And there's an interesting tie in to the article WRT the Orberg's Familia Romana. A quick glance at the article and a text search indicates the author is snubbing Orberg for some reason, as Familia Romana is much more famous in that field for that technique of teaching than the folks discussed in the article. I like that book and occasionally digest a chapter or two. Its like solving a puzzle.
I am pretty sure there are no legal ebooks of familia romana, its full of illustrations and the ebook transition would likely be painful. Too bad.
Re:Latin Lives
by laichzeit0 on Monday February 02, 2015 @09:36AM
(#8984287)
No idea why they would snub Orberg. It's not like what they are doing is totally unique. Terentius Tunberg runs the Conventiculum Latinum, "an annual summer immersion workshop in spoken Latin held on the campus of the University of Kentucky" [1]. Not in Rome, but still full immersion.
In my experience folks who've studied with Reginald Foster tend to admire Ørberg quite a bit, but they might think Ørberg's books are too basic for their own students (since I guess people coming to Paideia will have studied Latin for several years first) and/or study things that are not explicitly didactic works.
The best approximation we have is what's called the "restored" pronunciation. If you're interested in all the nuances the best book for this in my opinion is Vox Latina by Allen. Alternatively, just listen to anything by Evan der Miller on his YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/evan1965. His Latin pronunciation is the restored Classical and extremely good.
If you took Latin in Highschool and want to get back into it you should check out a book course called Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. It introduces Latin through Latin and also contains MP3 recordings for the first 31 chapters in first book, all in very good restored Latin pronunciation by the author Hans Ørberg. (there's a torrent of all the Lingua Latina resources)