LATINUM PUBLICATONS est 2006
Latinum Publications is spread across three sites:
Latinum Publications TEXT BASED LANGUAGE COURSES here at substack, latinum.substack.com/index where the focus is on written language learning courses: many for Latin, including specialised latin courses for medicine, law and science. Church Latin has its own course, as does Classical Latin. Our latin stories section contains short form and long form (novels) Latin fiction. Some fiction is published here at present, but after January 2026 new fiction will be published at our sister site Latinum Books, including our Latin language long form fiction.
patreon.com/latinum for our AUDIO course material, a huge catalogue built up painstakingly the old fashioned way since 2006. The index for all the audio is at latinum.org.uk
Latinum Books FREE BOOK AND NOVELS
Books and novels are published at our sister site Latinum Books https://www.patreon.com/cw/LatinumBooks
The books are free to read. If you want to download them as pdf, then you will need a paid subscription.
Subscribe to get full access to the occasional newsletter and publication archives. The substack is updated frequently: Latinum does often not send out emails with each publication, so your inbox will not be bombarded.
WHERE DO I FIND THE COURSES?
There is an index at latinum.substack.com/index
(On the app sections are not visible, and so I cannot recommend the app for using the individual courses. Use your browser for accessing the courses, or bookmark this page for easy reference).
DEVELOPMENT
Each language lesson is unique and self-contained. We have adapted the system over many years, developing it to rapidly get you independently reading with understanding. With constant reading of these lessons and texts, you will quickly and, more importantly, enjoyably, develop your language reading skills, and build a large vocabulary.
OUR LEARNING SYSTEM
Some History
The language reading lessons you see here are based on a system that was promoted by the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke (author of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and Two Treatises of Government). Similar systems were used in English editions of John Amos Comenius, Desiderius Erasmus and Mathurin Corderius. However, their production was difficult, requiring a specialised linguistic facility to make an effective construed text, and also typesetting of these specialised texts was expensive, and so few were made.
James Hamilton and his son-in-law Hamilton were the last publishers in a long line, stretching back to hoary antiquity using this remarkable method for teaching languages, based around studying texts with glosses and interlinear translations. For example, the medieval manuscript of the Rule of St Benet contains interlinear versions in Anglo-Saxon. This method was used for well over a thousand years.
John Amos Comenius (seventeenth century) and the philosopher John Locke in the eighteenth century were strong advocates of this system of teaching language though text, by reading. By the early twentieth century the method had disappeared from educational establishments, and even from private instruction.
Even today, almost no students of the classics or language study use this method, despite its evident success as a practical system. The lingustic purists of the late 1800’s did not like the deformities created by the construed (interleaved/alternating languages) textual method. However, as John Locke, the father of empiricism would have said, ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’ - if the system works - and it does - then ideology should play no role.
NEW PUBLICATIONS
The Latinum Institute has long wanted to make modern versions of various language texts using this method - and now, with the advent of artificial intelligence systems, a task that would would be horrendously expensive and time consuming can be done. Training the systems to carry out this work without error was not easy at all. We commenced intensive AI training in March 2023, and only now, after much effort and trial and error, in the final month of 2024, are we confident in the ability of the systems to perform. Even with assistance making the lessons takes much time: yet we do not charge. If you want to subscribe as a paid supporter, please do.
Join the crew on a linguistic voyage of discovery
Be part of a community of people who share your interests. Participate in the comments section, or please support The Latinum Institute with a subscription. (Some of my readers here already subscribe to Latinum at Patreon, where the audio materials for Latin are hosted, and of course we don’t expect you to subscribe twice for our language lessons. )
FREE BOOK AND NOVELS
Books and novels are published at our sister site Latinum Books https://www.patreon.com/cw/LatinumBooks
The books are free to read. If you want to download them as pdf, then you will need a paid subscription.
To learn more about the tech platform that powers this publication, visit Substack.com.
