Latin classes

I've been thinking for years that I'd like to take some classes in Latin. I've studied French and Spanish (the former for reading and writing, the latter for conversation). Does anyone have any recommendations? A stand-alone audio/video or on line? Preferably free, but will pay for known quality experience. Thanks for the help!

Let me know if you get a response. I tried to teach myself Latin a few years ago without much success.

I doubt you'll find an audio as conversational Latin is not generally taught. You might look into community college classes or continuing ed. classes--the grammar takes a little getting used to as it's a highly inflected language.

I'd let you sit-in for free on the college courses I teach (don't tell the administration!) -- but you'd have to find your way to Barbourville, Kentucky for that!

I wish I were closer, too--I took eight years of Latin through high school and college, but that was mumbledy-mumble years ago. I'd love to be able to re-read the Aeneid. And Cicero.

Also, though you'd have to pay for it as you aren't a Florida resident, the Florida Virtual School ( http://www.flvs.net/Pages/default.aspx ) offers a three-course Latin curriculum (the instructor is an old friend of mine from high school).

Latin would be hard to do, but—going off topic—I wish there were language classes available by Skype, Google Hangout or whatever. I'd pay for that, anyway. I find it particularly odd that such sites haven't sprung up for languages with poorer speakers. I mean, if I want to learn Arabic, surely there's some English teacher in Cairo who'd be very pleased to get $20/hour to teach Arabic to English-speaking speakers.

I think the best way to do Latin is to get a bunch of people together who want to work through an intro book, set a schedule and have weekly meetings. But you'd need to get a lot of people to do it.

Speaking also of Latin, I wonder that there aren't more sight-reading groups. I used to run sight-reading groups—basic to intermediate—in both Washington, DC and Boston. It took a lot of effort to get them together. Surely you could find people online easily.

I've thought about an online Latin course myself. The problem is, if I don't have the discipline to apply myself to self-study - and I have all kinds of Latin grammars and workbooks - how can I expect myself to be disciplined enough for an online course?

>8 cemanuel:

Peer pressure.

The Great Courses now has a Latin 101 course, new in the last couple of months. It's currently "on sale," running around $100. Here's the link: http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=2201

Thanks for the responses, everyone!

Nlytle--just ran across the The Great Courses class and looking closely at it.

Not necessarily a serious suggestion, but this year's TARS (The Arthur Ransome Society) IAGM weekend in Barnstaple is themed around Missee Lee, including Latin lessons.

Latin was compulsory in the secondary school I attended for four terms in 1st and 2nd Form (Years 7 and 8 in new money). The school I moved to taught compulsory French. I don't really remember much more than 'amo, amas, amat ...' from the Latin, but going from a phonetic language to a language full of elisons(?) and similar nonsense gave me an abiding attitude problem to French.

I suggest www.quasillum.com; you only need to buy the books for the course, otherwise, it's free. There aren't currently any new beginner's courses, but they post a new course about every six months.

I'm rather surprised that no one has mentioned either Hans H. Orberg's work Lingva Latina (and I note that at least one person has something by him), or Rosetta Stone (granted that's a pricier option, but they have Latin, or did when I bought it).

Amazon has a ton of things by Orberg, including a nice CD, where you can listen to the language being spoken. It's also nice to have friends who can converse intelligently, but those are becoming more rare as years pass, sadly.

I'm following this thread. Keep the suggestions coming.

There is also a thread on the Language Group about Latin textbooks:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/119466

>9 timspalding: Evidently that doesn't work. I was enrolled in a MOOC recently and only completed 2 of the 7 modules. It didn't help that I was maybe 2 hours into Module 3 when my browser crashed and dumped all my work, or that up to that point I hadn't learned anything new. Good thing it was free.

>1 MarysGirl: Going back to nathanielcampbell's suggestion, you might want to call around and see if there's a course at a nearby school that fits your schedule where the instructor would be willing to let you audit it.

I've just discovered an interesting (and ZERO cost) resource, while researching data for an author on a book I added yesterday.

http://www.forgottenbooks.org/books/A_Junior_Latin_Reader_1000095256

This specific entry is on LT, as:

https://www.librarything.com/work/1317922

Forgotten Books is (apparently) rescuing various works by authors that are long vanished. I have no idea of the copyright status on these, but there are a great many books on the site, so I suspect that they've researched this. I mention it because there is a very large collection of Latin books on the site (which is difficult to search properly), and most of them seem to be visible as suggestions at the bottom of Mr Sanford's page.

The Lukeion Project (http://www.lukeion.org/index.html) teaches Latin through a live online class.

Thanks for all the suggestions! I've been deep into research mode for a novel and haven't explored these yet, but reading Tacitus and Seneca in translation makes me want to tackle this even more.