Latin 3: A Little Lamb

I've got a fun Latin exercise today. This excerpt is taken from Latin By The Natural Method 1, which is found in the chapter titled Lectio Prima, or lecure one. Give this a read:

Maria habuit parvum agnum.
Agnus fuit albus.
Maria venit in scholam.
Agnus venit in scholam.
Agnus venit cum Maria.
Marcus vidit agnum in schola.
Agnus dixit: baa, baa.

I think from this that you can see why the book is called "by the natural method." Here we find a popular poem, Mary Had a Little Lamb, and you can almost dicern what the Latin words mean just by reading through it. Stuff like this causes me to laugh out loud a bit at the strange and awesome epiphany generated by the familiarity.

Here is the vocabulary for this section:

• habuit. had
• parvus. small, little
• agnus. lamb
• albus. white
• fuit. was
• venit. came
• cum. with
• vidit. saw
• dixit. said

Now if you wire up the translation, this is an easy read!

I have enjoyed this particular book about Latin, because it doesn't throw all the declensions and cases at you right away. Rather, they do it slowly, where it's a bit easier to find some meaning in the initial readings. This gives you some quick wins right off. I like this method a lot.

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