Lingua Latina: Pars I: Familia Romana (Pt. 1)
by Hans H. Orberg
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Book Summary Information
Author: Hans H. OrbergEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); Latin (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-02-21
ISBN: 1585102385
Number of pages: 328
Publisher: Focus Publishing/R. Pullins Co.
Book Reviews of Lingua Latina: Pars I: Familia Romana (Pt. 1)
Book Review: Resources for Self-Learners
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a list of important resources for self-learners, through Pars I-Familia Romana; followed by critical remarks concerning the later chapters of the book, and the passage into Pars II-Roma Aeterna:
(Since reviewers are prohibited from giving more than 10 product links per review, I shall note only the ISBN numbers for some of the volumes mentioned; all are available on Amazon.)
1. This has been mentioned in other reviews--the exercise book for Vol I: ISBN1585102121. Numerous 'fill-in-the-blank'-type exercises, that have been very well designed; they really help consolidate the material introduced in each chapter.
2. The answer key to all the end-of-chapter drills (the Pensa), and exercise books, for *both* Vol.1 Familia Romana, and Vol.2 Roma Aeterna: ISBN1585100749. Indispensable for self-learners.
3. Audiobook/CD-ROMs: Ørberg himself has recorded the first 31 chapters of Pars I (There are 35 in total), which recordings have been released by Focus Publishing in two different formats: The first ten chapters are available as an audio cd (Lingua Latina: Latine Audio (Audio CD ONLY) Chapters 1-10 only from "Familia Romana" (Latin Edition) (Pt. 1)); which I believe is enough to get a sense of what the language is supposed to sound like. The remaining 21 chapters are available, as mp3 files, only in cd-rom editions of the series, of which there are several releases.
The release for Mac OS X, (Lingua Latina: (MAC OS X) CD-Rom of Familia Romana, Roma Aeterna, Excertia Latina I & II & Grammatica Latina (Latin Edition)) contains all recordings, exercise books for both parts of the text, and both parts of the text itself. In the PC edition, the same material has been spread out to 4 CD-ROMS (the different editions are priced accordingly). For the text of Pars I, the interactive Pensa, and the sound recordings, see: Lingua Latina: (PC/CD-ROM) Pars I: Familia Romana-Interactive CD Rom (Latin Edition). Exercise book for Pars I: Lingua Latina CD: Exercitia Latina I (Latin Edition). For Roma Aeterna: Lingva Latina: Interactive Latin Course, Pars II: Roma Aeterna (PC) (Lingua Latina) (Latin Edition); and Lingua Latina: Exercitia Latina II (PC/CD-ROM) (Latin Edition) (No. 2).
Now, it is *essential* to the study of Latin, to have a correct sense of how the language is pronounced. While this may sound like a truism, what is at stake in pronouncing Latin correctly is more than clarity or elegance; often the proper declension of a word is conveyed through the duration of vowels--and in a completely inflected language like Latin, word order is of *no* help in determining the meaning of an unintelligibly declined word. Thus, the audio component of Lingua Latina is very highly recommended.
4. Additional Reading Material: Ørberg has edited several readers for the benefit of students who have finished Familia Romana (links provided below); as an accompaniment to chapters 1-24 of this first part, however, he has also written a short reader, the Colloquia Personarum (Lingua Latina: Colloquia Personarum). Carefully graded extra reading material, such as the Colloquia Personarum, proves to be an invaluable resource for self-learners; I wish Ørberg had written more volumes like these, with his standard marginal notes and meticulously notated macrons.
To be read right after Familia Romana--abridged/annotated editions of Caesar and Plautus: ISBN1585102326 (Caesar); ISBN8799701677 (Plautus); the 'Sermones Romani', a collection of heavily edited excerpts from major Latin authors ISBN8790696077.
5. A handy little booklet that contains grammar charts: ISBN1585102237
6. This one is not by Ørberg; the Barrons' book of 501 Latin Verbs--ISBN0764137425. Latin verbs are a little tough, and the different root forms of verbs (through the last third of Familia Romana) are about the only thing Ørberg wants to have the student 'memorize'--but see below for more on verbs.
7. And these are highly informative and readable sources on the history of Latin, for enthusiasts who do not have expert knowledge in linguistics: Latin Alive Latin Alive: The Survival of Latin in English and the Romance Languages; for speakers of French, Spanish, or Italian, a book that consists of sound charts, tracking how Latin mutated into these 'Romance Languages': From Latin to Romance in Sound Charts; for a very broad historical survey: A Natural History of Latin.
There are also excellent, authoritative online resources for more advanced students; the *immensely* rich Perseus library at Tufts University foremost--which, by the way, is an open source project, and also offers xml versions of their bewilderingly large collection of primary and secondary literature in Latin and Greek, as well as free software, stylesheets, etc., that translate those documents into readable html. (Manipulating xml requires professional web-authoring skills, though--I have failed in my attempts to import the texts into the Kindle; let me know if you have figured out how to translate Perseus xml into Kindle-friendly html!) The Philologic project at the University of Chicago also includes an implementation of the Perseus library, which is offered in a slightly less complicated interface. Both websites feature very user-friendly online editions of the famous Lewis & Short dictionary; I find the Chicago version slightly easier to navigate, though. German speakers may want to check out 'Lateinseiten.de' as well, especially their 'Konjugator' applet. (Just 'google' for these websites.)
Now, some general remarks on Familia Romana: This book has to be seen, 'to be believed'--please bear this in mind, if the reviews on this webpage have left you somewhat skeptical. It provides by no means a 'magical' method that teaches Latin with little effort on the part of the student; to the contrary, it is quite challenging, and as far as the grammatical foundations of the language are concerned, extremely thorough. Despite what some other reviewers have suggested, neither does the book have the least pretension, as to teaching Latin the way children pick up their first language; *that's not what is meant by 'natural method'*. In fact, the closest analogue to Ørberg's method that I can think of, is the method known to music students as 'species counterpoint'--this, roughly speaking, is a time-honored method of learning how to write music in two or more 'independent' voices, starting with very limited materials--consonances of equal duration--and gradually introducing new resources, i.e. more rhythmic diversity, different kinds of dissonance and their resolution, and so on. This particular method does not take the student from such graded exercises, all the way to the art of writing fugues or elaborate chorale preludes, of course; but it's an excellent way to learn to 'think contrapuntally', while *writing* very, very small pieces of *music*, however 'striated' the results may sound. See the following book, for instance, for examples of student exercises, on this method, of some of the greatest masters: ISBN 048628316X; you may also want to check out the famous 'Gradus ad Parnassum' by Johann Joseph Fux: ISBN0393002772, and perhaps the most thorough implementation of the method, by Arnold Schönberg: ISBN 0571092756.
Back to Ørberg: Every single word of the 'story' in this book has been picked with an amazingly precise sense of where the student is coming from, and in which direction, and in what manner, he or she needs to be guided. (See below for more on this.) There is a perfect balance of repetition and new material. Both tasks are accomplished, furthermore, through a rich variety of forms--that is, Ørberg never repeats older material for the sake of repetition, but keeps using already drilled grammatical concepts in progressively interesting, varied, challenging contexts; and when he introduces a new concept, he makes sure the student sees examples that are varied enough, so that the 'idea' at work behind them may be grasped.
The 'story', by the way, even in the earliest chapters, is never boring, silly, or childish; and there's a good bit of humor, to keep the student's interest, and make the experience all the more enjoyable. Beginners may rest assured that the somewhat disjointed 'tableaux' of the earlier chapters set up in fact the dramatic background, against which it becomes possible for the later chapters to elaborate. The book, in short, respects the student's intelligence.
One ought also to keep in mind, that 'Lingua Latina per se Illustrata' is a course of 61 chapters, of which Familia Romana covers the first 35--'thorough' as it may be, concerning the grammatical foundations of the language, there is an important sense in which it does not stand all on its own--let me explain: Just a quick scan through the pages of each volume would suggest that the first volume lays the foundations of the grammar, and that the second volume proceeds to adapted readings from the classics; and it is true that the first volume treats the entire case system, the entire system of conjugations, several of the subtleties of Latin syntax, the imaginative uses to which whole phrases in the ablative can be put, and so on; while the second volume has rather the appearance of an anthology of graded readings. Whence the 'incompleteness'?
Now, it is important to note that the ingenuity of Ørberg's 'total immersion' method lies in its pitch-perfect sense of which features of the language have to become salient, and which must recede into the background at every step of the course--and, it is by limiting verb conjugations to the 3rd person singular/plural (active and passive) that Familia Romana is able to work the 'wonders' that it's able to work, in inculcating the case system through the first third or so of the book. It is simply amazing how Ørberg teaches the student to *think in terms of a fully inflected language*, from *within* that very system of inflections (as a side note: I think that my German has benefited considerably from my work in Latin [and Greek 'looks', at least, to be far less mysterious]). It makes perfect sense, furthermore, to rapidly immerse the student in the entire case system right from the start--after all, 'all' the cases are used 'all' the time, often in a single sentence.
Yet, the trade-off here is that the complicated sytem of conjugations is held off, until fairly advanced in the book; this is not a problem for the comprehension of the simple 'core' of tenses and moods that are, likewise, used 'all the time', beyond the 3rd person--however, when all of the perfect forms, the subjunctive, and so on, enter the picture one after the other the student begins to feel more and more detached; chapters begin to look more and more like exercises in memorizing arcane conjugations that seem (deceptively, of course) to be reserved for special occasions; the last third of the book is a lot less 'exciting' than the first third.
Everything takes on a new light, however, in chapter 34 of Familia Romana, and the first of the separate 'readers': We're back to using all resources all at the same time, and the strained focus on this or that 'fancy conjugation' leaves its place to the 'excitement' of being able to think in Latin, once again. Needless to say, at this point, the conjugation system, in its *totality*, makes a lot more sense. (Vol. I ends with unadapted excerpts from Catullus!)
So, Familia Romana is 'incomplete' only in the sense that towards the end, the 'immersion' appears to lose its grip--but that's only because it will become all the richer, and stable, once we're back into using everything all at the same time, through chapters 34-61, and the readers.
A final note, concerning vocabulary: Here, too, Ørberg inculcates some of the *most relevant* core vocabulary for students of the classics--from seafaring (and its dangers), to dinner parties, to matters pertaining to the military and the Gauls and the Germans, to agricultural matters, and so on. Besides, some of the later chapters contain dialogues of early Christians, and Ørberg was able even to sneak in there some *lightly* adapted excerpts from the Vulgate (the characters in the book could not have known the Vulgate, of course--but historical accuracy has to yield in this case to Ørberg's ingenious teaching methods).
All in all: This is a superb achievement. Ørberg is a genius of pedagogy.
(Update: There is a new, colored paperback edition of the same book: see ISBN978-1585104208)
Summary of Lingua Latina: Pars I: Familia Romana (Pt. 1)
Entirely composed in Latin, Part I, Familia Romana, provides an excellent introduction to Latin, including the essentials of Latin grammar and a basic vocabulary of over 1500 words. The thirty-five chapters describe the life of a Roman family in the 2nd century A.D., and culminate in readings from classical poets and Donatus Ars Grammatica, the standard Latin school text for a millennium. Each chapter is divided into two or three lectiones (lessons) of a couple pages each followed by a grammar section, Grammatica Latina, and three exercises or Pensa. Hans Ã?rbergs impeccable Latinity, humorous stories, and the Peer Lauritzen illustrations make this work a classic. The book includes a table of inflections, a Roman calendar, and a word index, Index vocabulorum.Latin Books
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