A little while ago, I decided I wanted to rejuvenate my Latin studies. I took three years of it in high school, but I was never very good at it... my grades were A's the first year, B's the second, and C's the third... because I never really got my basics locked down, and so the farther I got, the more I was behind. At the time, I had real disdain for memorization. This was mostly snobbery on my part -- I felt like if it had to be memorized, it wasn't worth knowing. Fortunately for me, I've grown up, and I now have proper respect for the value of memorization. And so, I'm trying out the Dowling Method for learning Latin. It involves intense memorization, followed by immersion in all-Latin texts. This blog entry marks my completion of memorizing the noun endings -- I wrote them, from memory, 200 times. It took me months. I really do feel like I have all five declensions locked down now. The next task is to do the same with the adjectives, and then verbs. Wish me luck!
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Latin Noun Endings
A little while ago, I decided I wanted to rejuvenate my Latin studies. I took three years of it in high school, but I was never very good at it... my grades were A's the first year, B's the second, and C's the third... because I never really got my basics locked down, and so the farther I got, the more I was behind. At the time, I had real disdain for memorization. This was mostly snobbery on my part -- I felt like if it had to be memorized, it wasn't worth knowing. Fortunately for me, I've grown up, and I now have proper respect for the value of memorization. And so, I'm trying out the Dowling Method for learning Latin. It involves intense memorization, followed by immersion in all-Latin texts. This blog entry marks my completion of memorizing the noun endings -- I wrote them, from memory, 200 times. It took me months. I really do feel like I have all five declensions locked down now. The next task is to do the same with the adjectives, and then verbs. Wish me luck!
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Hi Jesse,
ReplyDeleteI recently wrote a webapp for helping people memorize the six tables for the Dowling Method. See if you find it useful: http://jonathanaquino.com/latin/index.php.
So far, I've typed out the Nouns table 100 times.
Hey .. I'm working on the same thing. How has your progress been so far? I'm down to the subjunctives.... really just slogging through so that I can get to Lingua Latina.
ReplyDeleteI'm halfway through the adjectives.
ReplyDeleteVery cool, Jonathon. Like I said on your blog, I like your Dowling Wheel tool. I'm just really ready to start reading Latin rather than memorizing forms. Stupid Dowling method better work. The Wheelock method I have tried before with very limited results at best.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny - we're investing 6 months of our lives in memorization, and we're not even sure it will work. It better!
ReplyDeleteIt's totally working for me. I'm 2/3 through the adjectives, and once in a while I go back and check my nouns, and they are still rock solid. I'm kind of slow (about 6 months in at this point, probably 6 months to go before Lingua Latina) but I definitely feel like I'm making good progress. Though, the verbs scare me to death.
ReplyDeleteSlow going for me too, Jesse. I've been at it for 3 months. The thing is, life is so busy - you know what I mean. I too am afraid of the verbs.
ReplyDeleteNo fear! Once you get the Active Indicative down, the rest are just variations on a theme. I, however, am dying to start LL. Another 200 of Passive Subjunctive, and I'm there. I think that I'm skipping the deponents. Seems overly repetitive.
ReplyDeleteHey, Jesse,
ReplyDeleteI posted this on Jonathan's blog, as well. This weekend I downloaded a memorization app from http://ichi2.net/anki/
It's a a freeware memorization app that syncs across computers and phones. In any case, I created a notecard deck with all the Indicative and Subjunctives (Passive and Active) on it. I created it as a shared deck. Anyone can download it and use it. It might (or might not) prove helpful to you. The name of the shared deck is 'LatinConjugations'.
Take care,
harry
Hey, just come across this site on google, I'm using Dowling method as well, right now just finished adjectives and started verbs, hopefully I can start LL by august
ReplyDeletecheers
Cool stuff. I just started verbs as well. I have probably forgotten Nouns by now. Oh well.
ReplyDelete