Diederich's Basic Vocabulary - The "Lodge"-Edition

Latin Learning Latin
1

Salvete!

I’m trying to improve my Latin vocabulary and do so by concentrating on the words given in Paul B. Diederich’s “Basic Vocabulary”, a list of the 1,500 (more or less) most common words. Mr. Diederich, however, gave only English “core-meanings” which I found somewhat problematic.
I toyed around with a list based on the definitions from Whitaker’s “Words”-programme, but I found the wide range of meanings given in that database as far too confusing for the purpose of this list. So I adapted the “Basic Vocabulary” using instead the English meanings taken from “The Vocabulary of High School Latin” by Gonzalez Lodge (1922).
For easier use I supplemented the Latin nouns with the genitive, gender, the verbs with the principles parts, and all with the macrons (the latter ones taken from a German dictionary). So, a typical entry reads like this (formatted in the actual file as two columns):

nūbēs, -is, f. - cloud (esp. storm cloud); (fig.) crowd, throng
or:
dūco, -ere, dūxī, ductum - to lead (in var. senses); (fig.) deem, consider, hold

As this list may be of use to other “discipuli”, I have uploaded the list (PDF, file size about 237 KB) here (last entry): http://hiberna-cr.wikidot.com/topical-vocabulary
Should you find any spelling errors etc., please report these in this thread.
Valete,

Carolus Raeticus

2

You’re a blessing! Would you tell how you manage to accomplish this? I would love to be able to automaticly give genders and macra to a list of latin words.

3

Salve Hampie!

Would you tell how you manage to accomplish this? I would love to be able to automaticly give genders and macra to a list of latin words.

If only I were able to do so! I am a humble beginner. No, I merely invested quite a bit of time, first looking up the Latin word in one dictionary and then doing the same thing in “Vocabulary of High School Latin”. Giving the gender is rather straightforward, simply a matter of learning the vocabulary, and in many cases it is even possible to do so for unknown words provided these follow some simple rules. Macrons…well, that is more difficult. For me it is just one thing that has to be learned by rote, I guess. But as not even the dictionary makers agree in all instances, I can live with making errors in that area. Especially as it rather unlikely that I shall ever meet Cicero or Caesar and have my pronunciation corrected by them :wink:

Vale,

Carolus Raeticus

4

What a useful PDF - if it is okay with you, I will put a link to that in the sidebar of my vocabulary blog, which is also based on Diederich. Using the most frequent words from Diederich (the top 300 classical plus 66 from the medieval list), I decided to start blogging about them, writing up a few basic notes for the “word of the day” along with lists of Latin proverbs and saying that use the word - that blog is here:
http://verbosum.blogspot.com/

I find it helpful to learn Latin sayings and proverbs to help me remember the meanings of words in a Latin context, rather than trying to find an English equivalent, or even a list of English equivalents (often difficult for some of the most common words).

I try to blog every other day or so there; I’ve done about 50 so far out of the list of 366 I want to cover eventually. Since the words are all very common in Latin, I haven’t had any trouble finding some good Latin proverbs and sayings to illustrate each word. This was a technique I used in teaching Latin (where I would do 10-20 proverbs or so per day in class, related somehow to the vocabulary and/or grammar being covered) - I figure that if people can choose and memorize one really excellent proverb for each common bit of vocabulary, that will reinforce the vocabulary as well as offering a good store of proverbial wisdom to draw on in times of need. :slight_smile:

5

Oh, then I have a most grand respect for you! Have you, by any chance, read Vox Latina? See, he gives rules for vowel lenth and the most common irregular ones, in the book, and supply one with the (as far as I know) recent knowleage abot how latin really was pronounced. If I recall correclty filii the genitive and fillii the nominative plural was pronounced differently! Anyhow, before ns and nf all vowels are always long due to phonetic changes in old latin. It’s quite interesting actually. Consul was in the dawn of time actually cǒnsǔl, then however the n was lost and the O was instead nasalized and enlongated, thus cȭsul. The educated, however, then reinstated the n, as it was in the written word, but kept the long o, wherefore we get cōnšul.

This.. is perhaos a little of topic, but fun to know none-the-less. If you do want to have a good source I’d recommend Vox Latina and an etymological dictinary of the latin language. See, the elderly dictionaries cannot for sure know about the lenth of vowels whose quantity are hidden, therefore they just say that they’re long, as it fits perfectly in poetry. There is, for example, quite good evudence that it’s mǎgnus and not māgnus.

6

Salvete!

After finishing another round of proofreading I uploaded today (October 12, 2010) a new version of the “Lodge-Edition”. This one should be pretty much final. Any errors left ought to be due to errors in the sources I used.
Note: I also uploaded a TAB-limited text file-version of the data so that anyone can play around with and use it as (s)he sees fit. You just have to load it into your favourite spreadsheet programme. It ought to be automatically converted into a fully working spreadsheet. Perhaps you have to do some tweaking with certain entries (e.g. “true”, “-que”), but that should be all. After that you can select and reformat the data to your heart’s content.
A few comments to the “Lodge”-edition of Paul B. Diederich’s “Basic Vocabulary”:

  • The Latin entries (additional cases, gender, principal parts, etc.) come from a recent (!) edition of a German Latin dictionary. So there should not be any major problems with outdated information. Of course there’s always room for scholarly dispute… (without my participation, of course, as I am not one).
  • The English meaning comes from the “Vocabulary of High School Latin” where available. For the few cases where the work by Lodge did not contain a respective entry, I chose “A Latin-English Dictionary for the use of junior students” by John T. White (1904).
  • The macrons come from the same German dictionary as the rest of the Latin information. However, I doubt that everyone will agree about whether these are correct or not. Macrons and the proper pronounciation of Latin seem to be a rather difficult and contentious subject. They will most likely be the cause of World War III :wink:. However, if there is a demand I can also upload a PDF-version without the macrons. It would be a matter of a few minutes.

An aside to Hampie:

If you do want to have a good source I’d recommend Vox Latina…

Hm…I guess you mean the book by W. Sidney Allen. I had a look at a preview in Amazon, and I have to admit that my eyes almost popped out and I dropped my jaw. I just wonder, how the Romans ever were able to make the conquered peoples speak Latin! Right now, that book is a bit too much for me. But thanks for the hint, it is nice to know that there is an in-depth review of that subject out there.
Valete,

Carolus Raeticus

7

Carolus, thank you so much for sharing. Your materials are really useful and thoughtfully designed. Thank you especially for the tab-separated file; I just downloaded a copy - and you have formatted the text file so nicely that it looks really good in the browser already. Euge! :slight_smile:

8

Salvete!

I have uploaded corrected versions of “Paul B. Diederich’s Basic Vocabulary”, both the original edition and the Lodge-edition.

Changes to the Latin section concern:

adduco, adsum, alter, canis, charta, comes, cubile, dexter, edo (to eat), hiems, honor, irascor, licet, maior, maneo, metuo, mille, miseror, parvus, paucus, peto, revertor, ruo, volucer

However, I found only two real errors:

  • cubile: wrong gender
  • volucer: wrong formation of substantive

Otherwise, the changes in the Latin section represent mainly clarifications.

I also corrected the English translations of the Lodge-edition:

accendo, aestus, assuesco, ater, aura, barbarus, cerno, coepi, cognosco, concipio, confero, cras, crinis, curia, damnum, edo, facio, finio, floreo, focus, gladius, hic, hiems, hospes, incendium, infero, inter, iste, ius, iuvenis, manus, meus, militia, mundus, noster, nubo, orbis, parens, paucus, pereo, pergo, polus, postea, prae, prope, propter, -que, quin, quisnam, rego, revoco, saeculum, salveo, servo, sperno, supremus, tempus, trado, usque, usus est, uber, utor, vicis, vir, volucer

Here, too, most changes are fairly superficial. Notable are the following ones (probably due to not having switched off the auto-completion function):

  • trado
  • hîc (= here)

The new files can be downloaded from my web-site.

Valete,

Carolus Raeticus

9

Perhaps it’s unintentional, Carolus, but by saying “the Lodge-edition”, you make it sound like Lodge’s book comes after Diederich’s and is an edition of Diederich’s, whereas it precedes the publication of Diederich’s thesis by over thirty years.

Sic, Carole, in dicendo, scilicet “editionis de Lodge”, videri facis, forsit imprudenter, ut thesis doctoralis de Diederich librum de Lodge praecedat. È contrario, liber de Lodge triginti annis et quod excurrit ante eum de Diederich proditus est.

10

I reread the posts above and looked at your website. I see now you mean not an edition by Lodge but an edition of Diederich with bits borrowed by you from Lodge. It’s good to keep the inverted commas you had originally in your title around “Lodge”.

Iterùm epistulas supras perlegi et situm tuum interretialem inspexi. Nunc tuam sententiam capio: non editio à Lodge facta sed editio de Diederich cum elementis à te extractis ex opere de Lodge. Bonum est ut virgulas tituli principes circum Lodge nomen retineas.

11

Salvete!

I just uploaded updated all versions of Diederich’s Basic Vocabulary. It is only a minor update, removing an error and adding a few macrons (see this Textkit-post).

User “brunoparga”, could you please check, whether these changes are what you intended?

Vale(te),

Carolus Raeticus