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Latinum Institute's Blog (186)

Latinum's French Cousin

I have started to record Henri Ollendorff's Cours de Latin. This is the French version of Adler's text, which I use on Latinum. It is a much shorter text. The new course has its own podcast site http://coursdelatin.mypodcast.com

After I have completed the French version, I would like to do a German one...

It is REALLY hard to keep my Latin pronunciation on the ball when I am reading in French along with the Latin. English and Latin are so much easier to use side by side.

Added by Latinum Institute on April 14, 2009 at 4:44pm — No Comments

Visit SCHOLA

Visit… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on March 24, 2009 at 7:16pm — No Comments

Latinum - where the listeners are

Latinum has now reached 4 million audio file downloads, with thousands of regular users of the site.

For the last 8 months, I have been keeping tabs on where individuals using Latinum are coming from: Here is the breakdown - for those interested in targeting Latin resources, advertising, and sales, etc, these figures are doubtless very interesting. I just find them surprising.

United States (US) 22,585

United Kingdom (GB) 5,240

Canada (CA) 1,726

Germany (DE)… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on March 18, 2009 at 6:00pm — No Comments

Dialectical Bootstraping

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Averaging the responses provided from a group increases accuracy by canceling out a number of errors made across the board (such as over- and under-estimating the answer).

What happens when we are on our own? What if there is no one else around to consult with before making a judgment - how can we be confident that we are giving a good answer? Psychologists Stefan M. Herzog and Ralph Hertwig from the University of Basel wanted to know if individuals could come up with… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on March 15, 2009 at 5:24am — No Comments

Why the Romans were successful - they were imperfectionists, perhaps?

When teaching perfect-imperfect, throwing this information into the ring might help kids get to grips with the differences. And might end up making them into better students.....

What I Was Doing Vs. What I Did: How Verb Aspect Influences Memory And Behavior

ScienceDaily (Mar. 13, 2009) — If you want to perform at your peak, you should carefully consider how you discuss your past actions. In a new study in Psychological Science, psychologists William Hart of the University of… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on March 13, 2009 at 5:53am — 1 Comment

Computer Games in Latin

I stumbled across a computer game that has been translated into latin called Zelda, and another called Zelda 2.
As I know nothing about computer games, I'll leave it up to others to comment on these. I've no idea about the quality of the translations.....

Added by Latinum Institute on March 1, 2009 at 8:15am — 2 Comments

Latinum Podcast Update

My work on Latinum continues - I do some work for the podcast every week, and I am now gradually processing the Comenius material, which is slowly making its way online. Comenius is proving surprisingly popular - I think the reason for this is the existence of a huge body of texts in multiple languages, making his works by far the most accessible textbook for an international audience - all this, despite its having been written in the sixteenth… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on February 21, 2009 at 4:55am — No Comments

Catalogue of Mediaeval Digitised Manuscripts.

New as of February 2009, is the Catalogue of Mediaeval Digitised Manuscripts.
A growing number of these are being digitised, and placed online. Many have not been published. As time goes on this will doubtless grow into an enormous resource, where the educated amateur Latinist would be in a position to actually make a contribution to scholarship, or if not that, certainly just have fun poking around.

Added by Latinum Institute on February 18, 2009 at 12:00pm — 4 Comments

A Delight I found today. This is a simple dialogue called Familiarium Colloquiorum Formulae, graecè et latinè. Cebetis,... Dialogus qui [...] inscribitur, cum latina interpretatione. @ hoc est : feli…

A Delight I found today. This is a simple dialogue called

Familiarium Colloquiorum Formulae, graecè et latinè. Cebetis,... Dialogus qui [...] inscribitur, cum latina interpretatione. @ hoc est : felium et murium pugna, tragaedia graeca, nunc primum Latinitate donata. @ , hoc est : Ranarum ac murium pagna Homeri, unà cum scholiis Philippi Melanchtonis antehoc nunquam editis. Elipsii Galentii amphratensis, de… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on February 15, 2009 at 4:48pm — 4 Comments

Greek Podcast?

Does anyone know what has happened to David Clark's new Classical Greek podcast based on Kendrick's text? The blogspot location is now dead, and the material here about the podcast appears to have vanished. The podcast seemed to start off really well, if it has died a death, it would be a real shame. Hopefully it has just moved somewhere else......

Added by Latinum Institute on February 14, 2009 at 3:04pm — 5 Comments

Gesturing and learning

Toddlers who use gestures more often have better vocabularies on reaching school age, US researchers say.

They say those who convey more meanings with gestures at 14 months have larger vocabularies at four-and-a-half years and are better prepared for school.

Parents and teachers could help children learn to speak by encouraging the use of gestures, say psychologists from the University of Chicago.

Their study, in Science journal, was announced at the AAAS… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on February 14, 2009 at 2:56pm — No Comments

recte pronuncianda?

Our endless pronunciation discussions are Lilliputian, Gulliverian, nay, verily, Blefuscian. With only - what - 500 people on the planet truly fluent in spoken Latin ad lib. we should have other concerns.

Those who carp overly much at other's pronunciation simply terrify, most responding by keeping their jaws clamped as though afflicted with the rictus, lest they be immolated upon the pyre of rectitude for proferring a misplaced stress, a poorly weighted syllable or - by Jupiter - an… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on February 13, 2009 at 3:41pm — 1 Comment

Transliterations into Greek

Interestingly, some of the tomb inscriptions in the Jewish Roman catacombs are in Latin, but are written in Greek. (and some are the other way around) This is really interesting, as these are phonetic transcriptions. For example, we see the dipthong ae rendered as restored classicists would have us render it on one inscription, and with a simple E in another. We find the accusative ending is simply not there - evidence for it's simply being a nasalisation?

Has anyone done any work on these… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on February 6, 2009 at 2:09pm — 3 Comments

Proposal - Collaborative Classics Podcast

I had an idea today - a collaborative Classics podcast:

How would it work?

A new account would created at Mypodcast, for a podcast called CLASSICS. Anyone who wanted to contribute to it, would be given the username and password to access the podcast for uploading material.

What would be on it?

Anything related to Latin or Greek, from any time period. Readings from classical texts in translation or in the original, or both, episodes on a topic of interest, grammar… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on February 1, 2009 at 11:00am — 17 Comments

SCHOLA - one year old this month

Schola

http://schola.ning.com

was Founded on 31 January 2008 - hard to think, almost a year has flowed by since then.

The site has as of now, 777 members, with more joining every single day.

NING added a chatroom to the site a month ago, and this has made a huge difference to the site. People are using the chatroom every day, forming friendships with others across the globe, in Latin. This built-in chatroom is far more successful than the remote chatroom we tried to run… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on January 26, 2009 at 6:43am — No Comments

More evidence pointing at the importance of Oral work

This study speaks for itself - if the brain is using facial movement as a cue, then it seems to make sense that giving the brain access to these cues would make learning the language easier, as the brain would have an easier time recognising words. Reading out loud, and speaking, would elicit these responses.

Here is the review of the study:

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Feeling Your Words: Hearing With Your Face

ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2009) — The movement of facial… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on January 26, 2009 at 5:05am — No Comments

Latinum Update - New Years Day 2009

2009 marks an important milestone in Latinum's short 2 years online - today the 3 millionth audio file download was passed. I remember when I started the podcast, and twenty downloads a day was a big deal. Now, from 6,000 to 15, 000 audio file downloads a day is the norm. I am still uploading episodes from the Adler textbook. This takes time, and my uploading lags behind the content already recorded, but the task is nearing completion, and soon, after 2 years of almost daily effort, the entire… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on December 31, 2008 at 10:29pm — 5 Comments

Childrens' Books in Latin

Following on a post by Laura Gibbs posted on Latinteach, about reading material in Latin, and comprehensible input, I have this to add:

One thing we need, to promote and advance Latin, are a large number of very basic childrens books, in Latin. Not enough of these exist. Books as basic as those produced for 2 and 3 year olds, mostly pictures, with only a few words. We need tens, hundreds, of books like these. I believe there would be a market for them, with parents who want to give… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on December 24, 2008 at 8:46am — 7 Comments

Counter-intuitive memory study

The results of this study are worth knowing about, especially to help kids learn vocab etc.

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Even though forgetting is such a common occurrence, scientists have not reached a consensus as to how it happens. One theory is that information simply decays from our memory—we forget things because too much time has passed. Another idea states is that forgetfulness occurs when we confuse an item with other items that we have previously… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on December 15, 2008 at 3:37pm — No Comments

Building a Virtual Latin Community Online

Building a Virtual Latin Community Online

An overview.

In early 2007, I started to investigate online Latin provision. It rapidly became apparent that the Classics community had been somewhat slow in taking full advantage of the newer aspects of the web. Some sites were excellent, such as the Cambridge Latin project, but this material could only be accessed by paying for it. There was a dearth of quality material available for free.

It was immediately evident that… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on December 13, 2008 at 7:29am — 5 Comments