There are 35 chapters and 328 pages in Familia Romana, all in Latin. So in the remainder of this article I will describe the first book of the series, Famila Romana, in some detail for UK readers. In the United States Lingua Latina is quite widely used, especially at college level, and there is an active Orberg List on the teachers’ website However, in Britain Orberg and LL are practically unknown.
In Italy the Lingua Latina system has been recognised this year as the best recommendable alternative to traditional teaching by the Ministry of Education in Rome, largely due to its championship by Luigi Miraglia, one of Italy’s leading Latinists. It is popular in Europe, especially Spain and Italy, but also has followers in France, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Croatia and Poland.
The LL course consists of two parts, Familia Romana and Roma Aeterna, along with a series of classic texts – Caesar, De Bello Gallico Plautus Menaechmi, Petronius Cena Trimalchionis, Plautus Amphitryo, Sallustius et Cicero: Catilina.īecause LL is written entirely in Latin it may be used anywhere. After many years of classroom teaching he revised it in 1990 and changed the title to Lingua Latina per se illustrata (from now on “LL”). Orberg published his first book, Lingua Latina secundum naturae rationem explicata in 1955. That means that there is no need to translate or explain grammatical points in the students’ own language, they are enabled to discover for themselves directly the meaning of the words and sentences and the functioning of the grammatical rules.” His idea was to make every sentence presented to the students immediately intelligible per se, or self-explanatory, by grading and organizing the introduction of vocabulary and grammar. Jensen, who had launched an English reading course called English by the Nature Method.
B Appleton, and by my compatriot Otto Jespersen and his disciple Arthur M. I was inspired by the work of English direct-method pioneers like W. I felt that Latin is a foreign language like other foreign languages and should be taught by similar methods. “I could see no reason why Latin should be taught by methods totally different from those used in the teaching of modern languages. Orberg records that from the beginning he practised the direct method of teaching in his English and French lessons, but with Latin he found this impossible. Hans Henning Orberg (1920 – Feb 17 th 2010) was educated at the University of Copenhagen, and qualified as a teacher of English, French and Latin in 1946. For such teachers the primary coursebook will usually be Hans Orberg’s Lingua Latina per se illustrata. In revolt against the killing slowness of traditional Latin teaching many teachers have thought to apply the direct methods used in MFL. Students of Latin on the other hand, encouraged to think of Latin as a sort of intellectual word puzzle which they have all the time in the world to translate, simply never read it fast enough to become fluent.
In short, the “direct method” acts as a discipline, which forces the student to develop the skills to read and speak the language quickly. As a result far more of the language goes through the student’s head, which improves their vocabulary they are forced to develop the ability to handle it at a brisk pace and they have to process the words in the order they are spoken (what chance does any student have of ever becoming fluent who is taught such barbarisms as “find the verb, the subject and the object?”) Modern Language (MFL) teaching is fast paced, with teachers insisting that the language must be spoken as much as possible during class. Why is the fluency of students of Latin so abysmal when compared with that of students of modern languages? Latin teachers are fertile with excuses, but an outside observer would conclude that the inferior results are simply down to inferior teaching methods. Ask a sixth-former studying Latin to read a random page of Caesar or Ovid, and after only a line or two they will come grinding to a halt and have to reach for the dictionary. “Ask a sixth-former studying French or Russian to read a random page of Moliere or Tolstoi, and they will probably make a decent fist of it. Orberg’s lecture can be found on the ARLT website Here is David Carter’s article, which also appears in the current edition of the JCT. “Orberg is the natural successor to W H D Rouse in that his Lingua Latina per se illustrata is the natural choice for anyone wanting to teach via the Direct Method….”