Episode 16 - Alessandro on learning Latin and Greek

In this episode, I chat with Alessandro (@polisisti on X/Twitter, @poli.sisti.ca on Bluesky) about our respective experiences learning Latin (and in his case ancient Greek).

YouTube link

Things I probably brought up:

• The Ranieri-Roberts approach to learning ancient Greek
• We need to talk about Latinitas
• Legentibus

Intermediate-level Greek texts:

• There is a good series called “Reading Greek” published by the Joint Association of Classics Teachers. An example volume is “The Intellectual Revolution: Selections from Euripides, Thucydides and Plato”.

Intermediate-level Latin texts:

• The reader Alessandro used in his second-year course was the “Oxford Latin Reader”, edited by Maurice Balme and James Morwood. However, Alessandro prefers “Wheelock’s Latin Reader: Selections from Latin Literature”, edited by Richard A. LaFleur.
• Carmina Burana is a collection of poems that is fairly easy and very fun to read.
• An anthology of medieval Latin texts that Alessandro greatly enjoys is “Reading Medieval Latin” by Keith Sidwell. Many of these selections are of intermediate difficulty (a few are very hard).
• The prose works of Seneca bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced.

Dictionaries and grammars:

• Alessandro’s favourite Latin dictionary: The “Oxford Latin Dictionary”
• For medieval Latin: “Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources”
  • the DMLBS is freely searchable at Logeion
• For advanced Latin grammar: “A New Latin Syntax” by E.C. Woodcock
• Alessandro’s favourite Greek dictionary: The “Cambridge Greek Lexicon”
• “The Greek Particles” by John Dewar Denniston is the book that’s very helpful for reading Plato.