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January 2010 Blog Posts (7)

Fluency in Latin

Regarding the issue of fluency - my general experience has been that those who are self taught seem to a have more sensible goals, and a more sensible methodology for studying Latin, than students taught in most school programmes. Through not knowing any better, they are aiming for in Latin what they would expect to aim for in French, German etc - an ability to command the language, its vocabulary,and its idioms.

It is a very educational experience to click through the profiles of… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on January 31, 2010 at 9:06am — 3 Comments

Greek Podcast

Some months ago, we had a discussion about a Greek podcast - someone from Eclassics started producing the course from Kendrick, and I was hopeful, when suddenly, after a few lessons were posted online, the whole thing vanished into thin air, and the person producing it disappeared off the edge of the earth. Anyway, Latinum is now pretty well established, and I want to improve my Greek - so I am starting work on a new Greek podcast - it will use Kendrick's Greek Ollendorff, and some other stuff… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on January 28, 2010 at 7:00pm — 3 Comments

A little rant I wrote earlier

Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of European history, would know that Latin was taught orally, and used actively as a spoken second language, uninterruptedly from Roman times, until well into the late 1700’s. Universities across Europe conducted all their business in Latin as well. In some European countries, this tradition continued into the mid 1800’s. Waquet’s “Empire of the Sign” is instructive reading. Certain schools forbad speaking anything but Latin on the school premises. It… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on January 28, 2010 at 6:28am — No Comments

ΔIAΛOΓOI ATTIKOI

Latinum also has a new social network site ( It has been in the planning for a long time) where only ATTIC GREEK (Classical Greek), Classical Hebrew, and Latin many be used. This social network (which shares its chatroom with Schola) is called ΔIAΛOΓOI ATTIKOI

Added by Latinum Institute on January 26, 2010 at 5:00am — No Comments

Latinum Interface Page

New home page for Latinum, setting out the project more simply and clearly.

Added by Latinum Institute on January 23, 2010 at 10:34am — No Comments

Sign "pro Auriga"!

I write this post to ask you to sign a request in favor of the magazine Auriga. The Generalitat government had subsidized the subscriptions of this magazine so that it arrived to all the Catalan Lycees. But now they say that they don't want to pay the magazine to any school... And this magazine is going to die in a brief course of time. We found very little solidarity. I speak about this in my personal blog… Continue

Added by Ramon Torné Teixidó on January 19, 2010 at 3:30pm — No Comments

More thoughts on the locutorium

The locutorium is an open space - anyone can enter, if they are a member of Schola, and can use it as they wish. You are warmly invited to come along in, and make of it what you will. It is an open space, and has no 'owners'

The only rule is 'Latine tantum' - Latin only. It is the only universally intelligible language the users of the chatroom have.

Technology

There is a synergy of new technologies that has made this possible - three or four years ago, what we… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on January 3, 2010 at 7:18am — 3 Comments