Books to teach latin

Pfft. Shop local.

You might be surprised at the "modernness" for lack of a better word of some of the materials available to learn Latin in the period, if you have the means to acquire them. I can't speak for all languages but if you were an English speaker you could use the Grammar, Glossary, and Colloquy of Aelfric of Eynsham, which are an explanation of Latin grammar, a collection of English words and their Latin equivalent, and a collection of written Latin dialogues respectively. There is at least one extant text of the Colloquy dating from the 11th century which has interlinear English translation - the kind of thing you see in many language texts for learners in the modern day. Taken as a whole they are effectively pretty close to a modern Latin learner's textbook.

Similar glossary texts (though not as well studied today, nor with such excellent extant manuscripts) exist for Middle Irish, such as the Sanas Cormaic and the DĂșil Dromma Cetta. An interesting quirk of Hiberno-Latin is that it used many obscure words including some loanwords from other languages like Greek into Latin which had fallen out of vernacular use. This is likely because unlike most of Latin-speaking Europe Irish people did not speak a descendant of Latin as their first language, so Irish learners did not have any way to know that certain words had become archaic or obscure as it was all foreign to them anyway.

I'm not sure if glossaries like this were as common in parts of Europe that spoke romance languages which were obviously much closer to Latin to begin with, but in Britain and Ireland there were certainly books available to learn Latin from the vernacular language.

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These texts are indeed teaching aids like those of Alcuin, unlikely to be used for independent study.

Ælfric's Excerptiones de Arte Grammatica is a translation of excerpts from Donatus' Ars Grammatica. His Nomina multorum rerum anglice is a set of lists of nouns.

Here is a nice excerpt of the Colloquium, which clearly demonstrates its use in school.

Do these texts really make sense as ArM5 tractatus on Speak Latin?

A combination of the Grammar, Glossary, and Colloquy (particularly if it's an interlinear version of the latter) would constitute a Summa or Tractatus in Speak Latin for someone fluent in English, in my opinion.

If the character already has a score in Latin (so has a grasp of the basics of the language) I would also argue that even just a list of words and their equivalents in a language the character is fluent in should be a Tractatus in itself - having a sufficient vocabulary is one aspect of the speak language ability, so it stands to reason any book which allows you to expand your vocabulary should function as a Tractatus for the language.

Those three combined are effectively a full primer on the language and it's certainly possible to learn a language by reading a textbook. Probably not the standard usage of these works in the period, but certainly possible for a character to do if they really want to. This is also true of modern language textbooks. They are usually intended for use in a more general learning environment, but that doesn't stop people from self-teaching from them.

Maybe if you wanted to represent the difference you could have the quality be lowered unless a teacher is present? So if used as a teaching aid the quality might be 11, but if used for independent study it is only say an 8. Or something to that effect.

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About this, you can indeed refer with @jason72 to A&A p.12.

Shouldn't that depend on the quality of these texts? Just translating excerpts of Donatus to Old English, putting an interlinear vernacular translation into a Latin text of some 100 to 200 lines, and adding lists of Latin nouns translated to Old English gets you a Summa or Tractatus in Speak Latin? I see the need for intervention by a teacher in the usage of each of these texts: then they become useful - in class.

Perhaps that is also the reason why there exists just a single copy of the Colloquium with the interlinear Old English translation. Or could a covenant just have its scribe put interlinear translations to vernacular into all their Latin books, thus making them double as tractatus in Latin?

With the right numbers put in here, this looks very reasonable.

Maybe if you could enchant the book to speak Latin as it’s read/written you can learn Latin easier?

Honestly though, every book becomes much better with a good teacher. Very few people actually learn better from just reading instead of a mixture of reading and teaching. Not just languages.

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Shouldn't that depend on the quality of these texts? Just translating excerpts of Donatus to Old English, putting an interlinear vernacular translation into a Latin text of some 100 to 200 lines, and adding lists of Latin nouns translated to Old English gets you a Summa or Tractatus in Speak Latin? I see the need for intervention by a teacher in the usage of each of these texts: then they become useful - in class.

I 100% disagree on the need for a teacher in this regard. A teacher certainly makes the process much easier, but you can absolutely gain benefit from the described materials without one. If someone sat down with Speak Latin 1, Speak English 5, and those materials by the end of studying them they would have memorised many Latin words they previously didn't know, they would have read an explanation of the grammar used to put those words together, and been able to work through an example text to see this grammar in action.

Is it reasonable to say that after this study, having increased their vocabulary, understanding of grammar, and having seen examples of fluent sentence construction, that their Speak Latin skill would be completely unchanged?

As an aside, as @raccoonmask has said most books are more effective with a teacher. We allow characters to go off and read books on Artes Liberales, for example, to improve when many of the key books used for this are similarly closer to teaching aids than manuals for independent study. A book as a teaching aid is not really modelled in Ars 5e. You could model such books in a few ways:

  • Treat them as a summa or tractatus as appropriate but require a teacher present to use them, with the usual restrictions on the highest ability level that can be taught.
  • Treat them as a summa or tractatus as above but allow them to be used without a teacher at a reduced quality.
  • Do not treat them as books in their own right, instead they apply a bonus to the teaching source quality.
  • Do not treat them as books in their own right, allow the use of a teaching aid of suitable quality to increase the gain limit of teaching.
  • Do not treat them as books in their own right and consider them necessary props for teaching with no bonus given (this one is unsatisfying, as it raises the question of why make these books if the teaching is just as good without them?)

The XP gain for books and teaching is not particularly realistic, but it is functional. The easiest and simplest way would be to treat a good library as a teaching aid, similar to how labs can be set up as classrooms.