Orberg texts?

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av1438
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Orberg texts?

Post by av1438 »

I saw some old threads that mentioned these texts ("lingva latina" series: http://users.cybercity.dk/~bbe6711/ ) and the opinions were generally positive. Are their any more recent views from people on the board about Orberg's books?

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Post by edonnelly »

I can report on the first third of the first book (which I just got and started reading for fun), and I think it's great. It's a little tedious at times, but it is such a different approach than any other series I've seen that I think it is definitely worth the money. I wish it were advancing through grammar more rapidly, but it is designed for the complete novice (which I am not).

av1438
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Post by av1438 »

Thanks for your opinion!
I'm not a complete novice either, but I'm starting a "return to latin" with someone who is, and this text looked good for our purposes. Perhaps we can supplement with a more grammar-oriented text, as well.

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Lucus Eques
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Post by Lucus Eques »

Does anyone know of a Greek equivalent? I'd love to have a Greek version of something like this.
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edonnelly
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Post by edonnelly »

av1438 wrote: Perhaps we can supplement with a more grammar-oriented text, as well.
Probably a good idea. While I really like the fact that it is entirely in Latin, it does make it difficult for the author to explain grammatical ideas early on.
Lucus Eques wrote:Does anyone know of a Greek equivalent? I'd love to have a Greek version of something like this.
I haven't seen one, but I agree it would be a great thing to have.

av1438
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Post by av1438 »

I found the following link in an old thread:

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/%7Ewcd/Latin.htm

His/her view is that one should learn all the grammatical paradigms (and only the paradigms) by rote and then go straight into reading via the Orberg series.

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Lucus Eques
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Post by Lucus Eques »

I found the following link in an old thread:

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/%7Ewcd/Latin.htm

His/her view is that one should learn all the grammatical paradigms (and only the paradigms) by rote and then go straight into reading via the Orberg series.
I think that's a fabulous idea! I've already bought Ørberg's Familia Romana, and using this fantastic site in conjunction with it will be delightfully effective! not for myself, that is, but for my father, for I've wanted to teach him Latin some time now, and using Wheelock for that purpose has indeed been very dull and ineffective. I totally agree with the Dowling Method, and greatly look forward to putting it into use. In fact, I've never done "brute memorization" of all the paradigms either, and have just used them passively for reference, and I realize now that truly comitting all of them to memory would be quite a boon. Thank you for the link! any others?
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av1438
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Post by av1438 »

Now here's a question...when one is memorizing grammatical paradigms by rote, what is more useful: to write out and memorize:

-a, -ae
-ae, -arum
etc.,

(-o, -mus
-s, -tis
etc.,)

or

aqua, aquae
aquae, aquarum
etc.

(porto, portamus,
etc.)

As in, write hundreds of times (to give the "Dowling method") the "loose endings," or the exemplary words fully inflected?

Some combination of the two?

I feel like that downside of memorization by means of inflected words would be a too strong association of with those specific words, which would seem to be unhelpful for trying to internalize the forms.

I personally would favor writing the loose endings over and over and then inflecting whole words (for quizzes) along the way.

I might be nitpicking here but it seems somewhat important...

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Post by edonnelly »

av1438 wrote:Now here's a question...when one is memorizing grammatical paradigms by rote, what is more useful: to write out and memorize: ...
As in, write hundreds of times (to give the "Dowling method") the "loose endings," or the exemplary words fully inflected?
I guess it's impossible to give anything but opinion here, but I would strongly favor writing out actual words, just use different words each time. I don't find a, ae, etc. to have much meaning to my brain, but seeing different words written out lets me internalize it better. Again, just an opinion. If you want to practice online you can try out some of the tools I developed once. It's a pretty boring task, but it will at least quiz you on different words. For the 1st declension it's at http://www.edonnelly.com/latin/n01-DeclinatioPrima.php and from there you can get to any others you want to try out. It's nothing great, but it's different than just writing on paper, and you can switch quickly to different noun and verb forms. It will always tell you when you are right or wrong.

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Lucus Eques
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Post by Lucus Eques »

I disagree. Memorizing endings is not helpful, because a complete novice would not get a sense of the words. A child does not learn in a vacuum; he learns with experience with real words, even if his vocabulary is limited, and this is what is important in the Dowling Method, which leads into the Ørberg Direct Method with Lingua Latina. Different words to different things, and besides, it's better ingraining some vocabulary than none at all. Moreover, it's difficult to understand the endings out of context; I can only imagine that seeing them as parts of complete words would do any good (especially when it comes to stem vowels, which change in length all the time -- I have no idea how you'd manage a concrete understaning of verbs through endings alone).

If you want to take the easy way out, and probably not get much success, go right ahead. I've been writing out everything since I last posted here, and my hand hurts from doing it so much -- but I've resolved to do more typing of the paradigms instead, which I find it just as effective in memorizing (though not as easy when it comes to writing long vowels and the like, so typing is merely supplementary in my method).
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Lucus Eques
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Post by Lucus Eques »

Wow! what fantastic tools! how extremely helpful. Proprie magister es! :-D Gratias tibi tantissimas ago!
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av1438
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Post by av1438 »

Well, it wasn't a matter of "easy way out" or avoiding writing, but which was more useful in the long term.
But I agree with you completely. You make a good point about the verbs.

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