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Hi, I'm Kim
and I'm going to quickly go over the two resources that I've started out my latin
studies with.
The first one
is the Minimus series.
This is aimed at around the age 10 or so
obviously i'm a little older than that, but I'm still really enjoying it.
I like the lighter approach.
It has stories in it about this mouse named Minimus and his
adventures
with a family in
the area of Great Britain during the time of the Romans.
You see here
it's got all these really cute cartoons
and it has,
like, vocabulary lists. They're not all inclusive, so
if you are the type of person that wants to know the exact definition of every word you
will have to look up a few words, but
really you can figure out most everything though context.
It's really light on the grammar since it is aimed at the younger crowd.
the grammar is more like
"this is what a noun is" and "this is what a verb is"
as opposed to
getting into the heart of the
Latin declentions and all of that.
But there is a of lot of historical content in here
which is really fun uh... it just adds a depth to it and for kids you know
and adults alike
it's very educational.
I mean, you can see they have
here this is an
artifact that was actually found
uh... near this town that this takes place at
so you can see what real latin writing looked like.
Alright, so that you can also buy the CD separately.
The CD, in my opinion, is the best part, because
when they read, it is not one person
reading all the dialogue,
but it's a whole cast.
And so you have
uh... you know
a woman reading the part of the mother and
and a little boy reading the part of the child
and they all
just do it so well. You can tell it's just really professionally done and
very refreshing.
Let's see, what else? There is a lot of English
on the CD.
I don't find it
annoying. It really adds a lot of depth
to the
dialogue, a lot of backstory.
But I can definitely see some people thinking it's too much and
therefore, a waste of time, but
I enjoyed it.
There's also a Minimus Secondus.
So this is a very thin book
you can see here. There's like
twelve little chapters.
You could do a chapter a day if you wanted. It's really not a big deal.
I'm taking a little bit longer. I'm doing a couple chapters a week.
You know, you finish this up in no time at all.
and there's the Minimus Secondus that you can get as well.
So, I'm almost done with
this first one and I'll definitely be ordering that one here in the next week.
I do hear online that there's a teachers
guide that you can get.
I didn't
feel doing this that I
needed that but if you're doing this as a homeschooling course or something,
you'd probably want to get it.
You can definitely figure everything out on your own.
You know, the activities are simple enough
that an adult can
reason then out
without the teacher's manual so you don't really need it for the answers anything
but it does
add a little more
discussion about
history and maybe about grammar and stuff. I'm not sure.
I haven't seen it but that's just what I read in some other reviews online.
Alright, so...
the second Latin resource that I wanted to talk about
was
the
TuTubus Latinus
channel on
YouTube.
Which, that does
mean YouTube in Latin. Tutubus.
Actually, there a few different series
The one that I'm doing right now is Learning Latin with Virgil.
Which was actually made a few years ago. Umm...
I chose this one spefically because I'm interested in the
writing of Virgil.
It's really
based on those stories, so if that's what you're into,
you will probably enjoy it.
And if you're not into that, then
you might want to find something else.
It does get into grammar. I would say uh...
It is not the best grammar explanations out there
but I just enjoy the
smooth professional quality of
the videos.
It must be like a
powerpoint slide that goes along
with the voice over of the instructor.
So did you get both the auditory and the visual.
And uh, as far as the accent goes, I'm no overy critical.
at all and
but it is helpful
for sure, to hear it as well.
So the instructors is Australian and has a very thick accent
which I'm
used to, since my husband's Australian, but
some people do find it
distracting.
So, anyway I really think we need to be less
critical of people's accents with
dead languages personally, [laughing]
but there's something to be said for having some attention to proper
pronunciation as well.
Uh, so let's see here.
I can't show you the
video right now. You can just go over to YouTube and
check that out, that "Learning Latin with Virgil," but I will show you the notebook I'm keeping.
So I have
just a little tiny notebook and
what I do
I define the
new vocabulary
in Latin and in English.
And then I
write down the dialogues.
If it has a lot of new vocabulary in it I want to keep track of that. So on the left it's in Latin and on the right it's in
English.
And then over here I make notes about
grammar.
Or grammar and the text itself. Since it's going along
the story of the poets and the
sailor, Aeneas, and everything
in the stories of Virgil.
Um, so yeah, I'm up to, right now, I'm working on
the seventh
video.
And I just
really
really find it compelling.
So,
I recommend that.
So that is where I'm at with the Latin resources. Please let me know if you have
any questions at all and I will answer them to the best of my abilities.
And also if you have any
resources that you'd like to share with me, please feel free to make a comment or a
video response.
I have a few other resources that I've heard about
from others in the YouTube community,
that I'm really looking forward to trying out. These just seem like really light-weight ways to
ease myself into learning Latin, so I thought I'd
do these and then get on with some of the more serious works.
Alright, I look forward to hearing your feedback.