10 Tips for Learning Latin at Home

Stuck at home? Let’s look at 10 com­mon and uncom­mon sug­ges­tions for improv­ing your Latin with­out leav­ing your house.

Strange times are upon us. The world is clos­ing around us. Every­one is told to stay at home, wash their hands and keep social­iz­ing to a minimum. 

Wher­ev­er you are and what restric­tions you have to fol­low – the times are hard. 

In our newslet­ter and week­ly mes­sage on our mem­ber­ship site the oth­er Fri­day, we talked about what you can do when locked inside to pass the time. 

I thought it might be a good idea to share it here too. 

So here are some tips (all regard­ing Latin, of course) about what to do while you keep your dis­tance from every­one else. They might keep your mind off things and help you improve your Latin at the same time: 

1. Read A Book: Make It A Habit

This first tip is per­haps the most obvi­ous one, but it is also one of the best ones as read­ing plen­ty of Latin will pro­vide you with a lot of input which in turn makes you inevitably bet­ter at Latin. So, find a book at your lev­el of Latin and read. If pos­si­ble, try some­thing amus­ing or fun­ny – choose a com­e­dy! In these times, a lit­tle fun input is extra valuable.

For extra cred­its, decide on a read­ing goal or set up a dai­ly read­ing habit, for instance, that you should read Latin for 20 min­utes. It’s eas­i­er to estab­lish and keep a read­ing habit, if you (1) make the habit itself very easy (start small) so as to pre­vent pro­cras­ti­na­tion, (2) make doing the habit easy, by plac­ing the book and nec­es­sary aids where you are going to be read­ing every day, e.g. in your favorite chair, (3) stick the new habit onto anoth­er dai­ly rou­tine or habit you have so that the old habit reminds you of your new read­ing habit. You can read more about set­ting study goals and cre­at­ing habits in this arti­cle: How to Learn Latin: Part 1.

I’ll give you an exam­ple from home. Every day after break­fast, Daniel sits down in our liv­ing room and picks up the Latin book that he left there the night before. Right now, he’s read­ing Plau­tus’ play Casi­na aloud and record­ing it.

2. Keep A Journal

Keep­ing a jour­nal is a great way to prac­tice your Latin while at the same time doc­u­ment­ing this odd peri­od in our lives. Don’t wor­ry if you think you’re not good enough at Latin yet, or don’t know enough. Write at your level—if you’re a begin­ner, you don’t have to ven­ture into long peri­ods of thought and descrip­tions. It’s enough with Hodie domi sum. Valeo. (“Today I am home. I am well.”) Use it either as a way to learn how to express new things or as a way to test what you already know and put it into practice. 

3. Word Of The Day 

When I was a child, we used to have a cal­en­dar in our kitchen. It was one of those cal­en­dars that dis­played only one day at the time, and when a new day arrived, you tore away yesterday’s leaf. What was great about this was that every day had writ­ten on it a new word that you could learn; “the word of the day.” So, for my tip, instead of a pre­made cal­en­dar, take out your favorite dic­tio­nary and choose a word at ran­dom and learn it and learn about it. A dic­tio­nary is so much bet­ter than a cal­en­dar with a word and half a sen­tence explain­ing it as you get to learn so much more from a good dictionary.

Once you’ve got your word, chal­lenge your­self to use it in sen­tences through­out the day. 

4. Talk To A Friend

Keep­ing your­self iso­lat­ed is tough for most peo­ple if you’re not used to soli­tude before, so try­ing to find ways around the lone­li­ness is key. There­fore, make it a habit to talk to a friend. If you know peo­ple who, like you, are into Latin—call them up! Make it a thing to speak in Latin for part of the con­ver­sa­tion. If you’re not inter­est­ed in learn­ing to speak Latin – don’t. Talk about Latin or Rome. Decide that you should both read a par­tic­u­lar book, or look up a spe­cif­ic event in his­to­ry or learn about a cer­tain author, then talk about that. Learn­ing Latin is not sole­ly about learn­ing words, gram­mar, and style; it is also about cul­ture, his­to­ry, and literature. 

5. Go On A Virtual Date Or Lunch

This tip is tak­ing tip no 4 and tun­ing it up a notch. For this tip, you will need a good inter­net con­nec­tion. Do exact­ly like in tip 4, only this time make a video call using Skype or Face­time and have cof­fee (or tea, or beer, or wine, or din­ner) togeth­er. Make it a date. Pre­pare your cof­fee before­hand or decide that you’re going to have lunch or din­ner togeth­er. Now, this is nice just as it is, but just as in tip 4 – do all of this in Latin or while talk­ing about some­thing to do with Latin.

6. Take Out Your Board Games

Board games are great! Take out your favorite one and play it using only Latin. The most suit­able one for this might be Scrab­ble (you might have to make some cus­tom let­ters for it). If you’re alone in your house­hold or if your fam­i­ly isn’t inter­est­ed in Latin – play it with a friend online. As sug­gest­ed in no 5 use Skype or Face­time and play togeth­er over a video call. 

7. Listen To Some Good Stories

Lis­ten­ing to audio­books, music, or any kind of sto­ry is a great way to not only pass the time but learn some­thing new or repeat some­thing old. Lis­ten­ing to Latin is also a great way to acti­vate the lan­guage and force you to accept its struc­ture. You can’t look ahead for key­words or verbs when lis­ten­ing; you have to under­stand as you go, which is great prac­tice. So for tip no 7, I sug­gest you look through our Audio Archive and the first chap­ters of the Latin Anthol­o­gy 2000 years of Latin Prose and chose some texts that call out to you. If you’re feel­ing bold, chal­lenge your­self to go through the entire Archive (you’ll find it here).

8. Watch Videos

What is more appeal­ing than binge-watch­ing your favorite show with a cup of tea/chocolate/wine/whisky when feel­ing a lit­tle bit down and lone­ly? Watch­ing the dumb box is an easy way out of bore­dom, and it’s easy to get trapped (trust me, I know). Why not com­bine our lust for the mag­ic box with mov­ing pic­tures with our desire for learn­ing Latin?

Through­out the years, we have pro­duced a library of videos in Latin rang­ing from the series Loci et Locu­tiones where Daniel explains an expres­sion or goes through a pas­sage from Latin lit­er­a­ture to videos about Roman authors and Hal­loween spe­cials – all in Latin. You can find all of our videos in Latin here. And, if you can’t get enough, on our mem­ber­ship site, we have over 200 videos in Latin, and we pub­lish new ones every Friday. 

9. Find An Online Teacher/Tutor

Some­times we need a lit­tle bit of guid­ance. Many of you are auto­di­dacts by choice and per­haps not that for­eign to be learn­ing Latin on your own, oth­ers have just found them­selves cut off from cours­es. Either way, there are times when we need a lit­tle help, a lit­tle kick-in-the-butt. Luck­i­ly, we live in the 2020’s where tech­nol­o­gy is amaz­ing, and you don’t need a phys­i­cal class­room to have access to a teacher. There are plen­ty online. So pull up your dig­i­tal sleeves and search for an online teacher/tutor. 

10. Take An Online Course 

In tip no 9, I sug­gest­ed find­ing an online teacher. How­ev­er, there is one draw­back con­cern­ing online teach­ers and tutors – you have to book a cer­tain time, and then you’re bound to that time. If you have chil­dren, this might be dif­fi­cult (impos­si­ble even), and if your tutor lives in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent part of the world, time zones might also be an issue. 

So instead of find­ing a teacher, you can take an on-demand Video Course where every­thing is pre-record­ed; that way, you can take it at what­ev­er time suits you. In the morn­ing, in the evening, while hav­ing lunch, when the kids are asleep, or togeth­er with your kids. You can repeat the same les­son as many times as you like and yet get the feel­ing of being in a class­room. You can learn more about the Online Course that we cre­at­ed for the book Pugio Bru­ti – A Crime Sto­ry in Easy Latin here if you think an online course is some­thing for you. 

I hope you’ve found some of these tips use­ful. When stuck at home, I find it help­ful to try to think out­side of the box and see if I can do what I usu­al­ly do differently.

Be cre­ative, be imag­i­na­tive and most impor­tant­ly: stay safe!