Hello, I am Katie, and this is my first into post to show I am real!
I live in NZ but was born in the UK. I had a wonderful opportunity to have a traditional classical education, but messed things up badly at school. I spent most of my high school years protesting against the imprisonment and confinement of a sector of the population based on nothing but age (school…) I therefore ended up woefully undereducated with no one to blame but myself.
I accepted this state of affairs but now I have a bit more time as the kids are older I have decided to get that classical education after all. I have decided to start with Latin as I can remember a lot from school. I have verbs and nouns stuck in my brain and never understood what they were for. For example, I did not know until very recently what the subject of a sentence was, so learning the nominative was used for the subject was hopeless first time round (my primary school was a hippy trendy late 60’s where lessons were not compulsory…so a traditional high school was a shock…)
Anyway, fast forward…a large number of patterns are firmly stuck in my brain, but in the English order
Mensa, Mensa menSAM, mensae mensae MenSA, mensae mensae menSAS MENSARUM mensis mensis!
In other words, nom, voc, acc, gen, dat, abl.
So I thought the Dowling method might be quite good for me. I know a lot of the patterns, but not what they mean…to this day verb tenses are a mystery. But learning from Wheelock is useless as they are American patterns but I found some tables on the net, in the UK National Archive. So I will learn those instead…or relearn them. And I shall do Lingua Latina at the same time because I am impatient!
I also have a friend with a book…English grammar for students of Latin…that she will lend me so hopefully that will get over my deficient early education!
There is not a Dowling sub-forum…are there any other Dowling people here?
I hope this is enough to prove I am a real person!
Katie.
