How to Learn to Speak Latin

Last Updated: October 21, 2021 References

Latin may be known as a "dead language" but it can still be learned and spoken today. Not only will you be enhancing your linguistic repertoire, but you'll be able to read original classics, learn Romance languages more easily, and widen your English vocabulary. If you want to get started on this mother of so many languages, see step 1 below.

Method 1

Method 1 of 4:

The Basics

1
Familiarize yourself with the alphabet. If you already speak English or any language with a Latinate script, you may think you already have the alphabet down. But language is constantly evolving and while most things are the same, there are a few differences.^{[1]
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- J, V, and W don't exist. Well, not really at least. There were 23 letters in the classic Latin alphabet.
- R is rolled, similar to the trill in Spanish.
- Y is known as "i Graeca" ("Greek i") and Z is "zeta."
- I can sometimes be pronounced as the English Y sound and Y is pronounced like the French "u."
  - If you know the IPA, that means the letter I is sometimes pronounced as /j/ and the letter Y is sometimes pronounced as /y/. See the reasoning?
- U is sometimes similar to a W -- in fact, that's where the letter comes from. It's written as "v."
2
Get the pronunciation down. While pronouncing Latin doesn't offer near as many trip ups as English does (generally, each letter sticks to a sound), there are a couple of things to keep in mind: length and combinations.
- An apex (´) or acute accent (like the accent aigu in French) is used to denote long vowels. With one, "a" becomes like the sound in "father" instead of the sound in "hat." "E" alone is "bed," but with the apex it's more like the sound in "café."
  - Unfortunately, modern Latin spelling has made this very confusing by using the macron (¯) to denote length of vowels, too, when it's normally used to denote long syllables. Now it seems noting syllable and vowel length is a free-for-all and most dictionaries don't do it sufficiently. And to make matters worse, Spanish uses the same symbol to denote accented syllables. But if you find yourself in Italy and you squint a little bit, you should notice the apexes on Roman inscriptions (at least from classical and postclassical times) in all their rightful glory.^{[2]
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- Different vowel/consonant combinations can change the sound of the letters. "Ae" becomes the sound in "kite" (or /ai/); "ch" makes a "k" sound; "ei" makes the sound in "day" (/ei/); "eu" sounds like "ee-ooo"; "oe" is the same as the sound in "toy."
  - If you know the IPA, this all becomes a lot easier -- there are tons of similarities. Needless to say, the IPA is Latin-derived.^{[3]
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3
Know where the emphasis goes. English has a lot of Latin roots and therefore shares some of the same emphasis patterns. However, it'd be ridiculous to say anything applies 100% in the current Lingua Franca. For Latin, keep these rules in mind:
- For one syllable words, well, emphasis isn't an issue.
- For two syllable words, emphasize the first syllable (pos-co: I demand)
- For polysyllabic words, emphasis goes on the penultimate syllable if it's heavy or long (mentiuntur: they lie).
- For polysyllabic words that have a light or short syllable penultimately, the emphasis goes on the antipenultimate syllable (imperator: commander).
  - All these rules are similar to this day in English. In fact, English long considered Latin's rules as the "right" way to speak and changed Germanic roots to fit in this box. It's the same reason your English teacher tells you to not split infinitives (did you catch that?). The reasoning is Latin (and now archaic).
4
Know what you're in for. If you don't already have a sense of this, Latin is a very complicated language. You're about to embark upon a long, uphill battle. Here's an example: verbs have to consider a few things, right? Maybe plurality, person, and tense? Nope. Way more. But you can handle it, right? The Latin verbs must take the following things into consideration:^{[4]
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- Three persons -- first, second, and third
- Two aspects -- perfect (finished) and imperfect (unfinished)
- Two numbers -- singular and plural
- Three moods -- indicative, subjunctive, and imperative
- Six tenses -- present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect
- Two voices -- active and passive.
- Four non-finite forms -- infinitive, gerund, participle, and supine
  - Have we mentioned yet that there are 7 cases and 3 genders for nouns?

Method 2

Method 2 of 4:

Nouns, Verbs & Roots, etc.

1
Use your present knowledge. Alright, so you might be feeling the weight of this endeavor you've planned to embark upon right now -- after all, this is a language that certainly has a lot to take in. But if you're a speaker of any Romance language and even English, you're pretty set, at least lexically.
- All the Romance languages stem from Vulgar Latin -- vulgar here meaning common, not disgusting or objectionable. But English, too, though it's of Germanic origin, has a vocabulary that is 58% Latin-influenced.^{[5]
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  Research source} That includes French (if you were cocking a brow), which is a Romance language and thus heavily Latin.
  - English is full of Germanic/Latin doublets. That basically means it has two words for everything; generally, the Germanic one is seen as more common (and you can hear the difference, too). With "begin" and "commence," which one do you think is Germanic and which one is Latinate? How about "ask" and "inquire?" "Aware" and "cognizant?"^{[6]
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    Research source} You'll find plenty of Latin words in English's fancier alternatives.
  - English's root words that are from Latin are practically innumerable. Once you see the Latin word, your mind will fill with words that all of a sudden make sense. Brev- is the Latin word for "brief" or "short."^{[7]
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    Research source} So now, "brevity," "brief," and "abbreviation" make sense, don't they? Neat! This will make the vocabulary a piece of cake (and up your English one, too).
2
Know how verbs work. Latin is a fusional language which, by definition, makes it heavily inflected.^{[8]
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Research source} If you have any experience with European languages, this won't come as a surprise to you. Though Latin puts Spanish, French, and German to shame with its complexities.
- Verb inflection in Latin can be defined in four conjugation patterns. However, it must be noted that the grouping is only based on how the verb behaves in the present tense; how it behaves in others cannot be inferred through its grouping. Unfortunately, you'll need several forms of the verb to know just how it acts and to form it in all the possible contexts. While most verbs belong to one of the four patterns, some (like esse ("to be")) do not. It's always the most common verbs that don't -- I am, you were? Je suis, tu es? Yo soy, tu eres? Same thing.^{[4]
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  - If you found that slightly confusing, just know that there are 4 verb families and most verbs fall into one and follow the pattern of that particular grouping.
- All tenses use personal endings. In the active voice, they are all the same, minus the perfect tense, which has chosen to be a nuisance. Here's the pattern the 5 tenses follow:
  - Present tense, etc.:
    Singular
    First person –ō, –m
    Second person –s
    Third person –t
    Plural
    First Person –mus
    Second person –tis
    Third person –nt
  - Perfect:
    Singular
    First person –ī
    Second person –istī
    Third person –it
    Plural
    First person –mus
    Second person –istis
    Third person –ērunt
3
Study up on your declensions. That's a fancy term for noun conjugation (and pronouns and adjectives while we're at it). In Latin, there are five declensions. This is just like verb conjugation in a way -- each noun fits into a category and its endings fit the patterns of that specific family of nouns.
- Declension gets a bit tricky because nouns (and adjectives and pronouns...) come in not only singular and plural, but also masculine, feminine, and neuter. Each noun can fit into 7 different cases, giving them all different endings. Water (aqua, -ae) is feminine, can be singular or plural, and thus has 14 different possible endings.
  - In case you're curious, aqua is a first declension noun (those generally end in -a).^{[9]
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- Latin borrowed a few Greek words that are quite common and they often decline to the beat of their own drum. However, some have been regularized.^{[9]
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- On the upside, first and second pronouns can only be masculine or feminine. That's good, right? On the downside, adjectives' gender is determined by the noun they describe, so they have endings for all cases and all genders. But there are only three declensions of adjectives, thank our lucky stars.^{[9]
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4
Nail down the cases. There are seven cases (five major ones) and, if you're not nauseated just yet, the same ending is often used for more than one case. You just like a good challenge, don't you? When you're studying you'll find that they are often abbreviated to the first three letters.
- You know how in English it's "book" and "books" but "child" and "children?" What's that all about? English used to have cases, too, but has vastly gotten rid of them. In case (haha!) you're a bit scruffy on your terminology, cases are seen on endings put on a word (nouns and adjectives, namely) that mark its grammatical function. Here's the list:
- The nominative case: This marks the subject of a statement. It is used to denote the person or object that is performing the verb in the sentence.
- The accusative case: This marks the direct object of the verb. It does have other functions, but that's generally it. Certain prepositions can determine it.
- The genitive case: This expresses possession, measurement, or source. In English, its equivalent would be "of." In Old English, nouns in the genitive used to be marked with "-es" in the genitive. Wonder how that evolved....^{[10]
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- The dative case: This one marks the indirect object, or the receiver of an action. In English, "to" and "for" would mark this case, at least in some contexts (they are very common words).
- The ablative case: This case indicates separation, indirection, or the means by which an action is performed. In English, the closest indicator of this would be the prepositions "by," "with," "from," "in" and "on."
- The vocative case: This is used in direct speech to address someone or something. In the sentence, "Jane, are you coming? Jane!" Jane is vocative.
- The locative case: This is used unsurprisingly and a little ridiculously (who needs to know this?) to express where an action takes place. In early Latin this was used frequently, but in Classical Latin they finalized realized this was superfluous information and it eventually died out, only being applied to the names of cities, small islands and a few other isolated, probably unimportant, words.^{[11]
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5
Forget about word order. Because English lacks adequate conjugation and declension, word order is absolutely imperative. But in Latin, for example, the sentence "The boy loves the girl" does not have to be written "Puer amat puellam" -- literally translating to "the boy (puer) loves (amat) the girl (puellam)." In fact, "Puellam amat puer" means the same thing -- it's all in the endings.
- Even though it looks like the second example says "the girl loves the boy," it doesn't. "The girl loves the boy" would be "Puella amat puerum." See how the the endings change places? That's the beauty of cases!
  - In fact, in Latin, the verbs generally drift toward the end of the sentence. It doesn't follow SVO (subject-verb-object) order like English, though it may be tempting to do since the order doesn't matter. "Puer puellam amat" is an authentic replication.

Method 3

Method 3 of 4:

Learning by Yourself

1
Use language immersion software. Rosetta Stone and Transparent are two brands of software that let you learn Latin as one of their languages. Transparent's website also has some Latin words and phrases that you can hear spoken for free.
- This is by far the easiest way to get started. You can do it on your own time at your own pace. It's best to study a bit every day (and you can do this at home!) to truly ingest everything -- software products couldn't make this any easier.
2
Read books on the Latin language. Check your local public library, school library, or bookstore for publications that will help you learn to speak the language. Possible resources to get include a Latin dictionary or books on Latin grammar.
- As an extra resource, indulge yourself with the internet. There are hundreds of videos and sites out there that can get you started. Though no one speaks the language technically, there are still tons of people out there looking to keep the language "alive."
3
Read Latin literature out loud. Classical figures such as Virgil and Cicero wrote in Latin. During medieval times, Latin was also widely used in the educational, legal and religious fields. How cool would it be to read the classics in their original language?!
- When you do this, don't be tempted to use a dictionary with every word. It'll become too much of a crutch and slow you down if you do. Set out to only get the general drift and bust it out if you're truly stumped.

Method 4

Method 4 of 4:

Learning with Others

1
Learn Latin at school. If the language is offered at your high school or college (university), fantastic. You're good to go. Your college's (university's) classics or history department would be good places to ask about taking Latin classes.
- In addition to taking straight up Latin classes, you may want to look into classes on English vocabulary and etymology, classic literature, and European language history.
2
Hire a Latin tutor. Try placing a printed advertisement at your local institute of learning and libraries inquiring whether an advanced Latin student or Latin instructor would be willing to teach you how to speak Latin.
- Try to get someone with a bit of teaching experience. Just because someone can speak the language doesn't mean they can teach it. If you're a student, ask your teachers if they know anyone who might be able to help you.
3
Participate in a Latin-speaking event. The Rusticatio, held by Septentrionale Americanum Latinitatis Vivae Institutum (SALVI), is an annual week-long immersion event where participants can converse in Latin. The full name for SALVI translates in English to North American Institute for Living Latin Studies.
- Events are in California, Oklahoma, and West Virginia (USA) in 2013. They also offer an intensive trip to Rome.
4
Join a group devoted to studying Latin or the classics. This could be an informal club at your high school, an official honor society at your college (university), or a national or international organization. You may meet others in your group who can learn and practice speaking Latin with you.
- Working with others will help cement the knowledge into your brain. It will also give you a stage to ask questions and use others' knowledge to better your own.

Community Q&A

Question

How do I say Gemma in Latin?

Community Answer

It is pronounced Gay-ma, but it is still spelled the same. In Latin, g's are always hard. They never make the j sound.
Question

Where does the accent fall in "insuper"?

Community Answer

It's "in-SUP-er" as a rule. It's usually on the second syllable for three-syllable words in Latin, think "mercator".