You know that years in the SCA have warped your definition of the word "useful" when...

[jducoeur]

... you have the reaction of "that's the most useful new site I've seen in months!" when you come across the Latin 1086 - 1733 For Beginners page.

I have no idea whether it's a good tutorial yet -- I just got the link from sca_today. My suspicion is that it is focused on a subset of the language (official documents), so it's only a start. But it's the first introductory course I've come across that is specifically for *period* texts, rather than classical ones. And given that most of the latin sources I really care about are 16th and 17th century, that's rather interesting...

Comments

[dreda.livejournal.com]

But that is so cool! Thank you!

[jtdiii.livejournal.com]

Or what you consider current events... :)

[fitzw.livejournal.com]

Interesting site — I've been hoping for one of those for a couple of years.

[griffinick.livejournal.com]

I have no idea whether it's a good tutorial yet

It's bound to be (within a very limited sphere, as you duly noted), given that it's from the National Archives site, which is loaded with helpful information.

On quick glance, it looks like a very abbreviated and condensed overview of Latin, and is probably geared more towards people who have a document in front of them and are wondering how the hell they're going to decipher it (their "reference" information is somewhat a dead giveaway). The reality is that none of the lessons seem to be presenting some of the more period-specific issues of late Latin (e.g. bastardization of grammar, disuse of more compact and sophisticated constructions, etc), with the exception of certain stock phrases and constructions that are common in medieval documents. The Latin it presents is pretty simplistic, and with the exception of certain telling medieval words (e.g. maneria), it could be mistaken for a very basic overview of Classical Latin. I wouldn't say that the majority of this tutorial is useful only for the period 1986-1733, though the word list certainly is based on documents from that period.

[(Anonymous)]

You could always pick up a medical tome to pick up on some Latin as well.

Or go to a proper Catholic Latin mass. Wonderful.

- Eric

[cheshyre]

Did you notice they also have a site on reading/deciphering period Secretary hand?

[jducoeur]

Hadn't come across that. I *can* pretty much read Secretary hand (enough years of looking at the output of Anton et al, I think), although it's fairly slow going. It helps that I'm completely comfortable with Elizabethan English to begin with, so I'm expecting the right grammatical constructs...

[cheshyre]

Palaeography tutorial.

I was recently reading Her majesty's spymaster (about Walsingham), and it discussed the ciphers of the time and codebreaking methods.

Growing up, I used to be a whiz at the cryptogram puzzles in Games magazine, and then I thought about the lack of standardized spelling in Elizabethan English and became much more impressed with the efforts of Phillipes and others...