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> To commit the very Accidence and Grammar to memory, requires three or four years, sometimes more, (as many can witness by woful experience) and when all is do

> To commit the very Accidence and Grammar to memory, requires three or four years, sometimes more, (as many can witness by woful experience) and when all is done, besides declining Nouns, and forming Verbs, and getting a few words, there is very little advantage to the Child. [I know the article is about understanding the cultural level of Latin and Greek understanding in 18 century Britain, but as a Latin teacher I feel obligated to comment about Latin teaching methodologies] This is a common complaint and is encountered many times in modern contexts. I contend that this is due to the method of teaching; namely in language courses that lack sufficient amounts of comprehensible input (i.e. simple text that one can read quickly without needing to pause to consult a glossary). Using a Comprehensible Input method, one can acquire a language much better and faster. For example I was able to read books in the Vulgate comfortably after only 200-300 hours of language learning. There are also people who have learned to speak Latin fluently, for example SaturaLanx or ScorpioMartianus on Youtube.

popularonion 3y ago
So what was your source of comprehensible input?
- deckeraa 3y ago
  Primarily Familia Romana by Hans Oerburg, and then a lot of public-domain Latin readers. There's a guy named Justin Armstrong who maintains a pretty good list here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TugURNkc0461IQoToKIlE4hnnbRykRYYxvrfl2X90No/ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TugURNkc0461IQoToKIl...
coyotespike 3y ago
I love this comment a lot. I am not fluent in Latin, but have also experienced amazingly fast progress using CI methods (relying on the resources you mention below). Currently I'm brushing up on Spanish in the same way and absorbing (for instance) the subjunctive painlessly. I think most people still underestimate how easily an adult can learn a language. "Paul Nation in a 2014 article estimates that to acquire a vocabulary of about 5000 words a student needs read about 2 million words." If you absorb about 3000 words a day, after less than a year you'll have read 1 million words. With a vocabulary of 2500 words you can do quite a lot. For me, in Latin, that's about 40 minutes of reading (I read faster in Spanish, slower in Ukrainian). Read/listen/watch 3000 words a day, understanding the majority of the words so you understand the whole passage, and after a year or so you'll be mostly fluent. These figures line up with your 200-300 hours to read the Vulgate, as well.
- nicoburns 3y ago
  What resources do you use for Spanish?
  - coyotespike 3y ago
    The great thing about CI is that it implies less is more. Don't do anything elaborate, don't memorize, don't practice grammar, just consume media you understand. I'm at a somewhat intermediate level, so mainly I am just watching The Mandalorian, Clone Wars, etc, in Spanish with Spanish subtitles. I'll often repeat a phrase or sentence into Google Translate, or repeat it into ChatGPT mobile and ask for a grammatical explanation or if the phrase is colloquial. I do copy transcribed phrases I like, so I can read them again later. That's all the review I do and is more than necessary. I've also signed up for News in Slow Spanish but not sure how much that adds over watching TV tbh. In a few months I'll think about adding conversational practice in some way.
ben_w 3y ago
In retrospect, I wish my secondary school French had been as you suggest. The tables of verbs and conjugations into tenses whose group-names made little sense, and my difficulty with them, was a permanent source of woe at the time.
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
  Ugh, the conjugaisons are a torture. I was lucky and knew how to speak and read and write in French before I had to study them or I'd never learn the language. I learned to read and write in French before I started school; I'm not a native French speaker btw, but Greek. I learned by reading Asterix and Tintin and I'm not half joking. That's how I also learned to read and write in Greek (by reading Disney comics in that case), also before starting school. I don't know if it was just me, but the combination of text and images in comic books is almost as good as being immersed in the culture of a language. Illustrated books, that simply have a few images along with the text aren't as good for that purpose. With comics you get to read text that directly relates to the goings-on in the images, and it's the next best thing to living in the real world and observing people speak as they go about their day. It also helps that text in speech bubbles tends to be short, and the things said aren't too complex, but not too simple either. There's some puns in Asterix that I only ever got much later, and one in particular (a Roman named Oursenplus) that I only finally got when I heard a French colleague say it out loud (with a "sh" sound at the end rather than "ss"). Of course, no school is ever going to stoop so low as to teach kids to read and write in their language or a foreign one with something as base and vulgar as comic books. Or it'd be something along those lines. Even in France where comics are big they wouldn't think of doing that. And yet, in my case at least, that worked out much better than all of school taken together. I bet computer games would also work in the same way. Good luck convincing educators that kids can learn anything useful from playing mere games. Unless it's chess I guess.
  - acqq 3y ago
    > one in particular (a Roman named Oursenplus) that I only finally got when I heard a French colleague say it out loud (with a "sh" sound at the end rather than "ss") Be kind to us who still don't know enough and explain it here.
watwut 3y ago
300 hours realistically amount to 3 years of school teaching.
- fullmoon 3y ago
  You’d be surprised to learn how unrealistic it is to expect someone that has learned Latin from 3 years of grammar drills/translation exercises to read any intermediate text comfortably (without translating sentence-by-sentence).

popularonion 3y ago

So what was your source of comprehensible input?

deckeraa 3y ago
Primarily Familia Romana by Hans Oerburg, and then a lot of public-domain Latin readers. There's a guy named Justin Armstrong who maintains a pretty good list here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TugURNkc0461IQoToKIlE4hnnbRykRYYxvrfl2X90No/ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TugURNkc0461IQoToKIl...

coyotespike 3y ago

I love this comment a lot. I am not fluent in Latin, but have also experienced amazingly fast progress using CI methods (relying on the resources you mention below). Currently I'm brushing up on Spanish in the same way and absorbing (for instance) the subjunctive painlessly. I think most people still underestimate how easily an adult can learn a language. "Paul Nation in a 2014 article estimates that to acquire a vocabulary of about 5000 words a student needs read about 2 million words." If you absorb about 3000 words a day, after less than a year you'll have read 1 million words. With a vocabulary of 2500 words you can do quite a lot. For me, in Latin, that's about 40 minutes of reading (I read faster in Spanish, slower in Ukrainian). Read/listen/watch 3000 words a day, understanding the majority of the words so you understand the whole passage, and after a year or so you'll be mostly fluent. These figures line up with your 200-300 hours to read the Vulgate, as well.

nicoburns 3y ago
What resources do you use for Spanish?
- coyotespike 3y ago
  The great thing about CI is that it implies less is more. Don't do anything elaborate, don't memorize, don't practice grammar, just consume media you understand. I'm at a somewhat intermediate level, so mainly I am just watching The Mandalorian, Clone Wars, etc, in Spanish with Spanish subtitles. I'll often repeat a phrase or sentence into Google Translate, or repeat it into ChatGPT mobile and ask for a grammatical explanation or if the phrase is colloquial. I do copy transcribed phrases I like, so I can read them again later. That's all the review I do and is more than necessary. I've also signed up for News in Slow Spanish but not sure how much that adds over watching TV tbh. In a few months I'll think about adding conversational practice in some way.

ben_w 3y ago

In retrospect, I wish my secondary school French had been as you suggest. The tables of verbs and conjugations into tenses whose group-names made little sense, and my difficulty with them, was a permanent source of woe at the time.

YeGoblynQueenne 3y ago
Ugh, the conjugaisons are a torture. I was lucky and knew how to speak and read and write in French before I had to study them or I'd never learn the language. I learned to read and write in French before I started school; I'm not a native French speaker btw, but Greek. I learned by reading Asterix and Tintin and I'm not half joking. That's how I also learned to read and write in Greek (by reading Disney comics in that case), also before starting school. I don't know if it was just me, but the combination of text and images in comic books is almost as good as being immersed in the culture of a language. Illustrated books, that simply have a few images along with the text aren't as good for that purpose. With comics you get to read text that directly relates to the goings-on in the images, and it's the next best thing to living in the real world and observing people speak as they go about their day. It also helps that text in speech bubbles tends to be short, and the things said aren't too complex, but not too simple either. There's some puns in Asterix that I only ever got much later, and one in particular (a Roman named Oursenplus) that I only finally got when I heard a French colleague say it out loud (with a "sh" sound at the end rather than "ss"). Of course, no school is ever going to stoop so low as to teach kids to read and write in their language or a foreign one with something as base and vulgar as comic books. Or it'd be something along those lines. Even in France where comics are big they wouldn't think of doing that. And yet, in my case at least, that worked out much better than all of school taken together. I bet computer games would also work in the same way. Good luck convincing educators that kids can learn anything useful from playing mere games. Unless it's chess I guess.
- acqq 3y ago
  > one in particular (a Roman named Oursenplus) that I only finally got when I heard a French colleague say it out loud (with a "sh" sound at the end rather than "ss") Be kind to us who still don't know enough and explain it here.

watwut 3y ago

300 hours realistically amount to 3 years of school teaching.

fullmoon 3y ago
You’d be surprised to learn how unrealistic it is to expect someone that has learned Latin from 3 years of grammar drills/translation exercises to read any intermediate text comfortably (without translating sentence-by-sentence).