Powerpoints, Audio files and more...

If you want to try different ways of learning Latin, or are looking for some more resources, try this website out. Created for high school students, it has a variety of different levels:
The Main Site: Latin at Grady High School
Latin I
Latin II
Latin III

Worksheet- Myths

For something different this week, I am providing you with a worksheet about Latin/Roman myths which you can try to solve.
Worksheet 1 Myths in general

Video

Today's post is a short video/animation looking around a Roman house

Roman Empire

To build on your background here are some websites and videos you could look at.
BBC - Romans
Roman Empire
The BBC have also had a series called What The Romans did for Us. The 5th Episode will be shown on BBC four on Monday at 19.30 GMT for those of you in England.

Declensions Song

Anyone out there struggling to remember which declension a word is may find this video helpful. Which has tips on how to recognise the declensions in the form of a song.
Sadly embedding is disabled so here's the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNlYWyaEbTQ

Translation Practice

As you have probably heard time and time again, practice will make you prefect. So today I have provided you with a website which generates a random Latin sentence and provides a translation so you can check your one.
So check out SCRIBAX for some more practice

If you need any help in for vocabulary, this is an online dictionary.

Online Dictionary

6 Months on...

I'm not sure if you were aware of this but this blog was born 6 months ago (November 2008) and since then it has been quite successful, I will let you see for yourselves.

Statistics:
Pageviews: 800+
Visitors- 500+ from 44 different coutries
Blog Posts- 36- And in the coming 6 months my aim will be to make these more regular and helpful.

The aim of this post is to thank all of you out there for being willing to Learn Latin- It's clearly not as dead as some people believe.

Snippets- Vocabulary, Context and more

Today's post has a number of snippets ranging from a link or two to a contextual PowerPoint and a vocabulary list to help those preparing for upcoming and vital exams.

Most importantly, the vocabulary lists:
Every day Latin- general phrases and the most common words that come up in texts, also Latin that is used today.
More Latin- again useful vocabulary that will make the exam easier.

Context:
The Growth of the Roman Empire

Links:
These will also be added to the useful links section of the website.
Latinum- a set of podcasts that are based on "A practical grammar of the Latin language" which can be downloaded here

Hopefully this will help both people with exams and those just learning Latin for fun :)

Roman Army

After a bit of an easter holiday I think everyone is fresh enough to start studying again.
Today's Contextual post is on the Roman army, the backbone of the empire and a set of military vocabulary as well.
Roman Army
Military Vocabulary

Latin Metre

To be able to read and analyse any Latin Literature, you need to be able to understand if not use latin metre so for todays (almost) contextual lesson/powerpoint we have (drum roll please)
An introduction to Latin Metre
So hopefull this will serve as an introduction, so that we can go on to look at some texts.

Note: from now on the posts may be a little more mixed, but will mostly include contextual information and of course some literature on the way.
The literature texts we will be looking at will be Pliny the Elder, Sempronia, Clodia and some others- which I havent decided about yet- sooo....
Until next time!

Temples

So continuing with the contextual resources todays post features a powerpoint on temples and looks at the styles, features and examples of them.
Great for the architecturally minded :)
Temples

Something different

Everyone knows that the study of Latin does not only focus on the language itself, to be able to understand a lot of what went on, and their literature, we need to know some context.


So over the next few posts I will provide some presentations that focus on context, starting with Childhood in the Roman Empire:
Childhood In the Roman Empire (slideshow office 2007)
Childhood In the Roman Empire (powerpoint file office compatible)

There will be more to follow.

Dictionary

Ok so here's a Latin dictionary that I used a lot when I was translating, it is free and simple to use (once you get the hang of it), dare I say it is the best Latin dictionary around (thats free anyway).
So here we go:
Latin Dictionary (zipped)

It even tells you the case and how to change it, and comes up in command prompt style screen.
So from now on you should be perfectly capable of translating things that I give you or at least figuring them out XD

Some More Exercises

Ok firstly I must start with an apology for not posting for over a week. That was due to a number of factors, including the most momentuous snow in England for 18 years, which has distracted me for nearly a week XD. See below :)

But I realise that you are eager to get some more Latin practice in so today I have another series of online exercises that will help you to practice, and they self correct, which is great in itself :)

Note: I am suggesting these exercises since when I was taught it, my teacher never gave me enough practice. 

So below are the links for the different Sections:

Main Site: Interactive Latin

Nouns

Verbs

Adjectives

Trial Classes

Ok so I thought that now would be a good time to see if we can start a class with exercises on a website called Quia. For the minute it will be a trial to see how many of you are going to be involved. So here is my profile

And hopefully you will be as enthusiastic about this as I am!!!

This is the class website: here

Here are the instructions:

Class:	Latin
	Code:	DMPCDD644

Step 1. Go to the Quia Web site at http://www.quia.com/web.  Step 2. Now, click the area labeled Students. When the next page appears, enter your username and password if you already have a Quia account. If you do not have an account, click the link Create my free account. Fill out the form that appears. Select "Student" as the account type. When you are done, press the Create my account button.  Step 3. You should now be in the Student Zone. Type in the class code DMPCDD644 in the text field and press the Add class button. Now you're done!  Now that you have registered for your instructor's course, you can view your class web page, take quizzes, view your quiz results, view time spent on Quia activities, and read your instructor's feedback from your Quia account.  Follow these steps to view your results:  Step 1. Log in to your account. (Remember, go to the Quia Web home page athttp://www.quia.com/web and click the area labeled Students.)  Step 2. Click on the class name.

Cambridge Latin Course

Some of you may be using the Cambridge Latin Course to study Latin (possibly if you study in the UK) , for those of you who haven't heard of it, it is the accompanying website to their published books which were used in my school. 

This is what they say

"Aims of the CLC

	to teach comprehension of the Latin language for reading purposes;
	to develop an understanding of the history and culture of Roman civilisation;
	to encourage a wide range of approaches to language learning through the use of high quality audio-visual resources." They have a great set of online resources, such as vocabulary testers and translation activities (as well as games for those times you want gentle "revision")  So here is the link to their website: http://www.cambridgescp.com

Past Tense

So we have done present and future tense, now for past perfect tense. This time,  there wasn't a single sheet that explained everything so there are a number, which should between them explain everything clearly:

Past Tense sheets

The Future

Ok so we have now looked at the present, so onto the future with another sheet to help you.

Future Tense

Recommendation

If you are someone who is teaching themsleves Latin, or just to go over everything in a slightly more ordered fashion then I definitely reccomend the about.com beginners Latin Tutorial, it clearly describes everything.

New Year slightly different topic

So, Hope that everyone had a great Christmas and New Year, 

Just before christmas we looked at the grammar, moving on we will now look at tenses and todays tense is... (the suspense :]) the present tense of course, since the grammar also involved a lot of this.

And here is the explanatory worksheet:

Present Tense