lingua latina per se illustrata

LATIN STUDIES

february 2024

salvē!

many years ago, we were fluent in latin enough to read latin literature, including the works of virgil, catullus, and ovid. reading ancient authors continues to influence us and our writing to this day. learning latin and participating in national junior classical league was invaluable to us as a growing person; however, it has been over a decade since we last seriously translated anything. our grammar skills are rusty and our memory of vocabulary is non-existent.

we want to learn again.

in order to facilitate that learning, we bought a textbook and exercise book for beginners. in high school, we learned in a very regimented way: discussing grammatical concepts in english, chanted along with charts for noun and verb endings, and memorized vocabulary lists. this new textbook, LINGVA LATINA PER SE ILLVSTRATA PARS I FAMILIA ROMANA, is written entirely in latin, including the grammatical lessons, and you learn from context. it starts with "Rōma in Italiā est," and, from there, you read passages about the antics of a roman family in the empire, along with passages of actual latin texts, such as works written by julius caesar.

this method of learning is not intuitive to us, and we are lucky to have retained enough knowledge of latin grammar that we are having an easier time than if we were just thrown into it as our first latin textbook. like most teaching methods, concepts become clearer with repetition, but with this method it is irreplaceable.

so, in order to reinforce our learning, we are writing the textbook exercises in a physical notebook and here on our personal website. the accompanying workbook, PARS I EXERCITIA LATINA I, also has exercises, but not all of the exercises leave enough room in the book to simply write them in, and we'll be adding those longer answers here as well.

these are not answer keys. we aren't looking up whether these answers are correct. although we will be trying our best, there will certainly be grammatical mistakes and misspellings. please don't use our exercises as an answer guide when doing homework.

our goal in putting this information on the web is primarily our own instruction. we'd also love if we can inspire even one other person to try learning latin for themselves. engaging with classical texts is enriching, and translation itself is rewarding.

thanks for reading. :)