How to Quickly Improve your Spoken Fluency in Latin

Stum­bling over words, entan­gled in a web of sentences.

Speak­ing a for­eign lan­guage you’re not used to can be like that. 

While you’re look­ing for the right word or form, the sun sets and ris­es twice. Even if you know the lan­guage, pro­duc­ing it is a strug­gle. This is a com­mon feel­ing for lan­guage learners.

What to do?

In this arti­cle, you’ll learn about islands, a lan­guage learn­ing tech­nique made pop­u­lar by Boris Shek­t­man, for­mer­ly of the For­eign Ser­vice Institute. 

In lan­guage learn­ing, “islands” are mini mono­logues or answers on fre­quent­ly recur­ring sub­jects of con­ver­sa­tion. The learn­er writes the mono­logues in idiomat­ic lan­guage, ver­i­fied by a teacher or advanced learn­er. The learn­er then mem­o­rizes them. In con­ver­sa­tion, these mono­logues allow for con­fi­dent, easy speech requir­ing lit­tle cog­ni­tive over­head. Mem­o­riz­ing many of these islands can lead to quite flu­ent speech, but this tech­nique must be com­bined with ample read­ing of lev­el-appro­pri­ate mate­r­i­al to lead to true fluency.

This tech­nique helps cre­ate con­fi­dence and dras­ti­cal­ly increas­es spo­ken flu­en­cy, and, most impor­tant­ly, it indi­rect­ly improves read­ing comprehension.

Automatic vs. Conscious Effort

Speak­ing a famil­iar lan­guage is like scrolling on your phone: you don’t think about it; it’s auto­mat­ic. Or, to quote Boris Shektman,

Speak­ing a famil­iar lan­guage is like walk­ing, speak­ing a for­eign lan­guage is like swimming.

Boris Shek­t­man

When you speak a for­eign lan­guage, you put down the phone and jump into an ocean of new language. 

There’s no scrolling, no strolling. Only swimming.

With con­scious effort.

Tired from swim­ming, you see an island where you can rest. You crawl up on it, pull out your phone, and start scrolling. It’s automatic.

In lan­guage learn­ing, islands are mini-mono­logues or mini speech­es of well-rehearsed and repeat­ed bits of lan­guage that you can use in con­ver­sa­tion auto­mat­i­cal­ly and effort­less­ly. You can swim to them and rest.

This may seem strange but you prob­a­bly use them already.

Language “Islands” are Natural

Islands in Everyday Life

Think about this: How do you intro­duce your­self? How do you describe your inter­ests in life, in your native lan­guage or Latin? How do you describe your job? Your fam­i­ly? Your Ph.D. project?

Chances are you respond in more or less the same way very often. While it’s true that vari­etas delec­tat, peo­ple tend towards ener­gy conservation.

Hav­ing dealt with cer­tain com­mon top­ics hun­dreds or thou­sands of times, we tend to respond reflex­ive­ly in these sit­u­a­tions; we default to auto­mat­ic, well-repeat­ed, and “rehearsed” mini-speech­es or monologues.

We see this in politi­cians and teach­ers: Some vet­er­ans of the trade give iden­ti­cal lec­tures with auto­mat­ic mini-speech­es in response to recur­ring stu­dent ques­tions, e.g., “Is the word order free in Latin?” “—Yes and no. The order is freer than in Eng­lish, but word order in Latin great­ly influ­ences mean­ing and can in some instances….”

This is not a bad thing. 

These are not con­scious­ly learned but have grown into effi­cient and (hope­ful­ly) elo­quent state­ments or respons­es, shaped over months or years of answer­ing sim­i­lar ques­tions in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions. They’ve grown into islands. 

I have talked to peo­ple work­ing in muse­ums, and when I men­tioned this tech­nique, they all said that they have ready-made mono­logues which have devel­oped over the years from answer­ing the same ques­tions every day. This means they might seem very flu­ent and elo­quent regard­ing the his­to­ry of a peri­od or an object, but out­side of that, repeat­ed mono­logue be far less fluent.

But what about pro­fi­cient users of for­eign languages?

Unconscious Islands in Language Learning

Like native speak­ers, pro­fi­cient speak­ers of a sec­ond lan­guage have repeat­ed the same things so often that the respons­es have turned into grooves in a record.

Then they just get into the groove. (clas­sic song, btw.)

Stu­dents often learn to use chunks of lan­guage at begin­ner lev­els, e.g., quo­mo­do res se habent? (i.e., “how are things?”), with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly being able to under­stand the con­stituent parts. 

Islands are noth­ing but larg­er chunks. And we can cre­ate them consciously.

Examples of Language “Islands”

Devel­op­ing islands in the ten most fre­quent top­ics of con­ver­sa­tion will go a long way towards lay­ing the foun­da­tion of flu­en­cy, or at least giv­ing you a place to rest in conversation. 

So what could some basic islands look like?

Let’s say you often talk with peo­ple about your teach­ing job. 

To the ques­tion “why are you learn­ing Latin?” you could have a short answer with high-fre­quen­cy vocab­u­lary and col­lo­ca­tions learned by heart.

An exam­ple:

“Why I’m learn­ing Latin? I’m learn­ing this lan­guage because I enjoy read­ing Latin lit­er­a­ture very much. For, when I read it, I seem to get to know ancient authors. I’ve been learn­ing Latin for two years now and I learn new things every day. But, to be hon­est, some­times it is difficult.”

“Cur lingam Lati­nam dis­cam? Hanc lin­guam dis­co quia lit­teras Lati­nas leg­ere mihi valde placet. Nam cum eas lego, vide­or scrip­tores antiqu­os cognoscere. Iam duos annos lin­guam Lati­nam dis­co et cot­ti­die nova dis­co. Sed, ut vere dicam, inter­dum dif­fi­cile est.”

This is a sim­plis­tic exam­ple, but it shows the idea; the “island” or mini mono­logue allows for com­mu­ni­ca­tion to con­tin­ue, takes a load of the speak­er, and rein­forces use­ful struc­tures (e.g., Iam duos annos [present verb], ut vere dicam, mihi placet, etc.).

These can lat­er eas­i­ly be reused in oth­er con­texts, e.g., Iam tres annos in Ger­ma­nia habito (“I’ve been liv­ing in Ger­many for three years.”) hic cibus mihi placet (“I like this food”).

Is This Real Language?

These “islands” allow us to pro­duce fast, effi­cient speech with­out too much cog­ni­tive effort, leav­ing more ener­gy for when we need it and build confidence.

But there may be a ret­i­cence to learn these mini mono­logues, a sense that it’s not real lan­guage. (Would it matter?) 

But it is: it’s your thoughts, but pol­ished and rehearsed. Which speak­ing about it for ten years would do any­way. We just con­dense the process.

As you inter­nal­ize these islands or mono­logues, the lan­guage they con­tain becomes part of you, and you won’t need to use them active­ly. You’re using and vary­ing the islands spon­ta­neous­ly to fit the situation.

They are only step­ping­stones in the process of learn­ing the Latin lan­guage. 

Getting Started with Language Islands

Examples

Before we go through the steps, here are two exam­ples of islands in practice:

Pre­sen­ta­tion island

“Mihi nomen est Daniel Pet­ters­son. In Sue­tia natus sum et Holmi­ae habito. In uni­ver­si­tate Stock­holmien­si in lit­teras Lati­nas inquiro et lin­guam Lati­nam doceo.”

Morn­ing island

“Hodie mane hora sex­ta horologium expergefi­cum sonu­it. Horolo­gio per fen­es­tram proiec­to de lec­to sur­rexi. Ves­ti­men­ta indui et ien­tac­u­lum cito sumpsi.”

These islands allow us to learn vocab­u­lary in con­texts that are rel­e­vant to us. Even when we’re not using the islands, the actions they describe, or the top­ic, will remind us of the Latin, and as such, reen­force the vocab­u­lary and the syn­tax used therein.

Step-by-Step Guide to Using Islands

Step 1: Select a Topic

This can be any­thing that you want to speak flu­ent­ly about, e.g.presentation, fam­i­ly, work, hobbies.

Sug­ges­tions:

• Per­son­al presentation.
• Pre­sen­ta­tion of family.
• What are your interests?
• What did I do this morning/evening?
• In defense of active Latin.
• What I wish I had known when I was younger.

Step 2: Write

Write out the “mini-speech” in a lan­guage you know well. Make it as short or as long as you want. Peo­ple use every­thing from two sen­tences to entire pages.

Step 3: Turn it into Latin

Trans­late it into good idiomat­ic Latin, using dic­tio­nar­ies, dic­tio­nar­ies of Latin syn­onyms, gram­mars, and/or teach­ers and friends. 

Sug­gest­ed read­ing: Latin prose com­po­si­tion: Books and Method

Step 4: Edit

Edit the text to make it flow nat­u­ral­ly, no Ciceron­ian peri­ods here, keep it short and fair­ly sim­ple. Read it aloud. Ask your­self if it sounds nat­ur­al? It’s imper­a­tive that the Latin be gram­mat­i­cal and idiomatic–as you will be mem­o­riz­ing this. Spend time ask­ing dif­fer­ent skilled Latin­ists what they think, pay for a coach­ing ses­sion for some­one to help you.

Step 5: Memorize it

We now have the islands and it’s time to learn them by heart.

How to memorise

In ancient times up to quite recent­ly, mem­o­riz­ing vast amounts of mate­r­i­al was part and par­cel of any edu­ca­tion; these days, how­ev­er, the prac­tice has, sad­ly, fall­en into dis­use and disrepute.

There are two prin­ci­ple meth­ods of mem­o­ris­ing: by rote and mnemon­ics.

Rote learn­ing, or learn­ing by rep­e­ti­tion, oral or writ­ten, requires lit­tle prepa­ra­tion but is less effec­tive. These days it’s some­what eas­i­er than before since we can record a text and lis­ten to it repeat­ed­ly. I’ve lis­tened to many French dia­logues on repeat for hours on end sometimes. 

Mnemon­ics, or mem­o­ry tech­niques, much espoused by the ancients (for a sum­ma­ry, read this arti­cle), most­ly con­sists of using the so-called mem­o­ry palace or method of loci. 

The method is effec­tive, but it takes some prac­tice and prepa­ra­tion. It is, how­ev­er, well worth the effort since you move from hop­ing that the mate­r­i­al will stick through review to know­ing that it will stick.

Now you know how to do it, let’s review the over­all advan­tages of using islands.

Why Islands? The Benefits

Using islands is a fun and inter­est­ing way of dis­cov­er­ing lan­guage and quick­ly devel­op­ing the abil­i­ty to speak. It takes a bit of work, but the pay­off is enor­mous. Start small, with short speech­es, and you’ll succeed.

OVERVIEW

• They give the speak­er rest with­out hav­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion break down (great Led Zep­pelin song).
• They boost con­fi­dence since they pro­vide fast, artic­u­late speech.
• They pro­vide vocab­u­lary and gram­mat­i­cal pat­terns to recy­cle for oth­er con­texts and situations.
• The com­po­si­tion of them illu­mi­nates lacu­nae in your knowl­edge of the language.
• You can gain con­ver­sa­tion­al pro­fi­cien­cy, even if you have no con­ver­sa­tion partners.
• It’s a fun way of dis­cov­er­ing and con­quer­ing a new seman­tic field.
• In order to learn a lan­guage well, oth­er activ­i­ties, such as speak­ing, writ­ing, read­ing and lis­ten­ing, are required as well.

I believe every­one can teach them­selves Latin, giv­en a well-round­ed and var­ied approach that keeps the learn­ing process enjoy­able and inter­est­ing. Islands can be a part of it.

For more sug­ges­tions on how to learn Latin, see this post “How to improve your Latin in 10 min­utes a day”)