After my honeymoon in Italy, I surprised myself by getting really into Roman history. Feeding my new interest at that time was pretty simple—I opened up Duolingo and started teaching myself Latin. Then, Duolingo went all in on AI, and I broke my streak. Instead of giving up on Latin, I remembered that for a really long time, people learned new languages without the use of apps. I grabbed a copy of Lingua Latina per se Illustrata, and I may not have a streak, but my self-imposed Latin lessons are so pleasurable.
Lingua Latina is written entirely in Latin. Every part of it, including the copyright information. On the very first page you’re presented with a labeled map and a series of Latin sentences: “Roma in Italia est.” From there, you can easily translate and understand basic Latin sentences and vocabulary by matching the words and the images. In each new section of the book, you’re introduced to new grammatical concepts and vocabulary, all accompanied by diagrams, so you can start thinking in Latin rather than just translating. It’s helpful that Latin is one of the bases of English and all romance languages—a lot of the words are the same or similar to the romance languages I am familiar with.
I don’t have a lot of time for teaching myself Latin, but I know that by reading (and sometimes rereading) chapters in Lingua Latina, learning this language feels very doable—and it’s also really fun. My progress isn’t marked by how frequently I return to an app, but by how many pages of this book I can read. Each time I read a section of Lingua Latina and understand it, I feel a sense of accomplishment that Duolingo never gave me. I also grabbed a few supplemental texts (the vocab accompaniment for Lingua Latina and Wheelock’s Latin textbook, in case I wanted to go further in-depth in my study), but genuinely, taking an hour once a week to try to read a new section makes me feel like I’ve learned and retained more Latin than daily Duolingo exercises.
What made Duolingo valuable to me was that I was feeling like I was always practicing and learning. But even after several months of daily Latin study, I didn’t feel like I was gaining any mastery over it. I was more dependent on the app than I wanted to be—I was more performing the act of studying than I was getting new knowledge to penetrate my skull. I think Duolingo’s AI pivot really cemented that for me. People have learned new languages without the use of apps for most of human history. Wheelock’s Latin was written in 1946; Lingua Latina was first published in the 1990s. Duolingo’s priority is not pedagogy, but getting people to use their app and make as much profit from that as they possibly can.
My progress is slower by reading a book, but that’s mostly because I am just a busy person. I can actually retain more Latin vocabulary just by reading this book than by the fifteen minutes of daily practice that Duolingo offered. I was learning the app more than I was learning the language. Sometimes, the old ways are best.
