Learn Latin, Old English, Sanskrit, Classical Greek & Other Ancient Languages in 10 Lessons

I receive week­ly reminders of my lin­guis­tic igno­rance when­ev­er I read any­thing by authors flu­ent in Latin. How could I not, when­ev­er Clive James starts to pon­tif­i­cate on the great­ness of, say, Tac­i­tus?

“For stu­dents acquir­ing Latin in adult life, the lan­guage is most eas­i­ly approached through those his­to­ri­ans who real­ly wrote chron­i­cles — Cor­nelius Nepos, Sal­lust, Sue­to­nius and Livy — but with the His­to­ries of Tac­i­tus you get the best rea­son for approach­ing it at all… What Sainte-Beuve said of Mon­taigne — that his prose is like one con­tin­u­ous epi­gram — is even more true of Tac­i­tus.”

Fan­tas­tic! So, which trans­la­tion should I read?

“There are innu­mer­able trans­la­tions but the orig­i­nal gives you [Tac­i­tus]’ unri­valled pow­ers of com­pres­sion.”

As with Latin clas­sics, so with oth­er Indo-Euro­pean lan­guage texts, includ­ing Beowulf, orig­i­nal­ly in Old Eng­lish, Homer’s Ili­ad and Odyssey, in Clas­si­cal Greek, and the ancient Vedic hymns of the Rigve­da, in San­skrit.

For those will­ing to take up the chal­lenge of read­ing these canon­ic texts in their orig­i­nal form, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas’ Lin­guis­tics Research Cen­ter pro­vides an excel­lent resource. In addi­tion to host­ing a mul­ti­tude of Indo-Euro­pean vol­umes in their entire­ty, the LRC has made 10-les­son crash cours­es, devel­oped by sev­er­al UT-Austin aca­d­e­mics. Lessons include a brief guide to the alpha­bet, back­ground knowl­edge on the lan­guage’s devel­op­ment, and a gram­mar guide, all  avail­able for the fol­low­ing lan­guages:

• Alban­ian
• Armen­ian
• Baltic
• Old Eng­lish
• Old French
• Goth­ic
• Greek (Clas­si­cal)
• Greek (New Tes­ta­ment)
• Hit­tite
• Old Iran­ian
• Old Irish
• Latin
• Old Norse
• Old Russ­ian
• Vedic San­skrit
• Old Slavon­ic
• Tochar­i­an

Best of all, lessons are based on sem­i­nal texts from each lan­guage: Latin lessons rely on Tac­i­tus’ Ger­ma­nia, Livy’s His­to­ry of Rome, and Virgil’s Aeneid, while Homer, Hesiod’s Works and Days, and Plato’s Repub­lic fea­ture promi­nent­ly in the Clas­si­cal Greek class­es. Stu­dents progress through each les­son by read­ing the orig­i­nal pas­sages, and using the pro­vid­ed guides to trans­late them to Eng­lish.

We’ll be adding these to our grow­ing list of Free Lan­guage Lessons (and our list of Free Online Cours­es), where you can learn over 46 lan­guages, from Ara­bic to Yid­dish.

Note: These links will direct you to pages for­mat­ted in Uni­code 2. If you’re hav­ing trou­ble read­ing the texts, head to the Ear­ly Indo-Euro­pean Online lessons site and choose a dif­fer­ent encod­ing in the side­bar.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an, the Lan­guage of Mesopotamia