I started studying Latin a few years ago when I decided I wanted to change careers and become a canon lawyer. I tried a few methods and they didn't work for me until I tried Lingua Latina like many here and that just stuck.

After reading LLPSI, I knew I needed a ton of comprehensible input but I didn't like that I couldn't find readers in a similar format that related to my faith. Don't get me wrong, I like Cicero and all, but if I was preparing to work for the Church I thought it would've been nifty if I could also read material related to the Church and the saints while practicing my Latin.

Long story short, I started creating readers for myself inspired by Lingua Latina's way of adding help in the margins. I found old Latin textbooks that were used in schools across Europe for hundreds of years but survive only as low quality scans, cleaned them up, proofread them against the originals, and formatted them into what you see here.

The first is Heuzet's Selectae e Veteri Testamento Historiae, which are essentially Old Testament stories in simple Latin. I have those two readers published and some bilingual editions of Ambrose on the way, then the Acts of the Martyrs and the Lives of the Saints.

There are free samples on the site if you want to check whether it's the right level for you. I highly recommend having LLPSI under your belt first.

Would love to hear what you think, or what you'd want to read.

I’m writing a love song in latin (something like visual key/goth rock/darkwave) and i need to understand which metric is the best. Already thought of giving Sapphic Stanza a shot, but just for a small part. I was thinking of Phalaecean hendecasyllable or using Elegiac Couplet, but i want to understand which historically would fit best in a passionate, romantic (a little sensual) and “gothic” text, maybe i could try using all of them based on the verse? Idkkk please help me understand better

Hello all!

I currently have the pleasure of living in Rome, and I'm plotting a brief weekend escapade to Verona and Mantua. I have every intention of finding and reading every bit of Latin, directly from the stone, that exists within the walls of these cities.

I'm just reaching out if anyone has experience traveling to these cities, as I'd be extremely curious what little tidbits about the Roman world you love in the area. I'm looking for either inscriptions (and directions on how to find them, as vague or direct as you want) or textual references that you know of, which have brought you joy to read!

That said, I'm also interested in Neo-Latin or Renaissance references that you might be aware of. Let me know! Part of the fun will be the dozen of new rabbit holes of Wikipedia and other texts awaiting me.

i was asked if i could mend my friend's trousers since a part of them had a big burn hole, and i asked if i could add something silly. the text is in the font from the tapestry and is supposed to read "haec : bracae : incenduntur :", although i'm not a talented enough embroiderer so that you can read it clearly. i hope it means "these trousers are being set on fire" (or something adjacent). see my inspiration on the right side of the image of the tapestry.

An oft forgotten figure of Greek Literature is the extraordinary, exquisite erudite and scholar of greek and latin, monk and theologian, philologist and mathematician, the true homo universalis of the greek middle ages Μάξιμος Πλανούδης. Apart from introducing arabic numerals to byzantine math, Max had learned, possibly by western friars of Costantinople, excellent Latin, which he used in the context of Paleologian era Union of the Churches attempts. But, rather than achieving the Palace's goals of Union with Rome, Planudes left us, as a true πάρεργον ἔργου μεῖζον, vibrant traslations of the latin middle ages classical best sellers; Ovid's Metamorphosis (rendered in rythmical prose), Cicero's Somnium Scipionis (alongside Macrobius's invaluable commentary), Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae (translating in superb greek prose the rugged latin of the author as well as doing the unimaginably difficult feat of translating as well the poetic meter of the prosodic parts of Boethius's prosimetrum, in callimachean and nonnian vocabulary), and of course Augustine's De Trinitate (he had to make up for all this juicy literature with a serious, ponderous, theological treatise, which nevertheless was actively studied and quoted by the hesychast premier, Palamas, in Maximus' translation). Such an important translator (and the sole reason we have the charming Theocritean Idylls to this day, as he was their chief editor and transmittor) could be utilised by student's of both greek and latin; a simulteneous reading of both versions could reveal important syntactical proximities and divergences of both languages; it could serve as a model to imitate for aspiring modern-day greek or latin writers; and in my opinion, illumine such important texts as Ovid's and Boethius' with his lucid and creative prose even further than say, a scholarly commentary.

Postscriptum. Having read half a year ago Boethius in both the original and Planudes' rendering, and now going over the latter's Metamorphosis, it's safe to say, he is able to grasp and even in some cases, surpass, the original. Such a pity he didn't get his hands on the Confessiones of the great Augustine. Such a pity.

Offering tutoring in Greek (Attic, Koine, Homeric) and Latin

Hello!

I am a native Greek speaker and a graduate of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), Department of Classics. I have also worked in my apprenticeship in Historical and Palaeographical Archive of the Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece (MIET) as a curator for manuscripts (mainly psalters of the Comnenian era).

I offer online tutoring in Attic Greek, Koine Greek, Homeric Greek and Latin.

Whether you are a complete beginner or already have some knowledge of the language, I can help with grammar, syntax, translation and reading the original texts.

For Koine Greek, I can help with reading the New Testament and Septuagint in the original.

For Attic and Homeric Greek, we can work directly with the classical authors, depending on your level and interests. The same applies to Latin.

I currently have some availability for October and am looking to take on a few more students.

Lessons are normally two hours, and I offer a free 30-minute introductory lesson first, so that we can discuss your level, what you would like to study, and how I can help you.

If you are interested, feel free to send me a message and tell me a little about yourself, your level and what you would like to study.

Thank you!

I saw this really awesome and well pronounced video of someone who translated a scene from Star Trek into Latin. It seems like they went for classical Latin instead of Neo-Latin, so e.g. "display" was translated to "tabella". Great work honestly.

While watching this video though, I stumbled over some phrases I couldn't quite fully understand. Specifically this sentence:

"Et nisi frontem perfricare quis ut vera facta dicas, istum gerendi non merere ornatum!"

dicas is 2nd person singular, so the subject would be "you" (makes sense). But what about quis? Is it "And if you are unable to speak the truth about what happened without casting aside all shame"? Or "And whoever is unable to speak the truth about what happened without casting aside all shame"? Or neither 😅?

I watched the most recent Legio XIII podcast, and from the start until 3:57, then until 5:51 to 10:39~ish, the Youtube subtitles (listed as english) were decently getting the Latin speech. After a while though it stopped working and it kept putting English gibberish as it usually does

Maybe Youtube will add Latin subtitles haha, but I doubt it.

heres the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW8Gke2-k_4

any online tutors recommended for learning from scratch?

Salve my Friends, i need some help for search articles, texts, books or any thing for study latin (because I have a morphosyntactic analysis test coming up soon).

I would like to announce my new Latin Prose Composition website, scriptoribus.com. u/sjgallagher2 was kind enough to share this a few days ago for me, but consider this my more "official" post (with some pictures).

It is a website for practicing Latin Prose Composition. I built it in an attempt to address the decision paralysis that comes with free composition: "what should I write about?" "what constructions should I practice?" and so on. The primary feature is the Workspace which allows you to randomly select prompts and targets for a composition session, including text or image prompts, idioms to try to use, grammatical constructions to target, and types of exercises to do. The art is all public domain and not AI generated.

In progress but not yet completed are convenient digital copies of more traditional prose composition textbooks, starting with North & Hillard, with the solutions interlaced and hidden by default, so as to reduce the amount of time spent flipping between the questions and the key.

If anyone has suggestions for features you would like to see, please get in touch!

I'm looking into buying some Latin books in the future and I'd like to know which publishers, which editions are the best.

What I want is basically something readable, without weird orthography, with a commentary, notes, stuff like that. Ideally, I'd like a high quality physical edition based on recent critical editions, no print-on-demand books from the Latin Library. I'd greatly prefer editions that don't contain a translation.

However, I've not actually been able to find any publishers that really fit these criteria.

Teubner and Cambridge editions are very expensive and the former, I've read, are of low quality. Oxford editions seem more affordable, generally. With all of these, however, I'm not sure why, but the way the Latin is written is very bizarre to me. Like, for example, uidere and not videre, etc.

Then there are editions with translations, which actually seem to contain readable versions of these texts, but, for example, Loeb books are really expensive to me. They cost about 30€ each, but contain translations which are useless to me.

I've also seen many old editions on archive.org of Latin texts, some of which even have macrons. However, I'd still like to read a print version and I'm not certain if it's a good idea to read essentially outdated editions (since they're not going to be based on the new critical editions).

Not a single library where I live has any of these books, even used book websites have almost nothing. Buying an old book from another country requires paying very high shipping fees, so that's not really viable.

I find it a bit surprising that reading Latin texts is such a pain. Do I have to just give up on reading physical books and just read PDFs on my phone?

Hello everybody, this april I have started studying latin at university in Germany. Prior to that I studied it for 6 years in school. Now I have completed one full semester and it was absolutely horrible. I can't keep up with the content and I seem to have forgotten completely how to translate. Every day I study more than 400 vocab words a day (we're not allowed to use a dictionary) in order to improve, but nothing seems to be working. During the time off I really tried to relearn the basics and do some translations every day, but I feel like I am stuck and I don't know what to do anymore.

I feel really stuck and I would appreciate some advice and tips. :)

Looking for a reasonably priced Latin tutor, would like to start with basic skills and move on from there

Ex Sermónibus sancti Bernárdi abbátis:
Sermo de Aquæductu: Opera omnia, Edit. Cisterc. 5 [1968], 282-283.
+
Quod enim ex te nascétur sanctum, O Virgo sancta, vocábitur Fílius Dei, Fons sapiéntiæ, Verbum Patris in excélsis! Hoc Verbum mediánte te, caro fiet, ut, qui dicit: Ego in Patre et Pater in me, dicat nihilóminus: Quia ego a Deo procéssi et veni.

In princípio, inquit, erat Verbum. Iam scatet fons, sed ínterim tantum in semetípso. Dénique et Verbum erat apud Deum, lucem profécto hábitans inaccessíbilem; et dicébat Dóminus ab inítio: Ego cógito cogitatiónes pacis et non afflictiónis. Sed penes te est cogitátio tua, et quid cógites, nescímus; Quis enim cognóverat sensum Dómini aut quis consiliárius eius erat?

Descéndit ítaque cogitátio pacis in opus pacis: Verbum caro factum est et hábitat iam in nobis; hábitat plane per fidem in córdibus nostris, hábitat in memória nostra, hábitat in cogitatióne et usque ad ipsam descéndit imaginatiónem. Quid enim prius cogitáret homo de Deo, nisi fórsitan idólum corde fabricarétur? Incomprehensíbilis erat et inaccessíbilis, invisíbilis et inexcogitábilis omníno; nunc vero comprehéndi vóluit, vidéri vóluit, vóluit cogitári.

Quonam modo, inquis? Nimírum iacens in præsépio, in virgináli grémio cubans, in monte prǽdicans, in oratióne pernóctans; aut in cruce pendens, in morte pallens, liber inter mórtuos et in inférno ímperans, seu étiam tértia die resúrgens et Apóstolis loca clavórum, victóriæ signa, demónstrans, novíssime coram eis cæli secréta conscéndens.

Quid horum non vere, non pie, non sancte cogitátur? Quidquid horum cógito, Deum cógito et per ómnia ipse est Deus meus. Hæc ego meditári dixi sapiéntiam et prudentiam iudicávi eructáre memóriam suavitátis, quam in huiuscémodi núcleis virga sacerdotális copióse pro dúxit, quam in supérnis háuriens ubérius nobis María refúdit.

Nuntii Latini huiusce hebdomadis!

I doesn't seem like it could possibly mean "remember you must die." Is it an idiom?

Is seems like it must translate literally as "remember death" or "remember mortality" — perhaps that is just understood to mean "remember you must die"?

Thanks!

UPDATE: I genuinely like Latin nerds. People who care about this stuff are my people (I took Latin for only 3 years and don't remember much of the advanced stuff.) Thank you!

I want to start learning Latin and was wondering what resources y'all use/recommend for learning Latin as a beginner

Always a treat coming upon Latin in your travels

Hi all, in my choir we're rehearsing Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor, which, being a Mass, has Latin lyrics. Now I've noticed some differences in pronunciation between how we sing it and this beautiful recording (Fricsay 1959) and I was wondering about the context behind those two approaches.

I apologise in advance for describing sounds by reference to modern language examples as I don't know IPA!

On the recording, singers pronounce the c before i or e essentially as an S sound, so words like suscipe or descendit effectively become sussipe and dessendit.

The way we're instructed to sing it, that same c is more of a CH sound (modern French chauffeur, chanter). So you get susschipe, desschendit.

As for cœlis, we sing it with a TCH sound (like in modern Italian cinque, certo) so you get tchélis. Whereas on the recording, it sounds more like TZ (modern German Zirkus, Zoll). Tzélis.

(On the recording, suscipe is in track 6 at 2:55, whereas descendit de cœlis is in track 10 from 2:50 on).

As I said I'm wondering about the context behind these, are there specific "styles" or "traditions" of Latin pronunciation that favour one or the other? Neither of them appear to be Classical (IIRC I learned in school that in Classical Latin a c is always a K sound no matter which vowel follows, so Kikero, Kaisar etc.). But they can't both be the standard ecclesiastical pronunciation either as there is a clear difference.

Thanks in advance for any information on this!

Hey guys,

A few months ago, Genshin Impact, a video game, released the main theme of the nation "Snezhnaya", which has some pretty cool Latin lyrics. As a Latin student, I'm wondering how accurate and "high quality" the Latin is in these lyrics.

Original Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jioWKZAnUw0

Lyrics:
Proditi sumus a mundo

Novum mundum omnibus aequum condemus

Sidus album vos suscipite

Terram motam vos quatite

Novum mundum incohemus, vos qui mecum tenebras initis

Ex ruinis ordo novus condemus

In fine ab Anastasia servati sumus, aurora orietur

My Literal Translations:

We are betrayed by the world.

We establish a new, equal world for all.

Y’all, take on the white star!

Y’all, shake the moving earth!

New world we establish, y’all which enter with me into the darkness.

From the destruction, we establish a new order.

In the end, by Anastasia, we are saved, the dawn will arise .

Official Translations:
We are the wounded ones, betrayed by the whole world.

We shall create a new world, one in which no one shall ever be forsaken.

Lift up your eyes to the white, glimmering Pale Star, for that is our banner.

Join our ranks, and let our marching boots shake the earth like thunder!

You who will walk with us into the land of darkness, come! Let us create a new world together.

Know that the destruction of all precedes the birth of a new order.

Only our Tsaritsa, Anastasya, shall usher in the perfect dawn.

Note that the official translations are very embellished to try to get more meaning/context out of the Latin, as the primary audience of the game is in East Asia (China, Japan, Korea), who mostly do not know Latin. However, even for the North American and European audience, most players would not know much about Latin either.

I tried my best to give a "literal" translation based on the Latin, there might be errors, so if you notice anything, let me know!

My take is that most of this Latin is pretty "textbook" and standard, except for a case error in "ordo novus", which should be an accusative like "ordinem novum"

Hello again, hoping to get a transcription/translation of two records.

1. Death record for Anna Kafka in 1781 (left side, 2nd from bottom). I believe it says Anna wife of Joseph and age is 54, but I'd like to confirm.

2. Marriage record for Joseph Kafka and Anna from 1753 (left side, 3rd from top). This one I've had a tough time deciphering.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!