Do you hate Latin?
This website is for every student taking Latin who hates the class, doesn't understand it, or just needs more help with it. It was made for students, by a student.
I've been in your shoes. At one point, I hated Latin too. I had just entered the class in eighth grade after taking French for the first two years of middle school (why I switched is a long story.) I was completely overwhelmed. I didn't know what a case or a declension was. I didn't know how to tell what tense a verb was. I didn't even know what I didn't know. I went to a few after-school tutoring sessions, but that didn't help. I got D's and C's on my first few tests, and I didn't feel like I had made any progress.
One day, things started to click. I realized all that I had been missing, studied what I needed to study, and memorized what I needed to memorize. I learned and devised a few tricks and mnemonic devices to help me remember things, and soon I was able to translate much more easily. In second quarter, my grade rose to an A, and it stayed that way for the rest of the year. I felt much more confident and knowledgeable.
It's my hope that through this website, you'll be able to have the same type of success - or at least be able to pass the class. Whether you discover a new passion or just want to tear your hear out a little less, I hope this website makes your experience as a Latin student a little better :)
- Nick
I've been in your shoes. At one point, I hated Latin too. I had just entered the class in eighth grade after taking French for the first two years of middle school (why I switched is a long story.) I was completely overwhelmed. I didn't know what a case or a declension was. I didn't know how to tell what tense a verb was. I didn't even know what I didn't know. I went to a few after-school tutoring sessions, but that didn't help. I got D's and C's on my first few tests, and I didn't feel like I had made any progress.
One day, things started to click. I realized all that I had been missing, studied what I needed to study, and memorized what I needed to memorize. I learned and devised a few tricks and mnemonic devices to help me remember things, and soon I was able to translate much more easily. In second quarter, my grade rose to an A, and it stayed that way for the rest of the year. I felt much more confident and knowledgeable.
It's my hope that through this website, you'll be able to have the same type of success - or at least be able to pass the class. Whether you discover a new passion or just want to tear your hear out a little less, I hope this website makes your experience as a Latin student a little better :)
- Nick
Why I haven't used macrons (for the most part)
1. Macrons weren't actually used by the Romans. They just knew how each word sounded, pronouncing long vowels (those with macrons) as long vowels and short vowels as short vowels. In their original format, Latin manuscripts and texts don't have macrons at all.
2. Latin is, unfortunately, a dead language, and people don't need to learn how to speak it anymore. (Though speaking Latin is a great aid to learning it, especially for auditory learners.)
*I have used macrons only on the long ā of the ablative singular, because the macron is the only thing that distinguishes it from the nominative singular, on the long ē that is the signature vowel of the second conjugation, because the macron is the only thing that distinguishes it from the third conjugation, and on the various forms that end in -ūs in fourth declension.
2. Latin is, unfortunately, a dead language, and people don't need to learn how to speak it anymore. (Though speaking Latin is a great aid to learning it, especially for auditory learners.)
*I have used macrons only on the long ā of the ablative singular, because the macron is the only thing that distinguishes it from the nominative singular, on the long ē that is the signature vowel of the second conjugation, because the macron is the only thing that distinguishes it from the third conjugation, and on the various forms that end in -ūs in fourth declension.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Ms. Richards, my first Latin teacher, for helping me discover my love for Latin, and languages in general. You may be back in Texas now, but we still miss you here in NC.
Thank you to Ms. Gill, my second Latin teacher, for helping me with this website. Your guidance was very valuable to me during this process.
Thank you to Ms. Molony for being such an amazing mentor during the process of the Personal Project. You were always available when I had questions and gave me very helpful feedback.
Thank you to Project Gutenberg, which allowed me to access public domain (copyright-free) e-Book versions of the books New Latin Grammar by Charles E. Bennett, Latin for Beginners by Benjamin L. D'Ooge, A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges by George Martin Lane, and A Comic Latin Grammar by Percival Leigh. I used these books to help me write the content on this website.
Thank you to Anne Mahoney and the Perseus Digital Library of Tufts University. I used Anne's article "Overview of Latin Syntax" to help me write some of the content for this website. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License, so in order to follow the terms of the license, I have licensed the pages I wrote with information from the article with version 4.0 of the same license. Please be sure to read the terms of the license if you use any information from those pages.
Thank you to William Whitaker, who has now passed away, for creating an extensive Latin-English dictionary and putting it all into public domain through the computer program, Words. Thanks also to Erik Mendoza for creating the software Interpres, allowing me to run the Words software on a Mac :) . I used the program to find any definitions of Latin words I needed during the process of writing content for this website.
Thank you to Ms. Gill, my second Latin teacher, for helping me with this website. Your guidance was very valuable to me during this process.
Thank you to Ms. Molony for being such an amazing mentor during the process of the Personal Project. You were always available when I had questions and gave me very helpful feedback.
Thank you to Project Gutenberg, which allowed me to access public domain (copyright-free) e-Book versions of the books New Latin Grammar by Charles E. Bennett, Latin for Beginners by Benjamin L. D'Ooge, A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges by George Martin Lane, and A Comic Latin Grammar by Percival Leigh. I used these books to help me write the content on this website.
Thank you to Anne Mahoney and the Perseus Digital Library of Tufts University. I used Anne's article "Overview of Latin Syntax" to help me write some of the content for this website. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License, so in order to follow the terms of the license, I have licensed the pages I wrote with information from the article with version 4.0 of the same license. Please be sure to read the terms of the license if you use any information from those pages.
Thank you to William Whitaker, who has now passed away, for creating an extensive Latin-English dictionary and putting it all into public domain through the computer program, Words. Thanks also to Erik Mendoza for creating the software Interpres, allowing me to run the Words software on a Mac :) . I used the program to find any definitions of Latin words I needed during the process of writing content for this website.