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Learn Latin With Video and Audio: 70 Hours of Spoken Latin

This article has been reviewed in accordance with our editorial policy.

Through the years, in my dif­fer­ent lan­guage learn­ing endeav­ors, I’ve always mar­veled at how much I have been able to improve my over­all abil­i­ty in a lan­guage (espe­cial­ly French) through sim­ply lis­ten­ing to as much (lev­el appro­pri­ate) con­tent as pos­si­ble in the tar­get lan­guage, every day.

The last few years I’ve been on the look out for any and all videos of skilled Latin speak­ers to lis­ten to. Not too long ago the num­ber of videos avail­able was not that extensive.

Luck­i­ly things are chang­ing: the amount of record­ings of speech­es and lec­tures held in Latin is increas­ing rapid­ly, mak­ing expos­ing our­selves to immense amounts Latin eas­i­er than ever.

Adding More Latin Audio 

I’ve col­lect­ed videos from all over YouTube into a playlist to watch/listen to and I thought I would share it. It con­tains videos of Lui­gi Miraglia, Nan­cy Llewellyn, Ter­ence Tun­berg, Vil­fried Stroh and many more. It is by no means com­plete, but I have tried to include what I have found thus far.

Thanks to the increas­ing num­ber of talks, con­fer­ences, and sum­mer cours­es, I have been able to grow the num­ber of hours in the playlist to over 70 hours of spo­ken Latin.

For addi­tion­al lis­ten­ing see our Latin audio archive

Make Listening to Latin a Habit

Lis­ten­ing to a lan­guage you’re learn­ing is one of the best ways to improve: it’s like phys­i­cal exer­cise, the ben­e­fits are numer­ous, e.g. it forces you to under­stand the mor­phol­o­gy, syn­tax, and vocab­u­lary in real time; it trains you to antic­i­pate the lan­guage. In all my lan­guage learn­ing endeav­ors, I’ve always found that I make the great­est (and eas­i­est) progress by lis­ten­ing to as much (lev­el appro­pri­ate) con­tent as pos­si­ble in the tar­get lan­guage, every day. 

Sug­gest­ed read­ing: How to Learn Latin: Moti­va­tion, Goals, and habits

I sug­gest mak­ing it into a habit to watch or lis­ten to one or two of these videos of peo­ple speak­ing Latin, every day. As I’ve writ­ten about here, a lit­tle time spent lis­ten­ing or read­ing Latin every day leads to mas­sive results in a year. 

Playlist Content 

The playlist con­sists of videos of talks and lec­tures giv­en by some of the best Latin speak­ers in the world, among oth­er peo­ple, it con­tains videos of Lui­gi Miraglia, Nan­cy Llewellyn, Ter­ence Tun­berg, Vil­fried Stroh and many more.

Many talks have been record­ed with cell phones result­ing in, at times, quite bad audio. But the Latin is still audible. 

Playback Speed

Some of the speak­ers’ Latin may be a bit too fast if you aren’t used to hear­ing a lot of Latin. In that case, I rec­om­mend using the dif­fer­ent play­back speeds that YouTube offers. To change play­back speed select (in the YouTube player):

  • set­tings (the cog wheel) > speed

You can click the thumb­nail below to access the spo­ken Latin playlist!

Frui­mi­ni!

Daniel Pettersson

Daniel Pettersson

Teacher and author Daniel Pettersson, M.A., is co-founder of Latinitium and is currently teaching Latin at Stockholm University, where he is also working on his Ph.D. dissertation on Humanist Colloquia. Daniel believes in the importance of Latin literature in the modern world and that you can teach yourself Latin with the right motivation, method, and material.
Written by Daniel Pettersson

Written by Daniel Pettersson

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