Lingua Latina
per se Illustrata - Familia Romana
by Hans H. Ørberg · first published 1982
50% recommend50% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Teaches Latin entirely in Latin, starting with simple grammar and vocabulary and adding more each chapter, so readers pick it up from context. Suits beginners and rusty learners; audio companion and Wheelock's pair well.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"Entirely composed in Latin, Part I, Familia Romana, provides an excellent introduction to Latin, including the essentials of Latin grammar and a basic vocabulary of over 1500 words. The thirty-five chapters describe the life of a Roman family in the 2nd century A.D., and culminate in readings from classical poets and Donatus Ars Grammatica, the standard Latin school text for a millennium. Each chapter is divided into two or three lectiones (lessons) of a couple pages each followed by a grammar section, Grammatica Latina, and three exercises or Pensa."--Publisher's description.
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There's a very good book for Latin that uses that trick. Goes from zero to extremely complex Latin. Whole book is in Latin, no translations. https://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Illustrata-Pars-Familia... The only requirement is knowledge of orthographic alphabet and how each sound is produced. Latin, fortunately, has very simple sounds compared to English or Swedish. It took…
on “Show HN: 100K sentences mined from Wikipedia to help non-native English learners” ↗I find it interesting reading about legendary language teachers. https://www.amazon.de/Chinese-Through-Poetry-introduction-tr... for Classical Chinese and https://www.amazon.com/Familia-Romana-Lingua-Latina-Book-ebo... for Latin are by amazing language teachers who refined their material over decades and finally published wonderful books that contain so much wisdom and good taste. ( If you know of similar…
on “Father Reginald Foster has died” ↗I think Lingua Latina is an amazing book! PSA: you only need the first book. The second is pretty much a reader. It is still great, specially if you are interested in Classics. If you are interested in reading the Vulgate…
on “Show HN: A Latin self study course, Khan Academy-style” ↗I'm on chapter 20 of Lingua Latina. I think it is very well done. I did study latin in school formally for four years, so it's more of a refresher, but it teaches some concepts I hadn't encountered before. That said, it can be difficult…
on “Global Latinists” ↗Having some simpler and easier selections ala Lingua Latina (https://lingualatina.dk/wp/) would definitely help. If you haven't heard of it, that is a book for learning Latin Wooten entirely in Latin. It starts off with very simple grammar and vocabulary and adds…
on “Paralleltext: Learn languages by reading” ↗For Latin, the go to resource to start learning is the book Lingua Latina [1] which has an easy conversational style. You can understand a good percentage of the book without any a priori (see what i did there? :) ) knowledge of any kind. Concurrently with that, you might…
on “A Review of Language Learning Tactics” ↗I would recommend some combination of Lingua Latina and Wheelock's Latin. That's what my Latin tutor used and they complement each other very well.
on “Speaking Latin” ↗…think of Neal Stephenson’s Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer when I’m reading it. It’s like parts of your brain being unzippered to discover understanding your didn’t know you already had. I think of Lingua Latina in a surprising number of conversations… it reminds me to be considerate of how much new information can be absorbed, but also to fully trust my audience with that new information. I don’t need to belabor…
on “Lingua Latina per se illustrata (2012)” ↗…leadup to their Math for Machine Learning course, which is linear algebra and multivariable calc. I think it's one of the three most mindblowing learning resources I've ever used. One of the other three: Lingua Latina Familia Romana. In both cases, I have the uncanny certainty that I am operating at the limit of my ability to acquire and retain new information, which is a fun place to be.
on “LLMs are the ultimate demoware” ↗I like comparing it to Lingua Latina Familia Romana, a book that teaches Latin basically without any English; it opens in Latin and just keeps going that way and somehow you're able to follow along. Both are kind of trippy experiences.
on “An Illustrated Introduction to Linear Algebra, Chapter 2: The Dot Product” ↗…this. It is a sort of thought experiment like you say in your comment. I discovered after I started that Hans Ørberg something similar for Latin ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_%C3%98rberg ). His Lingua Latina has been quite influential.
on “An experiment in teaching a language without relying on translation” ↗I believe the other popular suggestion is Ørberg's Lingua Latīna: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_%C3%98rberg
on “Show HN: A Latin self study course, Khan Academy-style” ↗Almost reminds me of the Lingua Latina method I used to learn Latin. You basically read a text that is totally in Latin, with occasional images to guide you. It starts off very simply, and gradually introduces new vocabulary and grammar.…
on “Learn to read a sentence of Chinese in 3 minutes” ↗I've always wanted to get into Latin, and my current plan is getting through "Lingua Latina"[1], a book written in Latin and heavily recommended by others. I do wonder about a "global Latin community", though. My personal experience with Latin "speakers" has been tinged by an atmosphere of…
on “Global Latinists” ↗…Latin, not just more words/phrases presented individually. (TBF, I never completed a Rosetta Stone course so maybe they get closer to this eventually, but that's not my impression.) https://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Illustrata-Pars-Familia...
on “Errors in learning a foreign language, 2 years in” ↗