Latin resources

I've only really been doing my new languages passively at the moment (need to work on that for Chinese for sure!) so my list of resources isn't massive, but I can already offer a few useful pointers. Today I'll start with Latin.

THE BIG ONE: Assimil's Le Latin

This is currently my primary source. I'm using the 2010 edition by Ducos-Fillipi listed here on Assimil.com. After having used it for a few weeks I felt qualified enough to write a review for a book website, which I've reproduced below the resources section. The short version is: I do recommend it, but just get the book itself. It's 25 euros from Assimil's own website, which isn't bad, but you'll find it cheaper on other websites like bookdepository.co.uk (they also have the older edition which has better support in the Latin learning community) and fishpond.com.au. Maybe even Amazon will have a good price on it. Who knows! Stranger things have happened!

One other note that wasn't in my review - it takes until lesson 62 to start getting much at all from the classical writers that are, after all, the whole point of learning Classical Latin, right? But at least from what I can tell, it's pretty much sections of the classics all the way out from there.[UPDATE: I've since found a few earlier passages which are based on classical authors - lessons 39, 41 and 45 are all I've noticed so far. However, 39 was more "inspired by" than based on. Lesson 41 seems to be a lot closer to the passage it's based on, and I assume they just get progressively closer to the original passage in later lessons, though I can't confirm that yet.]

Oh, wait, one important final note - it's in French. If your French is like mine (maybe, with a month or three of part-time study, I could pass the B2 exam in French, with the ability to read French novels with looking up plenty of words), then it should mostly be smooth sailing. I've only looked up one or two things in the first 28 lessons. Mostly, I can tell what is meant from context as well. It's a shame some of Assimil's catalogue isn't more widely available because their unique format should help disrupt the dumbed down modern book courses we usually find... But I digress...

Web Dictionaries

You can find a few of these for Latin->English. This one was sort of OK, but so far they've left me kind of cold. The interfaces are clunky and you need to know the base "dictionary" part of speech, which I'm getting a feel for, but I'd rather just put in the exact part of speech and see some quotes in context. LUCKILY, I learnt German first, because the best online dictionaries I've found so far have been in German. There's Latein.me and the Pons set of dictionaries which has Latin to German as well as a bunch of other language combinations. This one is my favourite, but they both do a neat job of looking up the part of speech and giving you some quotes.

Online Radio

This is perhaps the most surprising of all. After all these thousands of years, and in this age of communication that would have seemed almost magical to the Romans, there are still TWO radio broadcasts in Europe in Latin. The one that everyone normally mentions is this one from Finland, but I prefer the one from, you guessed it, Germany, on Radio Bremen's Latin page, which has translations of their articles into German and a proper RSS feed for the podcasts which is convenient for me. There is actually another German radio station which makes this same podcast available, but I found this one to be better. Both radio broadcasts suffer from an influence of the native language on the pronunciation, but, the German one at least (and possibly the Finnish - I haven't listened to theirs much) is spoken slowly and clearly. No, I don't intend to learn to speak and understand spoken Latin, but with probably a bit of initial work to study the news I will be able to listen to these podcasts as I drive to reinforce some of my other learning

Progress Update

I can't let a post go by without a status update, so here it is. I've finished lesson 28 in Le Latin and lesson 30 in Chinese with Ease. The latter has really picked up the tempo so it takes more time to shadow the lessons without obvious errors which I really expected, but it's a new challenge. I do need to spend much more time working on pronunciation and getting those tones CONSISTENT because I usually surprise my co-workers in a bad way when I try to say something new :-)

To help with my German I've decided to take audio snippets out of movies and translate them and then memorise them and their translations (roughly - I don't need to be word perfect!) to hopefully improve my understand of movie dialogues in general. I'll add new words along the way, of course. I'm also up to page 155 in "Das Todeskreuz". It's quite slow because reading it is low down on my priority list. I really need to give myself more time each day just to read because I'm really enjoying the story. And, of course, I still listen to a variety of podcasts in German, with the occasional Latin news thrown in just for kicks (but without much comprehension!). 

What else? My Anki reviews have suffered for a variety of reasons but the main one is that it doesn't work properly on my Nokia N97's Symbian browser anymore. The Chinese characters don't work at all, but even the German and Latin are all screwed up and slow to use compared to before. I do hope to have an Android phone soon, but I will have to hope that the AnkiDroid version comes out before that!

I would like some suggestions for interesting Chinese language podcasts on a variety of topics (I usually like science, the environment and world history and culture) and would love some with a Chinese perspective, although this isn't a high priority as comprehension is quite a way off. Also, of course, a good Mandarin news broadcast would be great! It should have RSS podcast feeds along with transcripts. Please drop your suggestions in the comments below!

To finish, here's my review of early review of Le Latin as promised. Other people's opinions are most welcome!

My Review of Le Latin

The book itself is excellent and really uses the Assimil method to its full advantage. I would like to see more classical authors being introduced early on in as minimally modified a form as possible to add interest to each lesson, as surely that's the main thing people will want to do after the course, but the lessons themselves are clear, concise and well thought out. The progression feels very natural and you get a feeling for latin word order, etc, early on, which is a great way to speed up your passive understanding for reading speed. It introduces the rules through use, and then later on revises those rules that you will have garnered through the lessons. You are meant, in theory, to do one lesson every day, and every seventh lesson is a revision lesson, which is the standard Assimil format. I am only in the early stages of the book, but I'm confident that I'll reach my goal of being able to read the more straightforward classics by the end of the course (with the help of a dictionary if necessary) which is exactly what I want.

However, I think people should probably not bother with the audio CDs. You can get the book on its own for a lot cheaper direct from assimil.com or perhaps somewhere else. Obviously, I don't plan on ever speaking Latin or needing to comprehend it in anything other than written form, but I figured that having the audio would just be an extra reinforcement for what I've learnt from the book which I can listen too while driving. However, although the recording quality is high (like all Assimil products) and the speakers seem to do their best most of the time, I find listening to it frustrating rather than reinforcing. The speakers do a pretty good job of putting on a classical latin accent, but they make various mistakes (french-style ones - like not pronouncing the "s" at the end of "klaras" in the phrase "klaras deorum fabulas", although the speaker didn't miss the final one). This means that you need to listen to the audio while reading a couple of times to pick out these mistakes and then to be able to recognise what's being said.

The other problem is that although the speaking speed is usually OK, words are sometimes run together or slightly mumbled, or nasalised where they shouldn't be (one speaker says "ambulant" in a very french way!). I would have thought that the focus for the recording wouldn't really be on trying to make it sound like a real-life conversation but rather on extremely clear and precise enunciation. Each letter should be very easily heard in each word, as learners won't need to get used to classical latin being used in any high-speed real world context, so the audio should just be a way to reinforce the learning through another medium, and to help people make best use of time when they can't read.

This all sounds quite negative, but actually the audio isn't totally useless, just that it's not quite what I expected, or what I think it should really be, and could be improved in a future edition. If you can get it cheap I'd say it's still worth having, but if I had known then what I know now I would just have bought the book on its own without the CDs and saved the extra money.