Working on Your Latin

Working on your Latin–for teachers and autodidacts

The following links are part of a growing number of resources that “may” give you some comprehensible input of Latin for your own listening. I qualify the “may” because as we each approach any of these works, we may find that we don’t understand.  This could be because the speaking is too fast, the Latin pronunciation is of a different sort (Classical, Ecclesiastical, European or regional generic), or because the reading or conversation simply contains too many new words. Nevertheless, we can likely find something here as a beginning place and do for ourselves what we attempt to do for our students–take in as much comprehensible Latin as possible.

As we work to give students comprehensible Latin, it’s probably a good thing to work on our own abilities in the language. Much gratitude to John Piazza, Justin Slocum Bailey Ellie Arnold and others for compiling these lists which I have shamelessly stolen from their posts and organized here. If you find others that you think helpful, email the links to me and I will add them. As several people have noted to me over the years, you can slow down the speed on youtube when watching on a computer, so that can help with comprehensibility at times

  • John Piazza’s Latin Listening Page–John has maintained a wonderful website of helps for many years now.  On this page, he has a whole list of listening opportunities that are likely good places to start.
  • Jessie Craft’s Video series–these are wonderful videos created to be used with students, but that also means that they are very easy ways into listening to Latin as well.
  • Latinitium–a site by Daniel Pettersson with audio, video and other kinds of links all in Latin.
  • Sermones Raedarii–a set of podcasts by Alexander Veronensis in Latin on the art of teaching.
  • Musaeolum–a series of recitations of classical texts by Corrado Russo
  • Nuntii Latini–not to be confused with the Finnish news cast, this is a production of videos and messages by students of Western Washington University.
  • Nuntii Latini–but this is the Finnish news cast.
  • Indwelling Language–this one link takes you to several offerings of Latin–the Quomodo dicitur weekly podcast as well as readings of various kinds of Latin literature.
  • 50+ Hours of Spoken Latin–a youtube playlist of a variety of lectures and talks compiled by Daniel Pettersson.
  • Collegium Latinitas–a youtube channel of short lectures and talks on identified topics from Latin Literature.