Latin 1: Basic Latin Vocabulary

Some years when my mother-in-law visited, I spotted this interesting looking book in the back of her car. It was titled: American, by Shannon Brooks. She agreed to let me borrow it, and I was taken on a journey of American thought. I learned from this that there was another book called A Thomas Jefferson Education that seemed quite interesting. And from there, I picked up a few hints about ensuring an effective education. Namely:

• There is a difference in Public Education, Professional Education, and Leadership Education
• Studying the Classics typically provides significant results
• To learn something, simply read, write, discuss

I am sure that there is much more to the book, but this is the gist that I picked up from it.

I eventually came to the conclusion that I would like to understand and/or read and/or learn the basics of the Latin language. Since the Norman conquest and the French language being intermingled with old English, we now use many Latin words. Ideally I'd like to expand my vocabulary.

Fortunately for us English speakers, the latin language alphabet is pretty similar to our own. There are some differences in pronunciation, but from what I gather, not everyone truly even cares about that. Or rather, they don't focus on what may or may not have been the original way to pronounce certain letters or words. At this point, I don't want to discuss the research behind all that, and who is phonetically wrong or right. I am just more interested in deriving meaning from the words that have been written. At some point the exact ancient pronunciation may become important to me, but for the sakes of this article I just want to provide some basic vocabulary words.

In any case, I ended up with two main tools for learning Latin:

• Wheelock's Latin
• Latin by the Natural Method

And from Wheelock's, here are a few Latin verbs for today:

laudo

• laudo - I praise
• laudas - you praise
• laudat - he/she praises

moneo

• moneo - I advise
• mones - you advise
• monet - he/she advises

Both of these are in the Present Indicative Active, according to Wheelock's.

Hopefully there will be plenty more basic Latin vocabulary words to come!

Valete!

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