Sentence Mining

Table of Contents

• 1 Introduction
• 2 How to Sentence Mine
• 3 Sentence Mining in Latin
• 4 Conclusion

1 Introduction

Once technique that may offer some help in becoming fluent in Latin is called sentence mining.

Here's the idea.

A person naturally learns a language by being exposed to the language, hearing it over and over. This is called immersion. Every newborn baby is immersed into a language environment, and after a few years they begin speaking. If you have kids, you've seen the process. Mom and Dad, along with older siblings, constantly talk to the baby. Eventually, baby talks.

The process in the mind of the child is undoubtedly complex but it seems that through hearing thousands, tens of thousands, and even millions, of words, and sentences, and through its own efforts to speak and communicate, the child develops a vocabulary and internal grammar.

Think about that. The child's brain, somehow, takes the examples that are presented to it and begins to make patterns and form rules. That the brain can do this is pretty amazing.

Again, if you're a parent you've seen this happen. One of the (grammatical) rules that children will invariable make is the rule that says to make the past tense of any verb, put -ed on the end of it.

This is a pretty good rule. It works a lot. But it doesn't work all the time. So children will say things like, "I eated all my food." Eventually, the child's brain will get enough other patterns that the internal rule will be nuanced to something like: "Form the past tense of a verb by putting -ed, on the end of it, unless it's one of those verbs."

Again, that the brain forms these patterns out of the thousands of language samples it receives is amazing.

But do we lose this ability? If we immerse ourselves in a different language environment can't our brain learn new tricks? If immersion worked the first time, can't it work a second time, too?

Sentence mining is the process of gathering and learning hundreds, even thousands, of target language sentence samples, in the belief that the brain will naturally begin to see patterns, make internal language rules, and even begin to think in the target language.

Usually these sentences are put on flashcards for easy review. But, note, that when I talk about flashcards, I'm actually using Anki.

2 How to Sentence Mine

So, how do you use flash cards for sentence mining?

It's easy. On one side of the card put a phrase, sentence, or paragraph, in the target language, or course. On the other side, put . . . nothing.

Yup, that's right. Nothing.

Why nothing? Because the goal is understanding in the target language. As such, there's really nothing to put on the flip side.

Suppose you were trying to gain fluency in English (totally theoretical here, because you already are, but let's pretend). Let's create some sentence mining flashcards.

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States.

How about another one?

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. 

Perfect. Create a few more.

Now review them.

Did you understand them?

As an already fluent English speaker, of course you did, but let's keep pretending that you're trying to learn English.

The cards will fall, roughly, into three categories. Those cards you understand perfectly, those you sort of understand, and those you don't understand at all.

Lay aside those that you understand perfectly, and work on those that you have trouble with.

But what exactly do you do with them?

Read them, speak them, memorize them. If there's a word you can't figure out, or some weird grammatical point that is bothering you, look it up (if you feel the urge). But above all, repeat, repeat, repeat, until understand and the sentence feels natural to you.

When this happens you have made it. You just understand the card in the target language.

3 Sentence Mining in Latin

How does sentence mining work in Latin?

Pretty much like it does in any language.

Let's trying some phrases based on Orberg's Familia Romana, Capitulum I.

Roma in Italia est.

Germania in Italia non est. Germania in Europa est.

Ubi Sparta est? Sparta in Graecia est. 

Nilus fluvius est.

Quid est Nilus? Nilus fluvius est.

Danuvius fluvius magnus est. 

Estne Sparta fluvius? Sparta fluvius non est. Sparta oppidum est. 

All of these could be made into flashcards. I don't need tosince they feel totally natural to me. I have no sense that I am translating them into English. But there are plenty of sentences to mine in later chapters!

But why stop with Orberg? Take a trip out to Nuntii Latini and mine for sentences.

Here's one that I found.

"Si Unio Sovietica voluisset," inquit, "murus non cecidisset neque
Germania orientalis et occidentalis unitae essent. At quid tum factum esset?
Catastropha aut plane tertium bellum mundanum. Equidem sanguinem effundere
nolebam."

This is taken from a speech by Gorbachev about the fall of the Berlin wall. It's a bit advanced for me, mostly vocabulary that I don't know. I look up the words and get the meaning.

Now I review the card, saying it out loud, until it feels totally natural.

And that's it! I've mined a great sentence.

4 Conclusion

Sentence mining is a simple method for simulating language immersion.

Does it work?

We're going to find out!

The Pursuit of Latin Fluency

Table of Contents

• 1 Introduction
• 2 Learning Latin
  • 2.1 Orberg and the Natural Method
  • 2.2 Spaced Repetition
• 3 Conclusion

1 Introduction

Gaining fluency in any language is a tough go for learners of any age, but supposedly it gets harder the older you get.

I'm an older adult learner but I'm going to try and gain fluency in Latin.

What is fluency? I'm defining fluency as the ability to read, write, and converse in Latin fluidly.

Of course, this raises lots of questions, but I don't see that a long and extended discussion is necessary.

Let's just say that if I'm able to browse Nuntii Latini and read fluidly, and if I'm able to gain the ability to write this blog in Latin, I will have achieved my goal.

2 Learning Latin

How do I plan on learning Latin?

2.1 Orberg and the Natural Method

There are lots of books out there that will teach you, or claim to teach you, Latin. Wheelocks, Henle and Jenny's come to mind, but there must be thousands of others.

I want nothing to do with any of them. Here's just one reason why. At this link to a sample pdf of Henle you will see this question on page 9:

How do you tell the difference between the nominative and ablative singular
of the first declension?

Excuse me??

The answer undoubtedly is that you can tell the difference because of the macron over the final -a in the ablative.

I think I'm going to throw up.

Is that how the Romans did it? Of course not. They used context. Just native speakers do all the time in their own, undoubted, ambiguous languages.

No, no, no. My goal is not to learn about lingua latina but rather to learn the lingua latina, ipsa.

I'm sure that Henle, like Wheelock, et cetera, have many admirable qualities. I may want to refer to them, even, at some point. But no, it's not the way to start. And please don't misunderstand. I don't hate grammar. In fact, I'm a grammar guy. I love grammar and I understand it. But I have no desire to study the grammar of Latin, or any language, for years, and not come to fluency. Grammar, certainly not by itself, does not bring the student to fluency.

I'm going to use Lingua Latina per se illustrata: Pars I Familia Romana by Hans Orberg. I've already been using this book for a while now. I'm not a total beginner.

Orberg's approach uses what is called the "natural method," where the student begins with simple sentences.

For example, in Capitulum I, the sentences are very simple and would give little trouble to many English speakers.

Roma in Italia est. Italia in Europa est. Italia et Graecia in Europa sunt.

Here's a sample page.

By the way, you'll notice that I'm leaving out the macrons in the Latin that I write. Here's what William Harris has to say on the subject of macrons.

The Romans knew the longs by knowing how the language sounded, but never wrote them in, nor do modern texts of any author include them with the one exception of high school textbooks. Since students seriously studying Latin will never see a long-marked text after high school, the use of such crutches may well be questioned. It would seem better to learn to deal with regular printed texts,than learn everything in "marked" text, and later wonder where the cribbed marks went. A Dutch doctor named Smets published in l599 a dictionary of regularly used poetic words illustrated with one verse from a good poet of the Augustan period,which establishes the natural length of the vowels. But even so there are questions about length in some words, which the OLD lists at the beginning of each entry. Note that modern Russians must speak with precise pitch accents, but would never think of writing them in their books. If students learn the longs and shorts by hearing Latin spoken by the teacher and speaking it themselves, there will be no problems later on, that is the longand the short of it.

William Harris
Prof. Em. Middlebury College
www.middlebury.edu/~harris

So, following Harris, I see macrons as remedial crutches that should be done away with as soon as possible. Modern Latin, such as at Nuntii Latini doesn't use them either.

Back to Orberg.

Beginning with these simple sentences the reader begins to acquire a vocabulary and a grammar. As he chapters go by, the sentences become more complex.

At the end of each chapter, a discussion of grammar is given, along with exercises.

At the end of the book can be found typical Latin paradigms.

By the way, the entire book is in Latin.

Along with the book, a DVD is available in which Orberg reads the entire book. His pronunciation for the most part is classical, but I have noticed where sometimes his "v" sounds as it does in English. This is fine with me. While I want to follow the classical pronunciation system, I do not want to obsess on it.

2.2 Spaced Repetition

A computerized flashcard system will be helpful.

I first learned about "spaced repetition" from SuperMemo many, many, years ago. Of course, today I wouldn't dream of paying for that product when there is such excellent software freely available.

From alternatives, I've decided on Anki, and I'll be using LaTeX to keep things looking nice (if you're using MS-Windows, you'll want MikTeX). I'll leave you to read elsewhere about the easy setup of Anki and LaTeX.

3 Conclusion

More coming! Come back to soon to hear of my progress.

Valete!!