If you are like me and can say the responses for Mass but beyond that your Latin is ...
nihil then here's a nice piece of info from
Diane at Te Deum:
On this Divine Mercy Sunday, I want to pass along another tidbit for those interested in learning Latin. I've added this post and more to the sidebar section called, "Got Latin?"
I've actually had a desire to learn Latin since I was in my teens. I attempted once, but did not have the proper text for self-learning. I think that may have changed. I have the first book above and was trying to spend just 15 minutes daily with it, but ran into one problem: No way to check the answers. That is, until I found the answer book online....
The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) has not only the Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin book by Collins at the Fraternity Publications page, but the answer book needed if you are engaging in self-study. It also has the Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin on the same page.
However, if you spend any time at the blog of Fr. Z, you will know that he says you should have a Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary as wel.
I would pay close attention to Fr. Z's PRAYERCAzT, which can help with proper accents and pronounciation. Puulllleeeeeeeaaase - don't Americanize it with the awful sounding Yayzooo Kwreeestooooo. Make it dignified with Yehzu Kdddistu (ok, so poke fun at my phonetic spelling! I've been rolling R's since I learned Croatian while living abroad for over 2 years and I can tell you, just think a string of d's and you will roll your R's. It prevents you from twisting your lips like you do in English. It's all a matter of making the dddd sound with your tongue).
You may remember
I asked readers about the Rosetta Stone Latin program which I got some excellent feedback from a commenter:
It is classical pronunciation, Not ecclesiastical pronunciation. NOT strong on grammar. Good for spoken Latin and vocab. Very expensive.
So I think the Collins books will be a good place to start this year. We want to teach our kids basic Latin for the Mass, especially the boys to help when they start serving. Not sure if we will ever try Rosetta Stone or not.
3 comments:
If I weren't already trying to learn shorthand and German, learning Latin would be a resolution for me, too. I've been getting by on my rudimentary knowledge of roots and similar words in Spanish and French, but you can only go so far on that. Good luck!
I wouldn’t sweat it too much Badger – as regards the boys learning Latin to serve Mass. Back in the day (circa 1952…!) we were taught the pronunciation of the Latin responses in grade school. Our teacher (‘schoolmaster’ back then…) wrote out the responses on the blackboard and walked us through the pronunciation syllable by syllable and line by line.
We learned them by heart – just as we would later learn Shakespearean soliloquies and poems by heart (rote learning is under appreciated these days!). No attempt was made at this time to translate the words – just learn to pronounce them properly. But our Mass sheets had them in both Latin and English, so while we could not have conjugated verbs or explained tenses, we knew what we were saying.
Later with five years of Latin in High School (High School in Ireland back then was 5 years, not four) we got into the meat of the language. I recall being amazed that so many words in English were derived from Latin and years later it would help in learning other Latin languages like Italian, French and Spanish. It’s a shame that Latin is not still a required subject in schools. Kids are missing out on so much!
Kat: Whoa, that's fantastic! Good for you. I had been taking German on Rosetta Stone for work(I work for a German company) but work and home have been too busy to keep up on it. If I had the time I'd like our whole family to learn one other language to speak in the home. Spanish would be a bit more practical(plus my wife and I have taken a few years in school), but we both come from German families.
GOR: Thank you for the info! I guess that makes sense. I HOPE my kids can get that same kind of education. We have a small school here in La Crosse that I have hopes in, otherwise we will try to homeschool, although we don't know any of the classics ourselves, both public school educated! It's a difficult spot to try and give kids a classical education when we've never experienced it ourselves.
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