As well as offering a multitude of primary sources – and being amazing at scanning them and sending them to you (thank you National Archives!) – the National Archives also offer some excellent online courses:
- Beginners’ Latin – Latin 1086 – 1733: A practical online tutorial for beginners. National Archives explains that “This tutorial is a beginners’ guide to the Latin used in documents between 1086 and 1733. It is the first online tutorial to help you learn the Latin from this period.”
- Advanced Latin – “A step-by-step online tutorial with 12 lessons to teach medieval Latin to an advanced level. You will have lots of opportunities to practise what you learn with a selection of activities, as well as extracts from original documents held here at The National Archives”.
- Latin Palaeography – The study of old handwriting. “This online tutorial will help you learn to read the handwriting found in documents written in Latin between 1086 and 1500. The tutorial is for people who already know medieval Latin.” It consists of ten lessons.
Aren’t they wonderful?!
Great finds — I have bookmarked and with luck will get some time for them before 2040 or thereabouts. I do sometimes wish that schools still taught Latin as a matter of course; yes, a lot of important subjects were neglected when Latin and Greek were the It Subjects for getting into university, but on the other hand, how much easier must it have been to study medieval and Renaissance history when you already had that Latin foundation? Much better than starting from scratch at eighteen or twenty.
This is a great idea. I love the thought of learning a new launguage and being able to understand the documents of the past. Thank you for the resource.
I love this! Latin will be my pet project while I have a few days off work over the holidays. Now I can show off and be a real smarty pants at Pub Trivia! 🙂