beefing up your latin vocabulary

7/27/2019 Beefing Up Your Latin Vocabulary

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Beefing up your Latin Vocabulary, and How I Learned to Love Comenius

I am grateful in these times to have a job. But in whatever spare time I've had the last two years, I've done my best to resurrect myLatin and Greek, strictly on my own. Drawing on my experience, I have been using this blog to pass on some hopefully helpful

information to other aspiring autodidacts.

Last year I devoted to my "Adler + Millner + rberg" curriculum (see my first post, Teaching Yourself Latin and Greek) for

resurrecting my Latin. Because this year is my "Greek year," for the most part I just haven't had time to follow up on last year's Latincurriculum and read Latin authors. But lest my Latin lie completely fallow, I am at least trying this year to beef up my Latin

vocabulary. In this post I will pass on some resources I have found effective for doing this.

I have had a very helpful friend in this endeavor: Mr. John Amos Comenius. But it took me a while to warm up to Mr. Comenius, andthat story will be the bulk of this post. But first a few other excellent resources.

Word Frequency and Topical Vocabulary Lists

Carolus Raeticus has created a number of valuable vocabulary aides on his hiberna. For example, in 1939 Paul B. Diederich created a"basic vocabulary" based on a word count from three Latin anthologies. The basic vocabulary is divided into parts of speech and then

subdivided by topics such as God, Time, and Food for nouns, "Verbs which express or affect the location of the subject," Constructive

Activities, and Destructive Activities for verbs. Raeticus has created two .pdf's of the Diederich basic vocabulary (varying only in theEnglish translation).

In 1930, Walter Ripman published "A Handbook of the Latin Language - Being a Dictionary, Classified Vocabulary, and Grammar."

The book is not yet available online, but the Classified Vocabulary is a copious list neatly arranged under fifty topics, and EvanMillner previously recordedall fifty sections on LATINUM. (You can also purchase the readings on CD from the LATINUM store

under the telling title Swallowing the Dictionary.) Raeticus has created two .pdf's of the Classified Vocabulary; the second conforms to

the order of Millner's reading. The second also has an appendix itemizing a number of mistakes Raeticus detected in Millner'sreadings. Like Raeticus, I had had some difficulty "swallowing" Millner's readings before being able to see a printed list of the words.

Raeticus's .pdf and the aural reinforcement provided by Millner's recordings are a fantastic vocabulary builder.

Of course, LATINUM is the source of many other valuable readings I take full advantage of, including Comenius, but hold that

thought.
http://hiberna-cr.wikidot.com/starthttp://latinum.mypodcast.com/200716_archive.htmlhttp://latinum.mypodcast.com/200716_archive.htmlhttp://latinumstore.blogspot.com/2009/12/swallowing-dictionary.htmlhttp://latinum.mypodcast.com/200716_archive.htmlhttp://latinumstore.blogspot.com/2009/12/swallowing-dictionary.htmlhttp://hiberna-cr.wikidot.com/start


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A Fable a Day

Since I spend most of my day online, I try to find a few minutes each day to read the day's Aesop's fable (and also here

) from LauraGibbs. This gives me at least a little chance to test my vocabulary and to exercise my Latin with a complete, albeit brief, unit of prose,and have some fun at the same time. Check out her web sites and blogs for Latin proverbs, anecdotes, and other fun stuff.

When reading Latin online in snippets of time, I need a quick way to look up words and get a no-frills definition. For this I use

Whitaker's Words. You can run this as a free Windows/Mac/Linux local application, called WORDS(on a PC it runs like a DOS

program), access it online, or use the interface to it that is part of Thomas McCarthy's Legible Latin(also free). Whitaker's Words isboth Latin-to-English and English-to-Latin, it operates on any form of the word you enter (such as a particular declension or

conjugation), and it compiles its ~39,000 words from medieval as well as classical sources.

But the Mother Lode of vocabulary for me has been Comenius.

How I Learned to Love Comenius

Possibly you've heard of Comenius, especially if you've explored the LATINUM podcast. Possibly not, since Comenius was a nativeMoravian from the first half of the seventeenth century, known mostly for his "didactic" works on education, so why would you have?

"Comenius": Fun (like my daily Aesop's fable)? Hardly. Easy? Hardly. Profitable? Quite ... with some caveats. Let me start with the

caveats:

1. The relevant writings are hard to find and, with one significant exception, without an available English translation2. You can waste a whole lot of time, I mean A WHOLE LOT OF TIME, establishing a personal "Comenius curriculum"

3. The writings are dull - at least that will be the judgment of many

For those who are not already scared off, my purpose in what follows is to leverage my experience in order to minimize these obstaclesfor you and help you leverage Comenius to beef up your Latin vocabulary.
http://bestlatin.blogspot.com/http://millefabulae.blogspot.com/2010/10/illustrated-dives-et-praeficae.htmlhttp://users.erols.com/whitaker/words.htmhttp://users.erols.com/whitaker/words.htmhttp://archives.nd.edu/words.htmlhttp://perlingua.com/LatinHome/Legible/http://perlingua.com/LatinHome/Legible/http://bestlatin.blogspot.com/http://millefabulae.blogspot.com/2010/10/illustrated-dives-et-praeficae.htmlhttp://users.erols.com/whitaker/words.htmhttp://archives.nd.edu/words.htmlhttp://perlingua.com/LatinHome/Legible/


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I won't say much about Comenius himself. There's of course a Wikipedia article. One of Comenius's best known works (though not

one of the works of interest here for vocabulary building) is theDidactica Magna, or "Great Didactic." You can find on Google Books

an 1896 English translation by M. W. Keatinge that has an excellent, contemporary sounding, sympathetic but also criticalbiographical introduction that puts all of Comenius's writings in chronological and historical perspective. In fact later I will quote someof Keatinge's judgments.

Comenius was an educational theorist. Latin still played a major role in the European schooling of his time, and sound training in Latin

as well as in one's native language were critically important in Comenius's educational theories. However, according to Comenius, the

way Latin was taught to young students amounted to a form of torture. To enable the practical implementation of his theories, as wellas to earn a living while in exile, and to make learning Latin effective and fun (he thought), Comenius wrote a number of Latin

textbooks over the years, beginning in 1631 with theJanua Linguarum Reserata ('The door, or gateway, to languages, unlocked"),which catapulted him to fame throughout Europe, and culminating in 1658 with the Orbis Sensualium Pictus ("The world of things

perceived by the senses, illustrated"), which instantly and for several centuries, into the beginning of the nineteenth century, remainedan enormously popular textbook.

All this would undoubtedly be of no interest if Millner hadn't beginning in 2008 started reading some of Comenius's Latin texts onLATINUM, astutely seizing on Google Books' and and others' incipient digitization of non-copyrighted books from previous centuries.

Orbis Sensualium Pictus

So let me stop here and make a recommendation: Start with Orbis Sensualium Pictus. This can be a long slog - see further below - andone I'm not finished with yet myself. But as I said, for me it's been the Mother Lode of object vocabulary (the vocabulary of interest

definitely includes verbs but is mostly the names of things, that is, nouns). Get somewhere with Orbis, then see how you can build onit with the rest of Comenius. Let me help, beginning with a brief description of the Orbis Sensualium Pictus.

As I wrote above,Janua Linguarum Reserata catapulted Comenius to fame. After some experience with it, Comenius concludedJanua was too difficult a starting point for beginning students, so he wrote a number of preparatory textbooks, culminating in Orbis.

Depending on whom you listen to, Orbis was either the very first illustrated children's textbook or one of the first. TheJanua hadattempted to present students virtually all human knowledge of the time, in a condensed form, in both the vernacular and in Latin. The

subject matter was arranged in a sort of taxonomic sequence over 100 chapters, each chapter being a brief essay standalone objectlesson - God, the world, the four elements, the human body, botany, animals, agriculture, trades, societal institutions, religions, etc. As
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Amos_Comeniushttp://books.google.com/books?id=sE9MAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=comenius+the+great+didactic&hl=en&ei=4KSDTsiADsTC0AG81OicAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Amos_Comeniushttp://books.google.com/books?id=sE9MAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=comenius+the+great+didactic&hl=en&ei=4KSDTsiADsTC0AG81OicAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false


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for the Orbis: "Imagine the Janua Linguarum considerably shortened, simplified, and illustrated, and you have before you the Orbis

Pictus" (Keatinge). Nouns in the text and objects in the illustration are cross-referenced with a number. As intended, editions ofOrbis

were published in many different vernaculars, including English.

A year after its inaugural publication in 1658, Orbis was translated into English by Charles Hoole. The first edition with two-column,side-by-side English and Latin was 1727. The twelfth and last English edition with the Hoole translation was in 1777: twelfth Hoole

English edition on Google Books, and twelfth Hoole English edition in print on Amazon. The twelfth English edition was reprinted inAmerica in 1810: American printing of twelfth Hoole edition on Google Books. I bought the 1810 American edition in print on

Amazon over a year ago but no longer find it on Amazon or elsewhere. There are also other editions out there, but Millner reads from

the 1810 Hoole, and I'm assuming (and recommending) one of your methods for memorizing the vocabulary will be repeated listeningto Millner's reading. Millner's second and most recent reading of the entire Orbis, Latin only, is August, 2011.

(The only differences between the 1777 English and 1810 American editions I can detect are (1) the pictures are different, though not

radically so, and (2) the 1777 edition treats Sphera caelestis andPlanetarum Aspectus both as chapter CVI, whereas the 1810 breaks

offPlanetarum Aspectus into a new chapter, so from that point forward it misleadingly appears as if the 1777 edition has one fewerchapters.)

(For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that in 04/2009 Millner recorded from an available scan of a 1790 Leipzig variation

on Orbis Pictus calledDer Kleine Lateiner.)

You've got Orbis on Google Books and Millner's reading of it on LATINUM for free, so give it a shot. It's got something like 5,000

words, some percentage of which you don't know, so don't kid yourself, it will take you a long time, I would say measured in months,to master its entire vocabulary. For me, the journey has had its bumps. Here's a few observations from my experience:

I like using the printed edition, so I can make notes in the margins, but see the third bullet

My approach is to read and re-read a sequence of topically related chapters, take note of the new vocabulary, make sure I

understand the Latin, then start listening to Millner for those chapters

The illustrations (originally woodcuts) are not to our level of graphic sophistication and resolution. Often in the printed book I

can't make out all the cross-referenced numbers. As a result, I initially dismissed the value of the illustrations. But after a duh,

the light bulb goes on moment of remembering that in the .pdf version I could zoom in to any scale I needed, I startedenthusiastically incorporating the illustrations into my approach. There's no doubt that associating a word with a picture is a
http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC27390661&id=pxkaVd0-bpgC&pg=RA3-PA1&lpg=RA3-PA1&dq=inauthor:Comenius&as_brr=1#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC27390661&id=pxkaVd0-bpgC&pg=RA3-PA1&lpg=RA3-PA1&dq=inauthor:Comenius&as_brr=1#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttp://www.amazon.com/Joh-Comenii-Orbis-Sensualium-Pictus/dp/B004QOA8S0/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317301709&sr=1-1http://books.google.com/books?id=yp8AAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Comenius+Orbis+Sensualium+Pictus&hl=en&ei=12SETujMHMHosQL3n6jTDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC27390661&id=pxkaVd0-bpgC&pg=RA3-PA1&lpg=RA3-PA1&dq=inauthor:Comenius&as_brr=1#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC27390661&id=pxkaVd0-bpgC&pg=RA3-PA1&lpg=RA3-PA1&dq=inauthor:Comenius&as_brr=1#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttp://www.amazon.com/Joh-Comenii-Orbis-Sensualium-Pictus/dp/B004QOA8S0/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317301709&sr=1-1http://books.google.com/books?id=yp8AAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Comenius+Orbis+Sensualium+Pictus&hl=en&ei=12SETujMHMHosQL3n6jTDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false


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valuable mnemonic device even for an adult. I've even taken to using my screen-capture software to take a screenshot of the

picture at 300% scale in Adobe, paste it into a blank PowerPoint page, and use the picture and its numbered objects to try to

reconstruct the text from memory. (My wife has a lot more taste than I do and is a devotee of English literature. She thinks the

illustrations are actually quite well done and finds them a fascinating view into the life of the age, so she's also opened my mindand eyes regarding the illustrations.)

I have a stubborn compulsion to look up, in Cassell's or the Oxford Latin Dictionary, every word I don't know. I like to see the

etymology, read the example quotes, gauge the frequency and period of its use, etc. With Orbis, I've had to curb this habit, as Icame to realize I was otherwise never going to get through it

o As a corollary to the last point, I got discouraged from time to time as a not insignificant number of words I could not

even find in the OLD, which means you're not going to find them in a classical author. Comenius was using what wewould call the "live Latin" of his day to teach about the world of his day, so this is inevitable. At a certain point I had to

make a conscious decision to not get hung up about this and to just "shut up and learn the book"

In reading Orbis, I've had to overcome my own narrow-mindedness and ignorance and let Comenius take me to school. I am

very much a mus urbanus, so by inclination I'm not very interested in the fine distinctions of different types of grain or parts of

a plough. My interest in seventeenth century trades only goes so far (and these comprise a good number of the chapters), nor ismy interest in antiquity first and foremost antiquarian. But then something interesting happened on the way to the forum (or I

should say on my way to the Janua). I reminded myself that Comenius intended with these textbooks to teach young studentsfirst about the world itself, in its non-abstract particulars, then how to speak about them in the vernacular, then in Latin. He did

not think learning words about things you don't understand was worthwhile, much less an effective way to learn the words. And

I began to ask myself: Am I, a technologically sophisticated and highly specialized adult citizen of the twenty-first century,going to be outdone by a ten-year old rustic lad from the mid-seventeenth century?! Yet I'm the one who's ignorant here! And

so I started veering off on some interesting internet excursions to learn something de rebus ipsis (does anyone want to see somelovely photos showing the difference between an ear of wheat with awnes and a paniculated cluster of oats?) So my approach

for mastering Orbis now incorporates the printed book, the .pdf, some software tools, and a search engine

The Hoole translation, which carried through all the English-language editions, was done in 1659. So of course sometimes I

have to look up the English word. Not an issue. And since I'm doing this to learn Latin, I have no issue with the, to our ears,quaint or antiquated sound of the English; to the contrary, I rather enjoy it


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Finally let me say that, with repeated reading, I have come more and more to appreciate Comenius's artistry. While the 150+

object lessons as a whole are a lot to get through, each individual object lesson is a marvel in how to pack a lot of information(vocabulary) into a few words. There is exquisite judgment about what to include, what not. The sentences and grammar are

extremely simple but artfully varied so as not to be monotonous. Many of these chapters are little gems

The Rest of Comenius

So again, if you think you might be interested in using Comenius to beef up your Latin vocabulary, my recommendation is, start with

Orbis Pictus, then, based on your experience with that, explore what else there is. The remainder of this post is to save you some time

figuring out what that rest is.

Due to religious conflicts, Comenius spent most of his adult life in exile in various places in Europe. In 1657, when he was sixty-five

years old, all his didactic works to date (as distinct from his theological writings) were published in Amsterdam - the Opera DidacticaOmnia (ODO). The four ODO volumes correspond to the different periods and locations of his exile. And among the didactic works

are the Latin textbooks of interest to us here, for purposes of building Latin vocabulary (you may or may not develop a broader interest

in Comenius, who was a major figure in modernizing education).

Are these writings (besides Orbis) accessible to us? First, yes, a few so far have been scanned by Google Books and similar services.But nothing yet with English translations, at least that I have seen. So there is an issue of, do I have to know Latin well enough to read

Comenius in order to learn Latin. Second, the University of Mannheim's CAMENA project, which is digitizing Latin books from theearly modern era, has put the ODO on the internet. Furthermore, the CAMENA site presents not just a scanned copy of the 1657 book

(whose font requires a little practice) but also a transcription of the text in both HTML and XML. And from your browser you can save

the HTML into a variety of formats, which you can then edit and print to your heart's delight. (NB: The HTML transcription has a fairnumber of spelling errors.)

You'll want to take a little time to learn to navigate the CAMENA site. Go to the ODO page whose link I provided. You'll see a Pars I,

II, III, and IV corresponding to the four ODO volumes. For each Part, clicking on "Titel" takes you to the scan of the title page of that

volume. On the scan rendering page are left and right arrow buttons for navigating backwards and forwards a page at a time throughthe scan. Back on the first page, clicking on "Conspectus operis" for each Part takes you to an HTML page giving the table of contents

for that volume. For each work in the toc, there is both a link to its starting page in the scan and a link to its starting point in the HTML
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/camenaref/comenius.htmlhttp://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/camenaref/comenius.html


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transcript.

To navigate the toc, it doesn't hurt to have a casual acquaintance with the titles of Comenius's works. You can get that from many

places, including an appendix in the M. W. Keatinge 1896 English translation of the "Great Didactic," which I linked you to way backup there somewhere.

Once you can navigate the ODO, you have to know which works are of primary interest for vocabulary building. I will describe theseand then tabulate them below. In sum, the works of interest for vocabulary building are the Vestibulum (the vestibule to the gateway of

languages), theJanua (the gateway), theAtrium, and the Lexicon and Grammatica associated with each level. Once you have mastered

theAtrium, you are ready for the Palatium, which is the classical authors themselves.

You also need to know that some of these works exist in multiple versions. After the runaway success of the firstJanua, Comenius,realizing he needed a more elementary starting point for Latin beginners, wrote the Vestibulum. Partly self-motivated, but mostly due

to the demands of his different patrons, Comenius over the years then produced other versions of the Vestibulum and theJanua as well

as theAtrium and the associated lexicons and grammars.

What is the nature of these textbooks? First, the Vestibulum, Orbis Pictus, andJanua were designed to be bilingual. Unfortunately, ifthere ever were English-Latin versions of the Vestibulum orJanua, none of have been scanned yet to my knowledge. By the time you

were qualified to be in the Atrium, you were expected to use Latin to build on your Latin.

Second, as we already indicated in describing the Orbis Pictus, the firstJanua established for all the future textbooks the Comenian

taxonomy or organization of universal knowledge. The Vestibulum and Orbis are more elementary versions, theAtrium a more ornatetreatment, of more or less the same topics. So if you've mastered the Orbis, you can go through (literally and figuratively) the

Vestibulum rather quickly (there are two very different versions of the Vestibulum - see the tables below) and then explore theexpanded treatment of these topics in theJanua (also two versions) and finally theAtrium.

Millner has recorded portions of some of these works. I imagine he is constrained by the unavailability of scanned English editions andby the sheer length of most of these works. Recently he has vowed to put on LATINUM complete "audio books" only (that is, only

works read in their entirety, Comenius or otherwise). As part of this resolution, in addition to his re-recording ofOrbis, he has re-recorded the first Vestibulum in its entirety, in English and Latin and in Latin only (the English I believe being his own translation).

Look and hope for more to come.


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The following tables, arranged by the periods of exile and corresponding volumes in the ODO, tabulate the Latin textbooks of interest

for vocabulary building. The full title provides additional insight into the nature and intended purpose of the work. In the first column I

use parentheses to indicate works that are contextually relevant as well as works that are discussed but not printed in their entirety in

the ODO itself. I've also indicated which works Millner has recorded to date.

Table 1. Lissa is the old German name for the modern-day town of Leszno in Poland. Pars I of the ODO collects the didactic works

from the "Lissa period," 1627 - 1642.

ODO Pars I (Lissa period, 1627 - 1642)

Work Full Title Description Other Scans LATINUM

Janua

Janua Linguarum

Reserata. Sive

SeminariumLinguarum et

ScientiarumOmnium.

~ 8000 of the most common Latin

words written out in 1000

sentences grouped into 100 topicsof universal knowledge. By design,

none of the words (particlesexcepted) are repeated.

Several bi- and multi-lingual

editions (sometimes with the titleJanua aurea reserata) but none in

English yet. If you're also studying

ancient Greek, you may want tocheck out the Latin-Greek and

Latin-Greek-French editions ofTheodor Simon, though

deciphering the Greek calligraphy

is a project unto itself.

Vestibulum

Januae LinguarumReserataeVestibulum, quo

Primus ad Latinam

Linguam aditusTironibus paratur.

427 elementary sentences using the

1,000 most common words

On europeana.eu you will findseveral scans of a Latin-Hungarian

edition. Millner uses this for theLatin text. The text varies slightly

from that in ODO.

08/2011 re-recorded in itsentirety, first in

Latin and

English, thenLatin only


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(Proplasma)

De AstruendoComenianae Januae

Latinitatis Templo,Epistola: Cum

Proplasmate Liminis,

Atrii, Odei, Adyti, InTitulo De Igne

Efformati

A David Bechner had been

working on a Viridarium Linguae

Latinae, an expanded version of the

Janua. Beating the architecturalmetaphor to death, his plan was toadd on a Threshold before, and an

Atrium, Grand Hall, and InnermostSanctuary after each topic in the

Janua. Printed in the ODO is

Bechner's letter to Comeniusexplaining his scheme, why he had

not been able to realize it yet, butwith a blueprint (proplasma) using

theDe Igne topic in the Janua ashis example. The proplasma makes

for amusing reading.

(It should be noted that in 02/2008 Millner recorded from an available scan a 1717 Leipzig variation on the Vestibulum called theVestibulum Maius.)

Table 2. Elbing is the German-Prussian name for the modern-day town of Elblag in modern-day Poland. Pars II of the ODO collects

the didactic works from the "Elbing period," 1642 - 1650. In this period, Comenius lived in Elbing while revising his textbooks for a

Swedish patron, hence the "Elbing period" is aka the "Swedish period."

ODO Pars II (Elbing period, 1642 - 1650)

Work Full Title DescriptionOther

ScansLATINUM


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(Methodus)Novissima LinguarumMethodus

As a theoretical foundation for the new versions

of his Latin textbooks that Comenius wrote forhis Swedish patron, he wrote a lengthy "brand

new method." You can see this reflected in thefull name of the textbooks. Chapters 14 - 17 ofthe method delineate the Vestibulum, Janua,

Atrium, and Thesaurus as they should be inconformance to this new method.

(Vestibulum)

Vestibulum Latinae Linguae

Rerum et Linguae cardinesexhibens (ad leges Methodi

Linguarum Novissimaeconcinnatum). Vor-Tr derLateinischen Sprache.

In the ODO, Comenius only provides a preface

and the first chapter, in Latin and German, to thisversion of the Vestibulum, referring the reader to

the third and in his estimation improved"Hungary" version published in Part III of theODO.

(Janua)

Latinae Linguae Janua

Reserata, Rerum et Linguae

Structuram exhibens ordinenativo. (ad leges Methodi

Linguarum novissimae). Dieoffene Tr der Lateinishen

Sprach.

Same as for Vestibulum.

Grammatica Januae Linguarum novissimaeClavis, Grammatica, Latino-

Vernacula.

Comenius had concluded this Grammar was overthe heads of students and so had created a more

concise student grammar for the "Hungary"textbooks, but he still included this fuller

grammar here in the ODO as of interest to

04/2009 Leaves offat the fourth

declension withinchapter 24, out of

76 chapters


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teachers. Appended to the Grammar are an

extensive set of footnotes (Annotationes).

(Lexicon

Januale)

(De Lexico Januali Latino-

Germanico.)

Comenius doesn't reproduce the Lexicon Janualehere, since it had been published in Frankfurt the

year prior and is quite lengthy. (He also came tobelieve it was too prolix for students, and he

rewrote a more concise version for the Hungary

textbooks.) But believing it to be of interest, hedoes publish in the ODO the 'Postfatio' to the

Lexicon.

(Atrium)

Comenius had also produced an Atrium for theSwedish textbooks, but events in his life hadretarded its publication, so it is also deferred to

Part III of the ODO.

Table 3. Comenius spent the years 1650 - 1654 in Sarospatak in Hungary, setting up a new school for a patron there and producing yet

another version of the Latin textbooks. This is the "Hungary period," aka the "Sarospatak period."

ODO Pars III (Hungary period, 1650 - 1654)

Work Full Title Description Other Scans LATINUM

Vestibulum Eruditionis Scholasticae Pars

Prima, Vestibulum, Rerum et

Linguarum fundamentaexhibens.

Really a completely different work

from the original Vestibulum. It is

essentially just a list of all thewords in the Janua, and hence is


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also much lengthier than the

original Vestibulum. It follows thetaxonomic order of the Janua and

will look very familiar to someonewho has studied the Orbis Pictus.

+Rudimenta

GrammaticaeRudimenta Grammaticae.

A short, elementary grammar

appended to the Vestibulum.

02/2010 In its entirety

(except the final chapter

XII, which wouldn'tmake much sense to

record)

+Word index

to theVestibulum

Reportorium Vestibulare. Sive

Lexici Latini Rudimentum.

A word index to the Vestibulum,which the young student could useto practice vocabulary (and locate

the word in the text if he didn'tknow it) and to behold the

foundation for a more complete

lexicon.

(+associated

writings)

Associated writings that give

Comenius's advice on, for

example, the creation of studentexercises to be used in conjunction

with teaching the Vestibulum, andon the proper

formation of the vernacularcounterpart to the Latin of the

Vestibulum.


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JanuaEruditionis Scholasticae ParsII. Rerum et LinguarumStructuram externam exhibens.

Comenius's "extraordinary

proposal" (Keatinge - he didn'tmean it in a good way) was for the

student entering the Janual class toread and absorb the LexiconJanuale first, then the Grammatica

Janualis, and only then the Januaitself. Hence they are printed in

that order in the ODO.

+Lexicon

Januale

Sylva Latinae Linguae, Vocum

derivatarum copiam explicens:Sive Lexicon Januale.

In the original publication therewere corresponding definitions in

Hungarian, but they are not printed

in the ODO. See further below inthe blog text about the Comenius

Lexicon Project.

+GrammaticaJanualis

Grammatica Janualis.

Continens Residuum

Grammaticae Vestibularis.

Comenius believed this version,

considerably trimmed down fromthe original Grammar, much better

for students.

11/2010 The first five of

fifteen chapters. (Thegrammar is arranged by

seven elements ofspeech. The first five

chapters cover letters,syllables, words in

general, and nouns.)

+Janua (text) Janualis Rerum et VerborumContextus, Historiolam rerum

continens.

The text of the Janua. Still 1,000sentences distributed across 100

themes, but much lengthier than

03/2010 Lesson 3("Aether cum Astris"),

English and Latin


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the original Janua. Unlike theoriginal Janua, Comenius allowed

words to repeat, in differentcontexts.

10/2010 Lesson 1("Introitus"), English

and Latin, and Latinonly

Atrium

Eruditionis Scholasticae Pars

III. Rerum et Linguarum

Ornamenta exhibens.

The student is now in Latin-only

mode. The Atrium introduces the

element of style.

+Grammaticaelegans

Ars Oratoria, Sive Grammaticaelegans.

Instruction on expressing the samethought variously, applying the

nine stylistic devices of oratory.Examples are given of how theIntroitus to the Janua can be

rewritten in the different styles.

+Atrium (text)Latinae Linguae Atrium,Rerum Historiam elegantiori

exornatam stylo exhibens.

The Janua rewritten, elegantly.

+(Lexicon

atriale)

Lexicon Januale Latino-Latinum, Simplices et nativasrerum nomenclationes, Janua

Linguae Latinae iam notas, in

elegantes varie commutaredocens.

The atrial lexicon is Latin - Latin.

This Lexicon was not published inHungary nor in the ODO, but

separately (like the ODO, inAmsterdam in 1657). See further

below in the blog text about theComenius Lexicon Project.

TheAmsterdam

edition isavailable from

Google Books


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(Orbis Pictus)

Orbis Sensualium Pictus. Hocest, Omnium fundamentalium

in Mundo rerum, et in Vitaactionum, Nomenclatura, adocularem Demonstrationem

deducta. Ut sit Vestibuli etJanuae Linguarum Lucidarium.

In the ODO, Comenius explains

what the Orbis Sensualium Pictusis, but that he hadn't been able to

get it published yet due to thedifficulty of finding a properlyskilled engraver. It was not printed

while Comenius was in Hungary orbefore the ODO, but a year later

(1658).

Part IV of the ODO contains writings from Amsterdam from 1654 - 1657, when the ODO was published. Part IV contains no works ofinterest for our purposes.

In conclusion, once you've mastered the Orbis Pictus, a personal Comenius curriculum might be something like this:

Read the Lissa period (ODO Pars I) Vestibulum and listen to Millner's new recording of it

Read the Hungary period (ODO Pars III) Vestibulum. You won't find much you don't already know from the Orbis, but you can

use it as a way to gauge how well you learned the Orbis vocabulary

Familiarize yourself with the Comenius Lexicon Project (see below) and incorporate the lexica into your studies of the Janua

andAtrium

Study theJanua, the Lissa and/or Hungary versions. If Millner were to record a substantial portion of either (which would be

quite an undertaking), I'd certainly go with that version. Until then, I've been working with the first, Lissa version simplybecause of Keatinge's judgment that "The [Hungary] classbooks, with the exception of the grammars for the Vestibulum and

the Janua, were all inferior to the previous editions published in Lissa. In his effort to be scientific Comenius fell into the verytrap that he wished to avoid, and became complicated and tedious."

Read and listen to Millner's recording of the HungaryRudimenta Grammaticae, which is brief and easy and a good way to start

thinking about Latin grammar in Latin


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Follow up by reading the Hungary Grammatica Janualis (Keatinge's judgment: "The grammar, if not quite a model, from the

modern standpoint, is yet extremely good. It is far shorter than that written in Elbing, and the rules are terse and to the point.")

If you're not screaming "no ms no ms" by now, try your hand at the Hungary Atrium. Read the Grammatica elegans and the

examples applied to theIntroitus of theJanua sufficiently to get the idea of the nine devices for stylistic variation, then read themore stylizedJanua that is theAtrium

The Comenius Lexicon Project

You saw in Table 3 that the HungaryLexicon Januale is printed in the ODO and available on the CAMENA site both in the book scanand in the transcribed HTML text. You also saw that theLexicon Atriale Latino-Latinum, while produced during the Hungary period,

was not published in the ODO but in a separate publication that is available on Google Books.

The definitions in these lexicons are in Latin only. That is by design in the case of theLexicon Atriale Latino-Latinum. The originalpublication of theLexicon Januale was in both Hungarian and Latin, but the Hungarian is omitted in the ODO. The "definitions" arealso not dictionary definitions as we think of them (though they are in alphabetical order). Lexicon Januale is organized by Latin roots.

For each root, given in upper case, the lexical entry typically gives various words in different parts of speech derived from this root,and an example or two illustrating the the primary sense or usage. For example, the definition of acervus ("heap"):

ACERV -us est, ubi res variae -antur -atim:praesertim -us frumenti. Sed disputatorco-at argumenta in -alem Syllogismum.

The purpose of theAtrium is to demonstrate the application of style and variation to the plain expressions of theJanua. Accordingly,

the purpose of theLexicon Atriale is to give the student, for a given Latin word, similar or analogous phrases from actual authors (not

always classical), to help keep the student within the bounds of demonstrated usage and taste, as he tries his hand at eloquence. Thedefinition ofacervus in the atrial lexicon is:

Acervus] Turba voluminum: Chorus virtutum, Cic. Strues lignorum,Liv. Strues malorum.Nav. apud Serv. Silva rerum. Quint. Agmen

aquarum, Virg. Glomeramen.Lucr. Torus graminis,Apul. Quis fons? Quis torrens verborum?Eras.

(The late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries produced some very worthwhile compilations of Latin synonyms, many available onGoogle Books and in print on Amazon. Most seem to go back to two sources: (1) M. Gardin Dumesnil's 1777 Synonymes Latin, et leur
http://books.google.com/books?id=cVQTAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Comenius+lexicon+atriale&hl=en&ei=T22HTrG0IYPf0QGqwq3HDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEoQ6AEwBjgK#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttp://books.google.com/books?id=cVQTAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Comenius+lexicon+atriale&hl=en&ei=T22HTrG0IYPf0QGqwq3HDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEoQ6AEwBjgK#v=onepage&q&f=false


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diffrentes significations, avec des Exemples tirs des meilleurs Auteurs. You can find the original and several editions of an English

translation by J. M. Gosset. (2) Ludwig Dderlein'sHandbuch der lateinischen Synonymik, first ed. 1839, second 1849. You can find

the originals and several editions of an English translation by Henry Hamilton Arnold. As an example, check their entries for acervus.)

Because the definitions in Comenius's lexicons are in Latin, they can be instructive, reinforcing, and sometimes quite clever and

amusing, even when you already know the English definition of the word. They are a useful read unto themselves. But in any case ifyou are unsure of a word when reading theJanua orAtrium, in theory you should consult the Comenian lexica first. However, this

could be slow to the point of being impractical.

TheComenius Lexicon Project is an effort to digitize these two lexicons, in order to make them easier to search and to manipulate with

software tools. I believe the project is the inspiration of Laura Gibbs collaborating with Evan Millner, but I am not a participant in theproject and only know what I can infer from scrutinizing the site.

The site has digitized the janual lexicon by simply pasting in the previously transcribed HTML from the CAMENA site. However,they have one remaining task. The CAMENA transcription preserves Comenius's format, which uses dashes that must be mentally

replaced by the reader (or written out as a student exercise) with the upper case root. Because of the dashes, you won't find a hitsearching the transcribed text on "acervus". So the remaining task is to reformat the entries. Millner did this for the first several 'A'

entries, by way of example:

ACERVus est, ubi res variae ACERVantur ACERVatim:praesertim ACERVus frumenti. Sed disputatorcoACERVat argumenta inACERValem Syllogismum.

The digitization of theLexicon Atriale Latino-Latinum begins with the much more tedious process of first doing the manual

transcription, then formatting, an obviously error-prone process that then requires meticulous proofreading to guarantee the integrity ofthe result. The end result is simply a digitized version of, for example, the book's entry foracervus shown above.

These transcribing, formatting, and proofreading tasks are being done by qualified volunteers. For the atrial lexicon they are up to theletter 'I,' and it looks like the process may have stalled, and if so, understandably.

In any case, this should suggest how you might incorporate the two lexica (three, if you count the word index to the HungaryVestibulum) into your personal Comenius curriculum.
http://comlex.pbworks.com/w/page/9977069/FrontPagehttp://comlex.pbworks.com/w/page/9977069/FrontPagehttp://comlex.pbworks.com/w/page/9977069/FrontPage


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Good luck, hope this helped.

Randy

beefing up your latin vocabulary

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