Latin I

Course Overview

Salvete omnes! This is Pastor Maltby’s personal landing page for Latin I. Here you’ll be able to find resources to help you in better studying the Latin language, including videos, stories, etc., all organized around the modules of the course. This may also be helpful if you are wanting to look ahead, to explore a topic you find interesting, et cetera. I will be building out this page overtime for your convenience.

If you aren’t one of Pastor Matlby’s students, I’m still glad you are here. Feel free to take a look around. Please note: watching videos online is no substitute for a real, in-person teacher. We live in a world where fast and easy access to knowledge is prized above long, arduous work to achieve true mastery. The optimal model for learning is almost always the master-apprentice model, where a master is a true master of his craft, for there are many things that the autodidact not only doesn’t know, but doesn’t know that he doesn’t know, and needs someone to point him toward avenues he didn’t know existed. Yet, this is a great place to start. Feel free to use it however you’d like, and perhaps in conjunction with a great Latin teacher if you know someone who knows and uses the language.

Philosophy of Language Learning

I do not believe in the grammatical-translation method (as it has been sometimes called). That is, it has always seemed backward to me to train ourselves in forms, grammar, etc. first, before getting into actually speaking the language, trying to express oneself in the language, and hearing it spoken. The grammar must be learned, no doubt, but in our own mother-tongue, we did this after we had thousands of words under our belt, and already intuited that grammar through hearing sentences millions of times, and constructing them ourselves.

This means that the approach should be less like checking off boxes (i.e., I can write out the present-active-indicative chart!) in order to pass from one level to the next, and it should be treated more like someone training in a gym. You have to put in the hours, and respect the grind! Watching a single video in Latin multiple times is a good things; it’s like putting in the reps. Eventually you do end up moving on, in the same way you don’t have the same weight on the bar every day when it’s no longer a challenge. You have to start adding new challenges to keep increasing in strength.

The reason why the other method is so appealing actually speaks to a sinful desire on the part of mankind: the desire toward legalism. We want, like the Pharisees of old, to have virtue boiled down into easily achievable little boxes. We want to appear to have virtue by saying, “I tithe a tenth of the mint and cumin I bought at the market, so I’m generous,” or “I didn’t walk any more than X number of miles today, so I kept the sabbath.” But virtue is hard-earned, and it is far more than checking off boxes. It is a training of the soul. The same can be said for any other kind of learning. The man who is a master of a craft is not the one who has analyzed different parts of that craft and has memorized its discrete facts, any more than the expert marksman is one because he knows every part of the gun and its dimensions down to a T. The expert marksman is one who has shot thousands of rounds and can hit the target. The virtuous man is one who has practiced the virtues of generosity, contentment, etc. over long periods of time. The master of Latin is one who has read, spoken, written, and heard the language with comprehension for hundreds or thousands of hours, and can do so with ease.

Modules

Grammar Modules

Unit One

  1. The Present Tense
  2. Infinitives
  3. Nouns: The Five Cases
  4. First Declension
  5. The Second Conjugation
  6. The Imperfect Tense
  7. Questions
  8. Second Declension Masculine
  9. Second Declension Neuter
  10. “To Be” in Latin

Unit Two

  1. The Future Tense
  2. First & Second Declension Adjectives
  3. The Perfect Tense
  4. Questions with “-ne” and “num”
  5. The Third Conjugation Present & Imperfect

Unit Three

  1. Third Declension Masculine & Feminine
  2. Third Declension Neuter
  3. Third Declension “-i” stems
  4. Phrases starting with cum
  5. Third Conjugation “io” verbs
  6. Third Conjugation Imperfect & Future

Unit Four

  1. Personal Pronouns: 1st and 2nd
  2. Personal Pronouns: 3rd
  3. Third Declension Adjectives
  4. Demonstratives
  5. Irregulars: “ire” “ferre” & “posse”
  6. Compound Verbs
  7. Fourth Conjugation Present
  8. The Pluperfect Tense
  9. Future Imperative

Unit Five

  1. Cardinal Numbers
  2. Ordinal Numbers
  3. Fourth Declension Masculine & Feminine
  4. Fourth Declension Neuter
  5. Partitive Expressions
  6. Future Perfect Tense
  7. Time Expressions
  8. Fifth Declension