Learn Latin

Latin was the lingua franca of the intellectuals of the late medieval and Reformation period. Today, we have better resources than ever for learning different languages, including Latin. In addition to conventional textbooks, there are several sites on the internet devoted to such topics. One must only do a search on expressions like “learning Latin” to find several interesting resources. Below, I have picked three among the most unusual ones.

1. Latinum, an online Latin course, where you can improve your skills by listening. Includes a major part of George Adler’s textbook of conversational Latin. Lessons can be downloaded as podcasts or listened directly from the webpage.

2. If you want to improve both your daily prayer life and Latin skills, Vatican radio broadcasts daily laudes, vesperae and completorium, directly from Rome. You can listen to each broadcast any time after the recording has become available, usually within an hour.

3. Each Friday, the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) sends the news review in Latin. The weekly Nuntii latini is also available in both written and audible form on a webpage.

One thought on “Learn Latin

  1. I see that Boris Johnson, the new London Mayor wants Latin to be taught in all London schools. However I would prefer Esperanto on the basis that it helps all language learning.

    Five British schools have introduced Esperanto in order to test its propaedeutic values. The pilot project is being monitored by the University of Manchester and the initial encouraging results can be seen at http://www.springboard2languages.org/Summary%20of%20evaluation,%20S2L%20Phase%201.pdf
    You might also like to see http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8837438938991452670

    Pope Benedict also used this language this year in his Urbi et Orbi address from the Vatican, at Christmas.

    If you have time can I ask you to visit http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU or http://www.lernu.net Professor Piron was a translator for the United Nations in Geneva.

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