The most effective way to learn a language is in context, because not only is it easier to learn new words this way, but you will also acquire grammar organically, and it's much more fun and interesting to learn this way than to memorize grammar tables. In these videos, we will be learning directly from simple sentences in Latin, and you may be surprised how easily and quickly you will acquire this beautiful language. Let's go! We'll start with this sentence, which is in present tense.
Can you guess what it means? Repeat after me. Oeta, scribet. Oeta, scribet. Oeta should be obvious.
And if you recall words like scribe, scribble, script, you can probably figure out that scribet means write. But wait, there are only two words. Is this a complete sentence? Yes, actually in Latin, there are no words corresponding to a.
or the. This has to be pulled from context. So, poetascribit can mean the poet writes or a poet writes, depending on the sentence that came before it. Discipula studit. Discipula studit.
Looking at the second word, can you guess the first? Who is it that studies? A disciplined disciple is a. Student, right?
That's right. This means the student studies or a student studies. Notice that the C in discipula is a hard sound like a K.
This is always the case for Latin. Cs never make a S sound. Now how would we say the student writes?
Can you remember? Discipula scribit. Discipula scribit.
And the poet studies? Poeta studet. Poeta studet.
Now let's change it up a little. Ego studeo. Ego studeo. Do you see how we changed from student to studio?
This is like the change from studies to study. So we know that the subject of this sentence is somehow different. Now, someone with a big ego is always thinking about themselves, so it's easy to remember that ego means I.
This sentence means I study. Now, for I write, we won't be able to guess the form following the pattern above, because it's ego scribo. Ego scribo.
So we have so far Poeta scribit. Poeta studit. Discipula scribit.
Discipula studit. Ego scribo. Ego studio. Now I'm going to add lines over some of the vowels, but don't worry, these will actually make pronunciation easier. These signify that the vowel is long, just like in elementary school.
You can note the difference in the word scribet, where there is one long and one short vowel. Scribet. Note also that the R in Latin is trilled, just like in Spanish. Let's add another verb.
Discipula legit. Discipula legit. When something is legible, we are able to read it. But notice that, just like the C in discipula, the G in Latin is always a hard sound.
Legit. Now look at the conjugation for scribit and studit. Can you guess how to say I read?
Ego lego. Or lego my ego. Ego lego.
The word you in Latin is to with a long vowel. You, to. Pretty easy to remember, huh? And for our three verbs, we have to scribes, to studies, to leges. Are you starting to see a pattern?
Verbs conjugated with ego always end with a long o. When the subject is to, the verb always ends with s. And for third person singular, the verb ends in T. The only difficult part is that the vowel sometimes changes before these endings.
But there are only four conjugation patterns, so it's not that bad. Let's add another verb. From this word comes the English words dormant and dormitory. Can you guess the meaning? That's right.
I sleep. And the student sleeps? Discipula dormit.
The TO form is a little different from what we've seen. It has a long E vowel. Tu dormis. Now, what do you think this sentence means?
Agricola dormit. Agricola dormit. Look at the first four letters. This is a person that has something to do with agriculture, i.e. a farmer.
And what does this mean? Agricola laborat. Agricola laborat.
Chop off the at and we have labor. or work and i work would be ego laboro ego laboro for the two form we have a change again but you might be able to guess it from laborat you work is to laboras Tú la borras. Now we have seen all the different verb patterns. Let's put them all together. Note the differences and similarities in the patterns.
All verbs end in either o, s, or t, depending on the subject. And the vowel before the s in the to form is almost always long, just like the u in to is long. And the vowel before o is dropped half of the time. When you look up verbs in a dictionary, they will be listed in infinitive form.
For the verbs we've learned so far, this looks like LABORARE, SCRIBERE, STUDERE, DORMIRE. As you can see, the vowel before RE in SCRIBERE is short, just like the TO form. But again, don't try to memorize these rules because that's not fun.
And you will naturally learn them as we work through more verbs, like this one. Discipula disket. Discipula disket. We already learned.
Discipula studet. So can you think of something else students do? It's a little hard to guess, so I'll just give away that this means learns. The student learns. Discipula disket.
Remember to repeat the Latin phrase out loud in the pauses I give. Look at this next sentence. What do you think et means? Discipula legget et disket.
Discipula legget et disket. This word is used in the famous line from Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, when he says, Et tu, brute? And you, Brutus? He says this after he sees that his friend Brutus is one of his assassins, and the phrase is often alluded to in literature when there is an unexpected betrayal by a friend. From the sentence, ego disco, can you figure out how to say, you study and learn?
Tu studies et discus. Tu studies et discus. Do you remember the short sound?
Now try to say you work and write and study and sleep. The next word doesn't have as easy of an association with an English word, but thinking of magistrate or maestro might help. A magistra is a teacher.
And what does a teacher do? Magistra dacet. Magistra dacet. A teacher teaches.
This verb has ties to indoctrinate and doctrine. Also, someone who is docile is teachable. and it's easy to remember if you know what a docent is. The infinitive is do-ce-re. So how do we say I teach and you teach in Latin?
We're now ready to tackle our first proverb in Latin. It's kind of amazing, isn't it? Look at the first word.
The wh-wa sound in English is a qu sound in Latin. So if you see a short word starting with qu, it most likely means who, what, where, when, or why. since we already know what ducat and discat mean can you guess the meaning of this sentence it's actually not a question it means literally who teaches learns or more elegantly phrased he who teaches learns don't worry if you don't remember everything from this lesson we will be repeating everything along the way If you like these lessons, please consider supporting this channel on Patreon. There's a link below. And be sure to like, subscribe, and share.
Gracias!