Latin by the Dowling Method
24th December 2021
For those of you whose educations were deficient.
Advice from a veteran:
- The key to memorization is repetition.
- The key to memorization is repetition.
- The key to memorization is repetition.
- What I tell you three times is true.
- With respect to verbs, whenever you see ‘mood’ pronounce it ‘mode’ out loud; eventually when you see ‘mood’ you will hear ‘mode’ in your head and the amount of confusion in your life will dramatically decrease. (If I ever find the guy who tagged this aspect of the verb with such a confusing name, I will smite him with a mighty smite.)
- For daily practice, try describing what you are looking at in Latin. If you see a white house, think ‘domus albus’. If you see a car go down the street, think ‘carrus movet’. You’ll be amazed at what this will do for your fluency.
- In addition to Lingua Latina, real from the Vulgate version of the Bible. This has two advantages – (1) You already know the story, so it will be easy to pick up, and (2) Like Koine Greek, Vulgate Latin is simpler in grammar and vocabulary than full-blown Classical literature, similar to the relationship between a newspaper and literary fiction. (If you want to read the actual news in Latin, there is a Finnish site where you can do that.) You can shell out for a print copy (Novum Testamentum Latine) or you can be cheap (like me) and use a Bible study site (I use Blue Letter Bible) for free.
- For learning vocabulary there are a number of free apps that will help you do that, or you can create your own spaced-repetition exercises using Anki Notes or equivalent.
December 25th, 2021 at 10:31
I studied Latin in high school and Greek in college, which gives you an idea of how superannuated I am. I’m told there was a time when almost everyone studied them, but those days were over before I was born. In fact, the French teacher I’d had in junior high school flipped out when she found out I was taking Latin in high school. “What are you ever going to do with LATIN?” she demanded disapprovingly. I understood her bias in favor of French, but even then I couldn’t understand her animus against Latin.
As for Greek, if people nowadays studied it for even a week or two, they wouldn’t have so much trouble pronouncing the word “omicron.”
December 25th, 2021 at 11:58
On my first day of Greek in college the teacher went around the room and asked everybody ‘Why are you learning Greek?’ Me being a snot, I said ‘To be civilized.’ He shook his head. ‘No, you learn Latin to be civilized. You learn Greek to be educated.’
December 26th, 2021 at 10:51
I love it.
By the way, the junior high school French teacher referred to above had a husband who taught in the foreign language department at the local college, which made her disparagement of Latin even more bizarre.
I never bothered to find out the opinion of the Spanish teacher I’d had in junior high. (I took Spanish in 7th grade, French in 8th. It’s a long story.)
A favorite quote: “In one hundred years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching Remedial English in college”. —Joseph Sobran
January 2nd, 2022 at 09:30
If you look at Donatus, Ars Minor, on the verb, you find it is indeed “mode” not “mood”! http://www.intratext.com/IXT/LAT0192/_P3.HTM
January 2nd, 2022 at 15:43
And, indeed, that is where I got the idea.
January 4th, 2022 at 14:10
[…] – indicative, subjunctive, imperative, and so on. Partly this came about after I read a blog post on the Dyspepsia Generation blog, on “Latin by the Dowling method”, whatever that might be. The blog as a whole is a […]