Plus, a great lineup of active Latin courses this Fall 🍂

Fall into Latin: Courses for Every Level

In a little over a week, I’m starting my second season of classes with the amazing Latinitas Animi Causa. The 4 courses I taught over 5 weeks of last summer were some of the most fun I’ve had in years, and it seems my students enjoyed them just as much I did. Inspired by this, I decided to redouble my efforts together with both of those numbers. From the end of September to the end of November, I’ll be teaching 7 different courses, with one repeated for American and European time-zones. Whether you’re starting from scratch, bridging the infamous “intermediate gap,” or ready to dive into poetry and prose, my courses will help you read, speak, and think in Latin with confidence.

—Victor K.

“I thoroughly enjoyed my class with Victor and learned so much. His spoken Latin is absolutely amazing, and he created a really comfortable and collegial atmosphere for the class.”

Maureen Stewart Haviland, Latin teacher of 24 years.

“Reading aloud from LLPSI to the class was some of the most fun I had all summer. Victor is an attentive listener and will offer hints and suggestions on better pronunciation. […] Producing extemporaneous grammatically correct speech is much harder than I realized. Sometimes though I get it right and I manage to communicate something not completely trivial, and when Victor beams at me and gives me a thumbs up I get a jolt of dopamine that makes all the discomfort totally worth it.”

Mike, retired programmer, rock musician, and a successful autonomous carbon based life form.

Victor’s Fall Latin Courses:

On weekdays:

• Active Latin from Scratch (from LLSPI: FR cap. 1) — beginner courses for American & European time zones, meeting twice a week.
• Intensive Familia Romana (LLPSI: FR cap. 16+) — pick up beyond the basics, ideal for motivated autodidacts or flexible schedules.
• Bridging to Intermediate — consolidate your passive and develop your active skills with Sermones Romani and Fabulae Syrae.

On weekends:

• Latin Poetry Courses — read Phaedrus’ fables and Lucan’s Erictho (from a reader co-authored by us) with a focus on pronunciation, performance, and discussion.
• Advanced Literature Seminars — dive into Catullus’ love poetry (Catullus +/- Lesbia and Virgil’s Eclogues (Bucolic Arcadia and the Roman World).

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No Human Author Needed

In the past two years, there has been a proliferation of self-published, A.I.-generated Latin readers on Amazon KDP. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish these books from ones that people write. However, they always have A.I.-generated covers, generally read like Latin mapped directly on top of English, lack idiomatic expression, and contain mistakes in spelling and morphology. Now, some of these issues are present in human-generated materials. However, the combination of the three, especially the frequency of morphological errors in the A.I.-generated materials makes them pretty easy for me to spot. But these are books targeted at learners. Beginning learners cannot spot these issues, especially with the Latin.

Is it worth it to try to address this?

Since the Latin community online is relatively small and we know a lot of the people who moderate these communities, it seems possible we could make an effort to make people aware of these A.I.-generated books. I have long hesitated, despite being asked on many occasions, to make “approved lists” of the novellas and other similar resources I think are better (or those I think aren’t so good) or even review them for political reasons within the American Latin teacher community. So, I think least controversial way to address this is to make a “no buy” A.I. list and distribute it in the larger communities on Reddit and Facebook. I understand this is, at best, a partial remedy for the issue. However, dozens of new learners join these communities with hundreds of thousands of users each day, so this information would reach some people. Also, there is, for now, a relatively small number of these A.I. authors on Amazon. It’s not an insurmountable task to identify them.

I’m also interested in your feedback in the comments. Additionally, I think this affects people who want start writing and selling resources for Latin learners the most. Lupus Alatus, for instance, has established sales channels and an internet presence, and people know we are people. New authors can more easily get flooded out of the market by the sea of A.I. books.

Curate ut valeatis!