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For reference: this book is obviously a (praiseworthy) ambition to have a Greek counterpart to the Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata[1] by Hans Ørberg. Ørberg's

For reference: this book is obviously a (praiseworthy) ambition to have a Greek counterpart to the Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata[1] by Hans Ørberg. Ørberg's way of teaching Latin is, in my view, excellent because it is based on a natural view of learning a language: show something, say what its name is, use its name in simple sentences, work up from there. Each time introducing new words surrounded by already-known ones and letting the pupil figure it out. All in the target language itself, exactly how we acquired our mother tongues. Vocabulary is acquired through repetition, grammar is acquired through "getting a feel for what sounds right". Using the brain's own mechanisms for deducing meaning and deriving rules. The book is definitely going to need illustrations, just like in LLPSI[2]. Hard to understand what 'πόλις' means per se, but not if I take you up a mountain and point at [3] while saying "πόλις". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_%C3%98rberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_%C3%98rberg [2] https://blog.nina.coffee/img/lingua-latina.png https://blog.nina.coffee/img/lingua-latina.png [3] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f5/c3/10/f5c31074eeb418bc51e7de35d729d7ae.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f5/c3/10/f5c31074eeb418bc51e7...

marginalia_nu 4y ago
Also worth pointing out that LLPSI is essentially Hans Ørberg's life's work. It's been adjusted and fine-tuned for decades, and it really shows. While at a surface level it looks fairly simple, it is no small task to repeat the process with another language.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  Giuseppi Peano tried to get people to learn an "unconjugated latin" by writing mathematics in it. eg https://archive.org/details/formulairedemat04peangoog/page/n52/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/formulairedemat04peangoog/page/n... (mini rationale https://archive.org/details/formulairedemat04peangoog/page/n65/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/formulairedemat04peangoog/page/n... ) Maybe set theory wasn't the best way of introducing a conlang, but I have to take my hat off for the weird flex.
  - senkora 4y ago
    Huh, surprisingly readable.
  - toto444 4y ago
    I am writing one for Japanese (I was not aware of LLPSI when I started) and I use things that are common knowledge to a lot of people like set theory. I have used a few unusual things on the way. I have recreated the UI of a fashion Ecommerce site such that the user is so familiar with the button labels ('buy', 'add to cart', 'recommended items') that they can easily guess their meanings. I teach HTML using simple Japanese. I make use of the fact that "<span style="background-color: yellow;"> </span> " uses English words but is not English. That allows me to say things such as 'to change the background colour to yellow you can add this tag' without using English. It's definitely cheating but I have found that cheating is actually good practice when it comes to help people guess the meaning of words in a foreign language .
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Funny, it's a bit like listening to Portugese when you've got a basic understanding of Latin. A lot of the pieces are there but they're all a bit off kilter.
RheingoldRiver 4y ago
> Hard to understand what 'πόλις' means per se, but not if I take you up a mountain and point at [3] while saying "πόλις". This works in theory, I guess, but in practice it's just absolutely awful. the Rosetta Stone courses work like this and I spent about 6 months maybe? working through the Korean class. I was only able to form my own sentences because I also bought some grammar books that taught me about particles and the "topic" of a sentence that you put -ga or -i after (depending if it ends in a vowel or consonant) and several other similar concepts. But also, even pointing at an object or showing pictures didn't work. I remember at one point being shown two pictures and thinking I was being taught "behind" and a word that English doesn't have, for "far behind." Ah, how interesting I thought! Nope, not at all. It was "near" and "far." The only reason I learned this is because I started screenshotting every slide to an actual Korean friend I had and asking for translations of every word (I'm sure I drove him crazy). The reason I stopped doing the class in fact was that he wasn't always awake when I wanted to do the lessons (ironically since he was Korean-American and I was awake in the middle of the night usually lol - if he'd lived in Korea our schedules would've aligned better). Anyway, after that experience I don't agree with this method at all. Maybe complete immersion does work, because people can correct your misconceptions, but learning from a book without any feedback is a horrible experience.
- svat 4y ago
  You're describing a bad experience you had with a specific course (Rosetta Stone's Korean), and this data point is a useful warning, but generalizing from it to say that the method itself is “in practice it's just absolutely awful” and “a horrible experience” — when replying to a post about Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, which many people have tried and absolutely enjoyed, and indeed successfully learned Latin from. All that this shows is that a course using this method can be either well-designed or not (possibly depending on the language and learner), and we don't know which one the current Greek one is.
  - RheingoldRiver 4y ago
    That's fair, I'd appreciate hearing from someone who actually did the Latin curriculum and learned Latin from it if they managed to do it without additional resources to learn e.g. case endings from a text written in English. Part of my reason for commenting is also that language-learning is something that a lot of people want to do but is extremely difficult to do & stick with outside of a structured environment/with a teacher. If you truly want to pursue it, I think finding an online class is going to help you considerably more than a self-guided curriculum like this; I probably should've mentioned that before. I wish I'd done that for Korean.
JoeyBananas 4y ago
I think Ørberg is too extreme. His approach would work better with just a little bit of english thrown in to explain things. Reading his books, I often found myself looking things up anyway.
- schoen 4y ago
  Hans Ørberg was Danish, so it might have been Danish rather than English if he had decided to include a modern language! Even though it's often claimed to be appropriate for self-study, I think Ørberg thought that the commonest way it would be used was with a teacher, who would either teach by immersion (I've met people who used it that way) or by speaking a modern language to the students. I'm sure one thing he saw as a benefit to the Latin-only texts is that they could potentially be used by people all over the world, regardless of their native language, without having to be translated or localized for different audiences.
- thom 4y ago
  I used Jeanne Neumann’s companion text as a jumping off point into deeper stuff (and because at least a couple of times with just the original text, I spent several pages with the wrong idea for a word and felt embarrassed).

marginalia_nu 4y ago

Also worth pointing out that LLPSI is essentially Hans Ørberg's life's work. It's been adjusted and fine-tuned for decades, and it really shows. While at a surface level it looks fairly simple, it is no small task to repeat the process with another language.

082349872349872 4y ago
Giuseppi Peano tried to get people to learn an "unconjugated latin" by writing mathematics in it. eg https://archive.org/details/formulairedemat04peangoog/page/n52/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/formulairedemat04peangoog/page/n... (mini rationale https://archive.org/details/formulairedemat04peangoog/page/n65/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/formulairedemat04peangoog/page/n... ) Maybe set theory wasn't the best way of introducing a conlang, but I have to take my hat off for the weird flex.
- senkora 4y ago
  Huh, surprisingly readable.
- toto444 4y ago
  I am writing one for Japanese (I was not aware of LLPSI when I started) and I use things that are common knowledge to a lot of people like set theory. I have used a few unusual things on the way. I have recreated the UI of a fashion Ecommerce site such that the user is so familiar with the button labels ('buy', 'add to cart', 'recommended items') that they can easily guess their meanings. I teach HTML using simple Japanese. I make use of the fact that "<span style="background-color: yellow;"> </span> " uses English words but is not English. That allows me to say things such as 'to change the background colour to yellow you can add this tag' without using English. It's definitely cheating but I have found that cheating is actually good practice when it comes to help people guess the meaning of words in a foreign language .
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Funny, it's a bit like listening to Portugese when you've got a basic understanding of Latin. A lot of the pieces are there but they're all a bit off kilter.

RheingoldRiver 4y ago

> Hard to understand what 'πόλις' means per se, but not if I take you up a mountain and point at [3] while saying "πόλις". This works in theory, I guess, but in practice it's just absolutely awful. the Rosetta Stone courses work like this and I spent about 6 months maybe? working through the Korean class. I was only able to form my own sentences because I also bought some grammar books that taught me about particles and the "topic" of a sentence that you put -ga or -i after (depending if it ends in a vowel or consonant) and several other similar concepts. But also, even pointing at an object or showing pictures didn't work. I remember at one point being shown two pictures and thinking I was being taught "behind" and a word that English doesn't have, for "far behind." Ah, how interesting I thought! Nope, not at all. It was "near" and "far." The only reason I learned this is because I started screenshotting every slide to an actual Korean friend I had and asking for translations of every word (I'm sure I drove him crazy). The reason I stopped doing the class in fact was that he wasn't always awake when I wanted to do the lessons (ironically since he was Korean-American and I was awake in the middle of the night usually lol - if he'd lived in Korea our schedules would've aligned better). Anyway, after that experience I don't agree with this method at all. Maybe complete immersion does work, because people can correct your misconceptions, but learning from a book without any feedback is a horrible experience.

svat 4y ago
You're describing a bad experience you had with a specific course (Rosetta Stone's Korean), and this data point is a useful warning, but generalizing from it to say that the method itself is “in practice it's just absolutely awful” and “a horrible experience” — when replying to a post about Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, which many people have tried and absolutely enjoyed, and indeed successfully learned Latin from. All that this shows is that a course using this method can be either well-designed or not (possibly depending on the language and learner), and we don't know which one the current Greek one is.
- RheingoldRiver 4y ago
  That's fair, I'd appreciate hearing from someone who actually did the Latin curriculum and learned Latin from it if they managed to do it without additional resources to learn e.g. case endings from a text written in English. Part of my reason for commenting is also that language-learning is something that a lot of people want to do but is extremely difficult to do & stick with outside of a structured environment/with a teacher. If you truly want to pursue it, I think finding an online class is going to help you considerably more than a self-guided curriculum like this; I probably should've mentioned that before. I wish I'd done that for Korean.

JoeyBananas 4y ago

I think Ørberg is too extreme. His approach would work better with just a little bit of english thrown in to explain things. Reading his books, I often found myself looking things up anyway.

schoen 4y ago
Hans Ørberg was Danish, so it might have been Danish rather than English if he had decided to include a modern language! Even though it's often claimed to be appropriate for self-study, I think Ørberg thought that the commonest way it would be used was with a teacher, who would either teach by immersion (I've met people who used it that way) or by speaking a modern language to the students. I'm sure one thing he saw as a benefit to the Latin-only texts is that they could potentially be used by people all over the world, regardless of their native language, without having to be translated or localized for different audiences.
thom 4y ago
I used Jeanne Neumann’s companion text as a jumping off point into deeper stuff (and because at least a couple of times with just the original text, I spent several pages with the wrong idea for a word and felt embarrassed).