Dreamt of learning Latin? Here’s how you’ll finally do it
By Thomas V. Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 29, 2025
[Young men] should realize that this quotation from Cicero applies in a certain sense to them:
“It is not…so great a distinction to know Latin as it is a disgrace not to know it.”
Pope St. John Paul II, 1978
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Like many Catholics, I’ve wanted to learn Latin for years. I had two-and-a-half years of Latin classes in my teens, but that never brought me to the point of reading the language independently, nor was I motivated enough to persevere. In my twenties, I made the occasional false start in picking up Latin again, but gave up quickly.
But over the past two years, I’ve finally done it: I’ve finally learned Latin. Or at least, I have learned enough to be able to read the Bible in Latin—which, though it doesn’t require the most advanced level of Latin skill, is certainly the best thing one can read in that or any language.
This article will not primarily be about why to learn Latin. But it’s worth mentioning that even in our age of vernacular liturgy, every pope since Vatican II has continued to affirm the importance of Latin in seminary education and the education of the young more generally. More important than the commonly invoked generic reasons for learning a second language is that Latin is simply our inheritance both as Westerners and specifically as Catholics of the Roman Rite. Without knowing Latin, we are cut off from the past in significant ways, theologically, liturgically, literarily.
For those who have harbored even a slight dream of learning Latin someday, I want to share the method I have used. Thanks to a particular textbook, the process has been easier and more delightful than I could have imagined based on the method of my high school classes.
The book I refer to is LINGVA LATINA PER SE ILLVSTRATA, Pars I: Familia Romana, by the Danish Latinist Hans Ørberg (1920-2010). Many consider it the best textbook ever written not just for Latin, but for any language.
The natural method of language acquisition
To explain why Lingua Latina is so great, I have to touch on a controversy between two methods of language acquisition. If you took a Latin class in school, chances are you were taught using what is called the grammar-translation method. This involves the memorization of forms and vocabulary, grammatical analysis of sentences, and lots of translation. Wheelock’s Latin is the most famous textbook based on this method.
Lingua Latina instead uses what is called the natural or direct method. It is based on how all children learn to speak their first language, but adapted for adult learning. Modern languages are now frequently taught by this method, in which rather than starting out with analysis in one’s native tongue, the emphasis is on hearing, speaking, and reading in the target language as much as possible—learning by immersion. Key to the natural method is “comprehensible input”, simply meaning that you learn a language by taking “input” in that language which you can understand. A mother points to an oak sapling and tells her son, “This is a tree.” Then she points to a mature oak: “This tree is taller than that tree.”
While we can immerse ourselves in a modern language by traveling to a country where it is spoken by natives, it might be objected that we can’t actually time-travel to Ancient Rome and learn Latin by talking with Romans on the street. Yet the brilliance of Lingua Latina is that it accomplishes something similar in the form of a Latin story. Using pictures, cognates, simple explanations, and the power of context, it gradually teaches you the language by exposing you to comprehensible input which gradually grows more complex.
I have read varying accounts of the origins of these two methods, grammar-translation and the natural method. Many assume grammar-translation is “traditional”; however, its critics argue that it only became widely and systematically used in the 19th century, and that students in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were taught using the direct method, with an emphasis on conversation in Latin.
In any case, what matters is which method is more effective for learning a language. I believe that both in theory and in practice, the natural method easily beats the grammar-translation method. In theory, it is not even clear whether grammar-translation is meant to make the student fluent in the target language, or if it has some vague goal like “mental cultivation”, to which the actual reading of works written in the language would be incidental. In his memoir Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis described the difference between knowing about a language and knowing the language itself in this way:
Those in whom the Greek word lives only while they are hunting for it in the lexicon, and who then substitute the English word for it, are not reading the Greek at all; they are only solving a puzzle. The very formula, ‘Naus means a ship,’ is wrong. Naus and ship both mean a thing, they do not mean one another. Behind naus, as behind navis or naca, we want to have a picture of a dark, slender mass with sail or oars, climbing the ridges, with no officious English word intruding.
Perhaps grammar-translation was originally intended as merely a preliminary stage to true fluency, but the vast majority of students never proceed beyond it.*
The proof of this practical failure is that the majority of professional Latinists today are not actually fluent in Latin! Many, like the famous classicist Mary Beard, will admit that they cannot even read Latin very well, let alone speak it. That is, they do what C.S. Lewis warned against, which no one would call fluency in the case of a modern language, yet which, even in the highest rungs of academia, has come to be seen as an acceptable level of language proficiency when it comes to an ancient language.
Unfortunately, in spite of these poor results and decades of studies showing the inferiority of grammar-translation, many classical schools stick to this approach as well. The result is that most students do not learn to read Latin texts, leading further to the perverse conclusion that most students are not capable of getting that far, or even that there is something about Latin literature which makes it impossible to be read with fluency by anyone at all—when in fact the method is at fault. This in turn results in classical schools being rather less than truly classical—because the very core of “classical education” in past centuries was the actual learning of classical languages and the reading of works written in those languages, which every schoolboy, not just a special few, was expected to do.
The above is only a brief sketch of why the difference in method is important. There are many places online where you can investigate this issue further.
Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata
As I said, Lingua Latina (a series of two main books plus a number of supplemental books) is based on the natural method**—and what makes it truly special is that it’s entirely in Latin, hence per se illustrata (illustrated by itself). Yes, Ørberg teaches you to learn Latin by reading Latin, with no previous knowledge of the language required. How could that possibly work? It starts very simply with a sentence anyone can understand—Rōma in Italiā est—and builds from there. You learn more by context, and by the pictures and marginal notes (themselves in Latin). (See this video for a sample of the first chapter.)
The first book, Familia Romana, is an entertaining story about a Roman family in the first century A.D. Over thirty-five ingeniously composed chapters, new grammar and vocabulary are gradually introduced. Each chapter ends with a grammar lesson in Latin and three short sets of exercises called pensa. Throughout the book, words and concepts are reinforced in creative, untedious ways, reducing (though not wholly eliminating) the need for brute-force memorization.
I found this way of learning by reading to be addictive and profoundly rewarding. I still remember my excitement at reading the following sentence in chapter nine. Oculi lupi in umbra lucent ut gemmae et dentes ut margaritae: The eyes of the wolf shine in the shadow like gems and its teeth like pearls. That seems simple in English, but it was my first time reading a metaphorical description in another language.
While not a few Latinists in Ørbergworld have soared to the heights of conversation and writing in Latin, my own ambition has been more modest. I simply want to be able to read real Latin texts fluently, without mental translation. (In fact, as I understand it, Ørberg’s goal with Lingua Latina was to bring the student to reading fluency, not necessarily conversational fluency—although the book is often used as a basis for conversation skills in a classroom setting.)
Chief in motivating me to learn Latin are, of course, the chants and liturgy of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Vulgate Bible, and the vast range of Catholic theology from the Latin Fathers to the Counter-Reformation and beyond. The good news for Catholics who simply want to read the Vulgate, pray the Divine Office, and study the Summa is that the Latin therein is comparatively simple. The general consensus (borne out by my experience) is that those who finish Familia Romana are ready to tackle the Vulgate, and I am told Aquinas is not much further off, only requiring acquisition of his technical vocabulary and some medieval/scholastic idioms.
However, those who wish also to read the classical authors—Cicero, Virgil, and their ilk, but also the Latin Fathers influenced by classical style such as Augustine and Jerome (outside the Vulgate)—will find the Latin of antiquity considerably more complex than much medieval Latin. Book two of Lingua Latina, Roma Aeterna, consists mostly of actual classical texts, and by all accounts is a significant leap in difficulty from Familia Romana, requiring the study of a good amount of intermediate material in between the two books.
All that is in the future for me, so here I will just outline how I used Familia Romana, a method I cobbled together from recommendations in various online fora. In particular, Latinist Luke Ranieri’s YouTube channel ScorpioMartianus was extremely helpful on a number of points.
Note for parents and teachers: Ryan Hammill of the Ancient Language Institute, whom I consulted in writing this article, told me that Lingua Latina is best used at college age and above, because of the speed with which it moves through concepts. For younger students, he highly recommends Picta Dicta: its Latin Primer series for older elementary, and its Latin Grammar for middle and high school.
Materials
One can certainly learn using only Familia Romana, but in order to get the most out of this method, especially without a teacher, my recommendation would be to use it in conjunction with a number of supplemental books, which follow the chapter-by-chapter learning curve of the main book. Hackett is the American publisher of Ørberg’s works. Here are the books I used:
- Hans H. Ørberg, Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, Pars I: Familia Romana. The main book.
- Ørberg, Exercitia Latina I: Exercises for Familia Romana. The exercises at the end of each chapter of Familia Romana are valuable, but brief. Exercitia Latina provides further exercises to deepen your knowledge of the material.
- Jeanne Marie Neumann, A Companion to Familia Romana: Based on Hans Ørberg’s Latine Disco, with Vocabulary and Grammar. While the intuitive learning of Latin vocabulary and grammar per se illustrata is fundamental to Ørberg’s method, it can be helpful to have English-language explanations of grammatical concepts you are struggling with. To be clear, this book does not translate Familia Romana, but comments on the material introduced in each chapter.
- Ørberg, Colloquia Personarum. Remember “comprehensible input”? The more of that the better, and so Colloquia Personarum offers short side stories matching the reading level of the first 24 chapters of Familia Romana.
- Luigi Miraglia, Fabulae Syrae. You won’t need this right away, as it picks up where Colloquia Personarum ends, with supplemental readings for chapters 26-34 of Familia Romana. Miraglia, an outstanding Latinist following Ørberg’s footsteps, retells Greek and Roman myths in authentic classical prose style. In fact, it is so authentically classical that while it is technically at the same grammar level as the corresponding chapters of Familia Romana, its surprising (to English speakers) word order and long, complex sentences make it significantly harder to read—I found myself poring over individual sentences far more than I did in Ørberg, and occasionally googling a sentence to find help in some online forum post.
For those who get past Familia Romana, there are several more books that apply the Ørberg format to real classical texts, as preparations or companions to the second book of Lingua Latina: Roma Aeterna. There is a helpful timeline showing how the various supplemental books sync up with the two volumes of Lingua Latina, and for those looking for even more comprehensible input, a very extensive list of other Latin stories and books graded by reading level.
Method
I settled into a fairly consistent cycle, going through the material for a given chapter in each of these books over a number of days. The amount of time required each day was modest: between 10 and 45 minutes depending on the day’s material. I knew too from my experience as a musician that a small amount of consistent daily work is better than a large amount at greater intervals.
So let’s say you’re on chapter nine (Capitulum IX) of Familia Romana. Each number point below represents a day in the cycle for that chapter.
- Read Cap. IX in Familia Romana slowly, attempting full comprehension (without translating in your head). This first reading of the main chapter is the longest day’s work in the cycle. (Note that when I refer to reading the chapters in Familia Romana and Colloquia Personarum, that means reading aloud, slowly and distinctly. This is important both for memory and for practicing pronunciation.)
- Read Cap. IX in Colloquia Personarum.
- Read Cap. IX in A Companion to Familia Romana.
- Return to Cap. IX in FR. Each chapter is divided into two or three lessons (lectiones). Today, just re-read the first lesson, and then do the exercises for that lesson in Exercitia Latina.
- Re-read the second lesson of Cap. IX in FR and do the exercises in EL.
- Re-read the third lesson (if there is one) of Cap. IX in FR and do the exercises in EL.
- Re-read Cap. IX in Colloquia Personarum.
- Study Cap. IX in the Companion again, with special attention to any grammar and vocabulary that isn’t already sticking in memory and thus requires more deliberate memorization.
- Luke Ranieri has recorded himself reading every chapter of Familia Romana and Colloquia Personarum, with beautiful classical pronunciation.*** Listen to his recording of Cap. IX of FR, reading along with the text in the video. At least for a while until you have solid Latin pronunciation, I recommend pausing after each sentence and repeating it out loud, mimicking his pronunciation as closely as possible. After this, finally do the pensa exercises at the end of the chapter in FR.
- Listen to Ranieri’s recording of Cap. IX of Colloquia Personarum.
This approximately ten-day cycle for each chapter is not a rigid schedule; the amount of time and repetition needed to comprehend this material will vary for each student. Later on, I spent more like seventeen days on each chapter because the companion book Fabulae Syrae has five stories per chapter. Regardless, I believe reading each FR chapter at least three times is important. If you really get stuck at some point, you may find it helpful to go back and re-read some earlier chapters to shore up your understanding. Also, you may or may not want to use the Companion I’ve recommended, but if you do, make sure to consult it only after familiarizing yourself with the FR chapter.
My approach was somewhat informed by Luke Ranieri’s video “Latin by the Ranieri-Dowling Method”. I didn’t do every single one of the recommended steps, but all the suggestions are good, especially Ranieri’s general emphasis on combining the visual and auditory component.
A couple of other important things in the process:
Memorization. The natural method reduces reliance on “brute-force” memorization, but drilling is still important for certain things, mainly the basic grammatical paradigms (declensions and conjugations) and numbers. Now, in the video on the “Ranieri-Dowling Method”, Luke Ranieri mentions that Prof. William Dowling recommended memorizing all the forms before even beginning to read Lingua Latina. I don’t think that’s necessary (especially if you already had at least a little Latin in school). What I did instead was to memorize the forms gradually as they came up in Familia Romana. This is especially crucial for a select few chapters that hit you with an unusual amount of new material, like Cap. VIII with its brutal onslaught of pronouns.
For convenience I bought Ranieri’s Excel spreadsheet and audio recordings of all the grammar tables, but you can find the grammatical forms for free in many different places. I also followed his suggestion of memorizing each form in the following way:
- Get the declension (or whatever) in your short-term memory.
- Write it down from memory at least once, while saying it aloud.
- Then repeat it out loud at least a hundred times, only counting it if you say it correctly.
This really isn’t grueling or time-consuming, because once the forms are in your short-term memory, you can drill them anywhere: in the shower, waiting to fall asleep, in line. I could get twenty or thirty reps in (the only kind of reps I care to get in) easily while walking to the subway from my apartment.
Pronunciation. Exactitude of pronunciation is less important to some than to others, but there are good reasons (other than aesthetic pleasure) to fine-tune your pronunciation. One element fundamental to both classical and ecclesiastical Latin, but not always attended to, is vowel/syllable length, without which Latin verse completely loses its rhythm. Elision of certain syllables at the ends of words is another important rhythmic factor.
Let’s not be silly and debate between ecclesiastical and classical pronunciation. Each should be used in its proper context, and as Ranieri points out, there’s no reason you can’t learn both. I was already familiar with ecclesiastical pronunciation growing up, so in learning Latin as an adult I have focused on classical. Again, Ranieri has an incredibly helpful playlist of videos on Latin pronunciation.
Entering the community
I think anyone can learn Latin using a method like that outlined above. In difficult moments, don’t despair or become despondent—there’s a big community of Latin learners out there, so just do a web search and you’ll almost certainly find a forum post where someone else got an answer to your exact question.
You also don’t have to study alone if you don’t want to. There are online courses teaching Latin and other ancient languages by the natural method, such as those offered by the Veterum Sapientia Institute (a pontifically-approved, accredited Catholic institution teaching Latin and Greek) or the Ancient Language Institute (Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Old English). And there are in-person events like the Paideia Institute’s Living Latin Conference, which I’ll be attending this year, or VSI’s summer workshops.
I am so deeply grateful to Hans Ørberg that I will probably have a Mass said for his soul at some point. He’s a true benefactor of the human race, and I hope this article allows more Catholics to benefit from his work. In the meantime, I’ll be working my way through the Vulgate, memorizing some Psalms…but I’m not leaving Ørberg behind just yet! To reinforce and deepen what I’ve learned, I plan to start Familia Romana once more from the beginning, along with yet another book of exercises.
*Having gotten this far in my Latin journey, I’m convinced that high schools and colleges ought to require students to take a multi-year course leading to proficiency in one language (even if that language isn’t Latin). The meager benefits of dipping into a language or two superficially cannot really be called education. If you never have the experience of becoming proficient in a second language, you will never know the true value of doing so—in fact, you’ll likely doubt your ability ever to do so. Once you’ve been through the experience once, on the other hand, learning multiple other languages in the future seems much more attainable.
**Some might wonder why I recommend Lingua Latina instead of Fr. William Most’s Latin by the Natural Method series. Though Fr. Most was a friend of Catholic Culture and a brilliant theologian, after having used both books my opinion is that Most’s Latin style is significantly inferior to and less enjoyable than Ørberg’s. For example, Ørberg early on begins to acclimatize the student to the more flexible word order that makes Latin so different from English, exposure to which is essential for true reading fluency. Most’s Latin is, especially at the beginning, clunky and tedious in order to be didactic; the brilliance of Ørberg is that he manages to be didactic for the beginner while also being fluid and clever in his writing. Yet despite his greater didacticism, Fr. Most relies on English explanations of the Latin grammar, whereas Ørberg accomplishes his task entirely in Latin. Ørberg also has illustrations to teach the meaning of words without translation. Fr. Most does not include macrons to indicate vowel length, which is essential to learn correct pronunciation. He does include stress marks, which Ørberg does not, but the rules of stress are more easily learnt without stress marks than syllable length without macrons.
And while one might think that the priest’s book would be more suitable for Catholic students, Fr. Most begins his first book with stories from secular history, so you still will not be encountering Catholic reading material until later. The Veterum Sapientia Institute, which focuses on ecclesiastical Latin, uses Ørberg’s book rather than Most’s for its introductory courses. There are other ways in which I could compare the two books, but in any case, Catholics will want to supplement Lingua Latina with the memorization of basic prayers and hymns in Latin, which will tide you over until you are ready to read the Vulgate and other Latin Catholic writings.
***For those who prefer ecclesiastical pronunciation, a reader informed me that he has recorded the first thirty-three chapters of Familia Romana in ecclesiastical Latin.
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Posted by: brenda22890 -
Feb. 02, 2025 8:28 AM ET USA
Exactly what I've been looking for!
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Posted by: Thomas V. Mirus -
Feb. 01, 2025 7:55 PM ET USA
mary_conces3421: I know about it, but it didn't seem to fit my needs.
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Posted by: mary_conces3421 -
Jan. 31, 2025 6:31 PM ET USA
Did you take a look at Father Reggie Foster's Ossa Latinitas Sola?
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Posted by: Thomas V. Mirus -
Jan. 31, 2025 4:21 PM ET USA
Winnie: It looks like there are some options listed in this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/6iwzho/is_there_a_resource_like_lingua_latina_for/ In addition, someone I know used www.dreamingspanish.com which is an audio-only resource using the same method.
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Posted by: wacondaseeds4507 -
Jan. 31, 2025 1:17 PM ET USA
The textbook used for the Latin course I took from 1972-1974, as part of the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas, was Hans H. Oerberg's Lingua Latina - Secundum Naturae Rationem Explicata. The course was taught by the renowned Dr. John Senior and Dr. Robert Carlson (co-founder of Wyoming Catholic College). We learned by emersion; only Latin was spoken in class, occasionally using the book. This course helped produce 2 bishops, an abbot, multiple religious, and many converts
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Posted by: winnie -
Jan. 30, 2025 12:01 PM ET USA
How exciting! Are there comparable books/courses in Spanish??
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Posted by: rfr46 -
Jan. 30, 2025 6:31 AM ET USA
Excellent article! Great bibliography. You inspire me to restart my Latin studies, which have been interrupted for over 50 years. Based on my experience with German and French languages, I agree that the natural or direct method of learning is far more effective than the grammar-translation method. Ave atque vale.