics Latin Study Materials? Here you'll find worksheets, study guides and grammar songs!

Tips for Reading Latin

Ginny Lindzey has designed some wonderful bookmarks with tips for reading Latin, based on Dexter Hoyos' book Latin How to Read it Fluently. Get your bookmarks at the University of Georgia's Latin SANDALS site (scroll down) -- and be sure to check out the other materials available there!

Grammar Songs for the New School Year!

Latin teachers always seem to be in search of ways to help their students remember all those declensions and conjugations.

David Pelligrino has a collection of Latin Teaching Songs, covering noun declensions, prepositions, personal endings, intransitive verbs, a plethora of pronouns and question words. Especially noteworthy is the Preposition Song (sung to the melody of Ode to Joy by Beethoven), but they are all fun!

Magistra Mattingly has her students Sing Their Way Through Latin Grammar with a songs set to the tunes of the opening themes to Gilligan's Island and the Beverly Hillbillies.

Nota bene: The aforementioned sites include lyrics only.

Don't forget about the Endless Noun Ending Song, which is available in MP3 format, for listening to online.

A Latin Wiki

John Muccigrosso has set up a Latin Wiki. A Wiki is a web-page that multiple users can edit. This Latin Wiki was set up for the purpose of collecting useful things for teaching and learning Latin. here you'll find a collection of sentences that provide examples of various syntactic and semantic constructions in Latin. This could be very handy for those of you who are teaching or learning more advanced grammar, such as ablative absolute, future passive periphrastics, subjunctive clauses, all the different types of pronouns, irregular verbs, etc.