For many courses of study, knowledge of the Latinum is still required. Anyone who was not fortunate enough to learn Latin at grammar school will have to make up for it in two semesters. Those who still want to study their own subject at the same time quickly find themselves in a dilemma – should they rather learn Latin or concentrate on their studies? The fact that the courses at the university are often overcrowded – between 50 and 100 students are not uncommon – does not make it easier. If someone doesn’t understand a topic, he/she may not dare to ask in such a large group, and also has to deal with the problem some of the students already have a good grasp of Latin, for example because they are repeaters or have already had two years of Latin at grammar school.

 

Many consider the Latinum to be a hidden numerus clausus. Let’s first ask ourselves the question of fairness: While pupils automatically get their Latinum certified after four years of Latin instruction and with at least the grade “sufficient” (= “4“), students have to take their own translation exam from a speech text of Cicero, in which they are, it is true, allowed to use a Latin dictionary, but the history of Rome has no influence on their grades in the written exams. On the other hand, pupils at grammar school usually do have a history section in their class tests, which corrects upwards the  grade of those who are not so good at translating. On the other hand, pupils in the first three Latin years are not allowed to use any dictionary in their class tests and therefore have a much higher vocabulary than students at university who have to catch up on the Latinum.

 

The conditions for the Latinum examination are extremely hard: Those who have more than 18 mistakes in the text are not even admitted to the oral examination, in which besides a translation with a quarter-hour preparation time (without dictionary), grammar questions, stylistic questions also the history of Rome or something from Cicero’s curriculum vitae can be queried.

 

After all, the risk for students is not inconsiderable: if he/she fails twice, the only thing left to do is to take the “Großes Latinum“ or abandon university.

 

Examiners compare students with pupils they have taught at grammar school and find two striking differences: The lack of vocabulary and the lack of a translation strategy.

 

So what is to be done? The number of providers promising the Latinum within a few weeks is growing. It is said that the Latinum can be completed in four to six weeks. Such courses usually have two parts, a grammar part (two to three weeks) and a translation course (two to three weeks). Students squat in these crash courses from 8.00 to 15.00 hours and literally suck the knowledge into themselves, then go home to continue learning for three to four hours. It goes without saying that students quickly become overtired and unwilling to work – also on the part of the lecturers, who quickly reach their physical limits. Nevertheless, around half of the students on intensive courses actually manage to get hold of their Latin certificate after only a few weeks of learning. For the other half, however, even this journey was in vain.

Our course concept differs from other intensive courses in that we give sufficient time to process what you have learned. Classes are held on Friday afternoons during the semester, so that you also have the opportunity to take a Latin course for beginners or advanced students at the university. However, we are not a university, but a school, the lessons are tightly and sensibly organized. The minimum number of participants is four students, the maximum number is sixteen students. This is the only way to ensure that each participant receives feedback and corrections from the lecturer.
We work according to the “Anglo-Saxon method”, i.e. the sentences for the respective chapters have already been tested umpteen times on students in Great Britain and either contain a pinch of humour or wisdom or are original quotations from the period of Rome. The entire Latin grammar is divided into 26 chapters, normally two or three lessons per session. After thirteen days of lessons, the whole field of Latin grammar is covered. However, the principle of personal responsibility is vital: What you learn with us, you have know and master by the following Friday at the latest. You will get homework, have to learn your vocabulary, translate a text and above all practice declining and conjugating. So if you don’t have any time at all to learn Latin and do homework during the week except for Friday afternoons, this is not the right course for you. However, if you are willing to invest time that you arrange yourself (e.g. study several hours on Saturday and Sunday or two to three hours during the week), we might be the right course provider for you.
With this course you will receive a Latin textbook, which we use mainly for homework and which also contains „Latinum“ exams. However, the actual teaching is done through a Latin script – the “Anglo-Saxon method” already mentioned. The grammar units are limited to the bare essentials and usually contain two or three tables. With a little help from the teacher, the translation of ten to twenty sentences can begin immediately. This works because you are immediately provided with all the word details – they are always under the sentences. You are spared time-consuming looking up words in dictionaries.
You don’t have to copy tables or grammar rules from the board in our courses, because they are already pre-formulated in the Latin script or Latin book for homework. The didactics of Latin has changed a lot in the last few years. Meanwhile there are computer programs especially for the subject Latin, which can save a lot of time. You have the possibility to use these programs and to train the vocabulary of the texts or to decline/conjugate adjectives, nouns and pronouns or verbs on our own laptops. We will also show you what you can do for your Latin on the internet with your own computer and which app on your mobile phone is useful. Nevertheless, there is also a limit to “artificial intelligence” (AI). What already works quite well between English and German (automated translation of whole text sections) is not possible between Latin and German. For the computer the Latin language is simply too bulky and too free in its word order, too ambiguous in its endings – just think of the u-declination – and there are simply too many possibilities what an ablative or accusative really means. With a little exercise and a trained eye, a human being can achieve what the computer is not able to do – to activate prior knowledge and to tackle solution strategies for a translation problem.
From the seventh or eighth session onwards, Latin exams are started directly. At this point at the latest you should have your own dictionary. Permitted are Pons, Langenscheidt and the Stowasser.
This year’s Latinum examinations consist of Cicero’s “Speeches against Verres” (books 1 to 5) / “The Defence of Sextus Roscius” / “Speech on the supreme command of Gaius Pompeius”. From the second session onwards you will receive practice sentences from these speeches to improve your vocabulary.
From the beginning of our Latin course to your Latin exam, you will have five months time to learn the basics of Latin grammar (different types of words, often declined or conjugated / main and subordinate clauses) and a vocabulary. This will enable you to translate Cicero reasonably quickly. Cicero as an author is not an easy task, because his sentences can be very long and main and subordinate clauses have to be separated. In addition, there are also stylistic refinements, such as the renunciation of “esse” and special forms for associations. It is also about the field of political speech or court speech, i.e. you have to expect that Cicero, as prosecutor, defender or even senator, attacks his opponents with the means of rhetoric, which includes metaphors, irony and also indignant exclamations. Unlike the English or French lessons at school, this is not about everyday
communication (“Pass me the salt, please” / “When does the post office open?”), but about an art form of the Latin language that only educated Romans have mastered.
If you should take a four or six-week intensive course with another course provider in summer, you will have a three-week translation course after three weeks of grammar training. However, your time until the exam is only two months. There are students who manage the learning workload in such courses, but it should be noted that the stress level for you would be much higher.
We translate directly from the first learning unit and you have enough time to process what you have learned when we meet again a week later. If you have already studied a little Latin, you might only need one day for Latin, without any previous knowledge you should plan two or three days where you have to do something for Latin. But it is not that you have to study Latin seven days a week from morning till night to pass the exam. You should also make sure which learning type you are. If you are more haptic, you should work with flashcards that contain both grammar rules and words; with auditory learning you should speak and listen to the grammar and vocabulary yourself, with visual learning type you should search and memorize many pictures of the vocabulary and summarize the grammar in diagrams. Then your equipment is also important, a ballpoint pen or pencil is not enough, work better with highlighters in different colours or with coloured pencils to mark word endings or set arrows. You could create your own vocabulary book and keep a ring binder with an alphabetical index where the different grammar topics can be arranged. The learning success does not only depend on how much time you spend, but also on your own learning organisation.
You will be introduced to a new grammar topic in each lesson, followed by a few example sentences which will be translated together with the teacher. You will then be asked to solve further example sentences of the same type, followed by a discussion. If you get such sentences as homework, you should try it alone, you don’t even need a dictionary, as the list of words is below the text. Your homework will be corrected later. If you want to do more, you can also have more sentences with a solution key for self study.

The better you know the German language, the easier it is to learn Latin. Perhaps you had grammar lessons for the last time in the eighth grade and have already forgotten some things again. If you already know in advance what an adversative sentence, indefinite pronoun or participle is, this is certainly not a disadvantage. Here is a short list of things you already know in a German grammar (e.g. “Der kleine Duden – Deutsche Grammatik. Eine Sprachlehre für Beruf, Fortbildung und Alltag):
Definite and indefinite article – demonstrative pronoun – noun – four cases in the sentence structure (nominative, genitive, dative and accusative) – full verb – auxiliary verb – modal verb – present participle – present participle – perfect participle – substantiated verbs – active and passive – indicative and subjunctive – present, past and future (verb conjugation: present tense, past tense, perfect, past perfect, future tense I, Future II) – adjectives and possible increases – substantiated adjectives – adverbs – preposition – personal pronouns – interrogative pronouns – reflexive pronouns – possessive pronouns – relative pronouns – numerals – interjection – conjunction – statement sentence – wish sentence – instruction sentence – comparative sentence – causal sentence – temporal sentence – adversarial sentence – consecutive sentence – final sentence – conditional sentence – relative sentence – infinitive sentence – apposition – sentence construction plans: Sentences with objects and prepositional or adverbial additions.

Latin can be fun if you understand what you have to do in a translation. But Latin is no fun if you have not understood the old grammar chapter and the new one is already there and you have to look up every word in a thick dictionary. Latin is similar to a chess game – you have to know which
move with which piece leads to the correct result.
“I must learn Latin” is a sentence that you might think resignedly. “I am allowed to learn Latin, at last!” That would be a sentence that would suit you better. So don’t ponder whether such a Latinum examination is fair, but get completely involved in the new and foreign language.