SUBJECT: Latin (and other foreign languages)
TIME REQUIRED: 3–4 hours per week, beginning in third or fourth grade.
As you’ve no doubt noticed, Latin is not the defining element of a classical education. Classical education has to do with setting up solid foundations, with learning how to learn, with mental discipline and intellectual curiosity and a willingness to grapple with the lessons of the past. All of this is much more important than a single foreign-language course.
But you still have to take Latin.
Elementary students are perfectly capable of studying Latin. In third and fourth grade, the students do basic memory work—vocabulary and parts of speech—and work on English derivations from Latin words.
We’ve discovered systematic, easy-to-follow Latin courses that you can teach to your third-or fourth-grade child. And you’ll have the opportunity to learn along with him.
WHY LATIN?
Why bother with Latin? It is, after all, a dead language (a pejorative phrase)—no literature is being produced in it, no one’s speaking it or doing business in it.
We bother with it for a number of reasons.
Latin trains the mind to think in an orderly fashion. Latin (being dead) is the most systematic language around. The discipline of assembling endings and arranging syntax (grammar patterns) according to sets of rules is the mental equivalent of a daily two-mile jog. And because Latin demands precision, the Latin-trained mind becomes accustomed to paying attention to detail, a habit that will pay off especially when studying math and science.
Latin improves English skills. The grammatical structure of English is based on Latin, as is about 50 percent of English vocabulary. The student who understands how Latin works is rarely tripped up by complicated English syntax or obscure English words. Susan attributes her high standardized test scores (740 in SAT verbal, 800 in GRE verbal) partly to her study of Latin, beginning in third grade.
Latin prepares the child for the study of other foreign languages: French, Spanish, and Italian are all related to Latin. Even non-Latinate languages can be more easily learned if Latin has already been studied. The child who has been drilled in Latin syntax understands the concepts of agreement, inflected nouns, conjugated verbs, and grammatical gender no matter what language these concepts appear in.
Latin guards against arrogance. The study of the language shows the young child that his world, his language, his vocabulary, and his way of expression are only one way of living and thinking in a big, tumultuous, complicated world. Latin forces the student to look at words and concepts anew:
What did this Latin word really mean?
Is this English word a good translation for it?
Doesn’t the Latin word express something that English has no equivalent word for?
Does this reveal a gap in my own thinking?
A foreign language, as Neil Postman writes in The End of Education, “provides one with entry into a worldview different from one’s own…. If it is important that our young value diversity of point of view, there is no better way to achieve it than to have them learn a foreign language.”2
HOW DOES LATIN WORK?
The third-grade Latin course we suggest consists almost entirely of vocabulary memorization and word study. But some grammar is introduced toward the end of the course.
Here’s what you have to know to get all the way through Leigh Lowe’s Prima Latina.
To understand how Latin works, you have to remember that word endings are more important than word order.
If I want to say that my husband just planted his shoe in the dog’s ribs, I say:
Peter kicked the dog.
(although he would never do such a thing). How do you know that the dog was the receiver of the kick and that Peter was the giver of the kick? Because Peter comes before the verb, and the dog comes after. This tells English speakers that the dog is the object (receiver) of the kick and that Peter is the subject (the doer) of the kick.
But Latin works slightly differently. Latin has special endings (called inflections) that tell the reader whether a noun is the subject or the object. It’s as though, in English, every noun acting as a subject had an s on the end and every noun acting as an object had an o on the end:
Peter-s kicked the dog-o.
If English worked this way, we could reverse the sentence:
The dog-o kicked Peter-s.
and the reader would still realize that Peter had done the kicking and that the dog had received it—because of the ending.
That’s how Latin works. Case endings take the place of word order. Case endings tell you whether a word is being used as a subject, object, possessive, and so on.
You also need to know that Latin uses these word endings on verbs to take the place of pronouns. If I say:
I kicked the dog
you know who did the action, because “I” comes before “kicked.” But instead of using pronouns before verbs, Latin conjugates verbs by tacking the pronouns onto the ends of the verbs:
Kicked-I the dog.
Now I could say “The dog kicked-I” and mean the same thing.
There’s more to Latin than this, of course, but the above explanations will get you started.
There are several different ways to pronounce Latin: the so-called classical pronunciation (in which, for example, “v” is pronounced as “u” or “w”) and the “Christian” or “ecclesiastical” pronunciation, used by choirs, are the two most common. We prefer not to worry overmuch about pronunciation. As Douglas Wilson explains,
Because microphones were not thrust in Augustus Caesar’s face…we are not exactly sure what his pronunciation was…. There are alternative approaches to Latin pronunciation [and the simplest method] is called the “Protestant,” “Old,” or “English” method. It follows out the bright idea of linking Latin pronunciation to the vernacular. In other words, say it as though it were English.3
The ecclesiastical pronunciation will be useful if the child ever gets to sing in Latin. Otherwise, though, don’t get too sidetracked trying to master pronunciation.
HOW TO DO IT
If you decide to begin Latin in third or fourth grade (see Chapter 19 for other options), you’ll take advantage of the child’s most natural “window” for language learning. We suggest that you consider using either Prima Latina, published by Memoria Press, or The Big Book of Lively Latin. Both are gentle introductions to Latin, and neither requires that you have previous knowledge of the language.
Prima Latina, written by Leigh Lowe, consists of a student book, teacher manual, and pronunciation CD; you can also buy an instructional DVD and premade flashcards. The teacher’s manual has a summary of Latin grammar in the front. Read it over, but don’t let it confuse you. In the 25 lessons provided, you can learn the basic grammar needed along with your child.
You can begin Prima Latina in either third or fourth grade; the program will take a year or less to complete. When you complete this introduction to Latin, you can continue on to Latina Christiana I, which is put out by the same press and is designed to follow Prima Latina. Both of these programs are written for parents who do not know Latin and feature very clear instruction. The optional DVDs provide instruction from one of the program’s authors, Leigh Lowe.
Latina Christiana introduces more complex Latin grammar, and in most cases students will need to be working on at least a fourth-grade level in English grammar before beginning it.
Prima Latina is ideal for beginning Latin with a student who is third grade or younger. If you are working with an advanced third grader or fourth grader, you may also consider using The Big Book of Lively Latin. Written by Latin teacher and home school parent Catherine Drown, the Big Book provides more supplementary material (historical background, activities and games, studies in mythology and Roman society) and moves a little faster than Prima Latina.4 The Big Book is self-explanatory, intended for parents and students to work through together. After completing the Big Book, students can continue on to one of the programs suggested in Chapter 43.
Samples of both programs can be seen at the publishers’ websites: www.memoriapress.com and www.livelylatin.com.
As you investigate Latin curricula, beware of “whole to parts”5 Latin instruction. These two programs provide systematic, “parts to whole” instruction: children memorize vocabulary and then learn to use that vocabulary properly; conjugations and declensions are taught all at once rather than incidentally.
Here’s what we mean. In Latin, every verb (such as amo, “I love”) has a root, which carries the verb’s basic meaning (am-, “love”), and endings, which serve as pronouns: -o means “I,”–as means “you” singular, and so on. These pronoun endings are the same for every verb the child encounters in the first two years of study. So once the student learns the list of endings for I, you (singular), he/she/it, we, you (plural), they (the endings are–o, -as, -at, -amus, -atis, -ant), he can put them on any verb he wants:
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amo |
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I love |
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voco |
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I call |
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amas |
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You love |
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vocas |
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You call |
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amat |
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He/she/it loves |
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vocat |
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He/she/it calls |
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amamus |
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We love |
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vocamus |
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We call |
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amatis |
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You love |
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vocatis |
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You call |
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amant |
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They love |
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vocant |
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They call |
This is parts-to-whole instruction: first the student learns the parts, then he learns how to put them together to form a whole.
Whole-to-parts Latin primers, on the other hand, tell the child that the word amamus means “we love,” never explaining that the word has both a root and a personal ending. Later, the child will meet vocamus in a sentence and discover that this word means “we call”—again with no explanation. Sooner or later, he’ll figure out that -amus means “we.” Or he may get frustrated with this apparently patternless language and quit. Either way, he’ll have wasted a great deal of time and energy trying to understand how Latin works.
But if he is simply given the list of personal endings to memorize, he will have the power to form any Latin verb he likes as well as the knowledge to decode the Latin words he encounters in his reading. Whole-to-parts Latin instruction is frustrating and counterproductive, and breaks down the very skill that systematic Latin lessons develop—the habit of systematic thinking.
SCHEDULES
Plan on spending about three to four hours per week on Latin. It’s more productive to spend thirty minutes every day than to do one long session or even two shorter ones per week. Three days per week is an absolute minimum; four is better.
WHAT ABOUT OTHER LANGUAGES?
Why do we recommend beginning Latin when everyone knows that starting a modern foreign language at a young age is the best way to achieve fluency?
Well, we agree. The elementary grades are the best time to learn a modern foreign language—and at the end of this chapter we’ve recommended a couple of modern language programs suitable for home use. However, in our experience, none of these programs will get you speaking a foreign language. This only happens if you’re able to speak the language (with a live person) at least twice a week. Conversation, which requires you to think in the language you’re learning, is the only path to fluency.
If you speak a foreign language fluently and would like to teach it to your student, go ahead and do this during the third-and fourth-grade years, and save Latin until fifth or sixth grade. Or if you can arrange for a tutor (preferably a native speaker) to come in and converse with your child at least twice a week, go ahead and study a modern language now and save Latin until fifth or sixth grade. (We think every American child should learn to speak Spanish at some point, if possible.)
But if you can’t arrange for modern-language conversation, make Latin central to your foreign language learning for right now. The study of Latin syntax and vocabulary will provide many of the same benefits as modern language study, as well as improving the child’s general language skills. The student who has completed a Latin course will have much less difficulty when he encounters a modern foreign language later on. And since Latin isn’t a spoken language, you won’t need to worry about the conversational component.
As you study Latin, you may want to use one of the modern language programs listed below as an additional resource, perhaps adding it to your schedule once or twice a week. This will give the student exposure to a modern language and prepare him for later learning.
RESOURCES
Basic Texts
Latin
Drown, Catherine. The Big Book of Lively Latin. San Marcos, Calif.: Lively Latin, 2008.
$55.00 for the online PDF version, $79.00 for the PDF on a 2-CD set, $125.00 for the print version. Order from Lively Latin. Lowe, Cheryl.
Latina Christiana I: An Introduction to Christian Latin. Louisville, Ky.: Memoria Press, 2001.
$39.95 for the set. Order from Memoria Press.
Student Book. $15.00.
Teacher Manual. $20.00.
Pronunciation CD or Tape. $4.95.
Instructional DVDs. 5-DVD set, $55.00.
———. Latina Christiana II. An Introduction to Christian Latin. Louisville, Ky.: Memoria Press, 2001.
$39.95 for the set. Order from Memoria Press.
Student Book. $15.00.
Teacher Manual. $20.00.
Pronunciation CD or Tape. $4.95.
Instructional DVDs. 4-DVD set, $45.00.
Lowe, Leigh. Prima Latina: An Introduction to Christian Latin, 2d ed. Louisville, Ky.: Memoria Press, 2003.
$32.95 for the set. Order from Memoria Press.
Student Worktext. $14.00.
Teacher Manual. $14.00.
Pronunciation CD. $4.95.
Instructional DVDs. 3-DVD set, $45.00.
Latina Christiana/Prima Latina Flashcards. Louisville, Ky.: Memoria Press.
$14.95. Order from Memoria Press. Includes the vocabulary for both Prima Latina and Latina Christiana.
Modern Languages
Kraut, Julia, et al. Spanish for Children. Classical Academic Press, 2008.
Order from Classical Academic Press. The approach of this Spanish primer meshes well with Latin studies. An audio CD accompanies the student text. Samples can be viewed on the Classical Academic Press website; an instructional DVD and two more levels are in the works.
Spanish for Children, Primer A. $21.95.
Spanish for Children, Primer A, Answer Key. $12.95
La Clase Divertida. Holly Hills, Fla.: La Clase Divertida.
Order from La Clase Divertida. This Spanish program, developed by a home-school father with twenty years of Spanish teaching experience, is designed as a family learning project. The Rosetta Stone courses listed below are focused primarily on language learning; this program provides games, stories, cooking and project activities, and other resources along with video and audio cassette instruction, turning Spanish into something closer to a mini-unit study. Good for family fun. Each kit provides enough material (workbooks and craft supplies) for two students.
Level 1 Kit. $110.00.
Additional Student Packet. $15.00.
Level II Kit. $125.00.
Additional Student Packet. $25.00.
Rosetta Stone Language Learning: Homeschool Edition. Harrisonburg, Va.
$219.00 for Level 1 (probably two to three years of study for a young student). Order from Rosetta Stone. An interactive computer-based language learning program which uses photos and graphics to encourage the student to think in a foreign language. Each Homeschool Edition Level 1 includes the CDs, a study guide, a consumable workbook plus answer key, a teacher handbook, and a program for keeping track of the student’s progress. Many other languages are available at the Rosetta Stone website, www.RosettaStone.com.
Spanish Level 1.
French Level 1.
German Level 1.
Schultz, Danielle. First Start French. Louisville, Ky.: Memoria Press, 2008.
Order from Memoria Press. This beginning French program takes the same approach as Prima Latina. The pronunciation CD features a native speaker. Each book offers one year of study. Samples can be viewed on the Memoria Press website.
Book One
Student Book. $17.50.
Teacher Book. $17.50.
Pronunciation CD. $4.95.
Book Two
Student Book. $17.50.
Teacher Book. $17.50.
Pronunciation CD. $4.95.