WHEELOCK'S LATIN:
THE MUSICAL!

a website for the falling behind - by irony
it'll look good at 800 by 600, and pretty much like shite at anything else.


Latin is complicated. Damn complicated. My mother likes to tell me how much she enjoyed Latin in high school, and this figures, as my mother - like most people's mothers - is a control freak. Those of us less obsessed with the details may not find Latin quite so much fun; there are rules, formulae, and exceptions for everything, and it's bloody hard to remember it all. You can just picture poor Cicero sweating over Against Cataline, going 'oops... 'greedy' didn't agreed with 'bastard' in case there!'

In the hopes of helping all my fellow poor suffering Latin students who are desperately trying to cram all this stuff into their already overloaded brains, herein is my attempt to reduce Frederic M. Wheelock's opus into a series of nursery rhymes. There's not much I can do for you in the vocabulary department, but for what it's worth, here's the grammar. I hope it's helpful.


CHAPTERS

  1. CHAPTER ONE
    Verbs; First and Second Conjugations: Present Infinitive, Indicative, and Imperative Active; Translating


  2. CHAPTER TWO
    Nouns and Cases; First Declension; Agreement of Adjectives; Syntax


  3. CHAPTER THREE
    Second Declension: Masculine Nouns and Adjectives; Apposition; Word Order


  4. CHAPTER FOUR
    Second declension Neuters, Adjectives; Present Indicative of Sum; Predicate Nouns and Adjectives, Substantive Adjectives


  5. CHAPTER FIVE
    First and Second Conjugations: Future and Imperfect; Adjectives in -er


  6. CHAPTER SIX
    Future and Imperfect Indicatives; Possum: Present, Future, and Imperfect Indicative; Complementary Infinitive


  7. CHAPTER SEVEN
    Third Declension Nouns


  8. CHAPTER EIGHT
    Third Conjugation: Present Infinitive, Present, Future, and Imperfect Indicative, Imperative


  9. CHAPTER NINE
    Demonstratives Hic, Ille, Iste; Special -ius Adjectives


  10. CHAPTER TEN
    Fourth Conjucation and -io Verbs of the Third


  11. CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Personal Pronouns Ego, Tu, and Is; Demonstratives Is and Idem


  12. CHAPTER TWELVE
    Perfect Active System of All Verbs
As I work through my own Latin studies, I will add more chapters. Sorry, you don't get to know anything I don't know.


Incidentally, Dan Quayle wasn't entirely incorrect - learning Latin has a spooky effect on your ability to comprehend the Romance languages; French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. A linguist from Mars might in fact considere these four dialects of Latin rather than seperate languages. After six weeks of Latin, I found I could suddenly understand Josh Groban. That was weird.