# Vocabulary Memorization Techniques



## wolfwood27

Hey...

Well, I checked the resource area, and actually found a lot of good sites that had tips for memorizing. I was wondering if anyone else had a certain way they memorize vocabulary. I'm not talking about for a quiz or a test, just in general. It seems to me that most of the time I spend doing latin is spent looking up words in the dictionary. How do you retain the definitions for all those words? It would be nice to find a method that would allow me to retain the words.


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## Whodunit

I'm afraid there's no such recipe how could memorize all the Latin vocabulary best. By the way, you don't need to know every word to understand classical Latin. It might, however, help searching for links to modern Romance (and some Germanic) languages; which other languages are you learning?

If Latin is your first Romance language, it's kind of hard to memorize all the words that do not look very English or that don't have an English equivalent (anymore). However, learning a modern Romance language then should be a walk on the beach.


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## wolfwood27

Yeah, I'm taking Latin 3 at the moment. Next year I'm skipping Latin 4, and going to the AP class. I'm also learning Spanish which I started this year, because I thought it would be good to have a language that I can speak. Spanish is a lot easier to remember the vocabulary for.  Although sometimes I'll look at a notecard for Latin, and instead of saying "also" I'll end up saying "Tambien" then flipping to the next card before I realize what I did. 

For Latin, I usually have 2 words on a flash card, writing the word, and putting the Gen. ending as well, or with verbs I put the principle parts. The English goes on the other side so I can do it Latin --> English and English to Latin. The problem is, this doesn't always help me learn it in the long term, unless I use the words a lot.


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## Whodunit

wolfwood27 said:


> Yeah, I'm taking latin 3 at the moment. Next year I'm skipping Latin 4, and going to the AP class. I'm also learning Spanish which I started this year, because I thought it would be good to have a language that I can speak. Spanish is a lot easier to remember the vocab for.  Although sometimes I'll look at a notecard for Latin, and instead of saying "also" I'll end up saying "Tambien" then flipping to the next card before I realize what I did.


 
Of course Spanish vocabulary is no guarantee for perfect Latin vocabulary.  You can't expect that you will get everything right when you use your knowledge of Spanish, however it works quite well to understand Latin passively by help of your Spanish.



> For latin, I usually have 2 words on a flash card, writing the word, and putting the Gen. ending as well, or with verbs I put the principle parts. The english goes on the other side so I can do it Latin --> English and English to Latin. The problem is, this doesn't always help me learn it in the long term, unless I use the words a lot.


 
That's one possibility, however I don't like cards; they are boring and I've never looked at them again. My teacher had the idea to write a vocabulary test every three lessons for the new unit (I always got an A+ ), and after that all the class was asked to try to translate the text of the unit. It's worked quite well!


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## virgilio

wolfwood27,
                One very good way to remember words is to think of what words you remember most easily in other fields.
For very many people song lyrics would be high on the list, if not at the top.
Therefore, use the same principle in Latin, too.
It's very difficult to imagine  what ancient Italian melody and counterpoint might have sounded like, of course, but rhythms are a different matter altogether.
Have you yet learned to scan hexametres at sight! If not, I recommend that you should. If you can't find an explanation of the rules send me a PM and I'll write them out for you.
After that, like the guy who came out of the railway station and asked "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?", the answer is "Practise, practise, practise!"
For practice purposes the undeniable master of the Latin hexametre is, not my namesake, the guy from Mantova, but the magnificent poet from Sulmona, Publius Ovidius Naso.
 After a while (say, two or three weeks of half-an-hour's daily practice) you will find the rhythms irresistible and they will start to 'outcrop' from your memory and you'll find yourself walking down the street inadvertently mouthing bits of Latin hexametre verse.
When that happens, you can say goodbye to vocabulary problems and you should also find that you are beginning to dislike translation - or at least to find it time-wasting..
One word of warning:Ovid's verse is so good, it's addictive! You have been warned!
All the best.
Virgilio


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## pacobabel

Hi,
First at all, sorry because of my English, that is no good at all.

Even Spanish students have problems to remember the mean of Latin words, although it's of course easier for us than for students who speak a non-Neo Latin language. But Spanish people who just learned for 2 or 3 years Latin can't understand almost anything of a text of, for exemple, Virgil or, in general, of a text written in classical Latin (for medieval texts it's easier).

For me it was very useful in order to forget the dictionary:
a. I made a particular vocabulary with each new word I considered important or interesting for me. I wrote the Latin term with its mean in Spanish. I often established (and wrote) relationships between words (similar meanings, similar words with a different meaning etc.). Then, I often reviewed my vocabulary (1 time every week, it took around 1 hour per week).
b. I tried to read so many texts in Latin as I could. At the beginning, I always needed bilingual editions, but, with the time, I became able to read it without help of a translation, even if I didn't understand everything. It can be also helpful if you review often the texts you had already translated at the school or university.
c. You can't ever stop to practise your Latin if you want to have a good level this language. Even nowadays, I try to read Latin texts so often I can.
p.


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## virgilio

Other aids to Latin vocabulary memorising are the recognition of recurring patterns, of which there are many. Here is one:
(1) the majority of verbs 0f conjugation 2 are intransitive and describe states rather than actions:
e.g.
umeo, umere, umui - to be moist  
rigeo, rigere, rigui - to be stiff

(2) a collateral 3rd conjugation form, which shares the same perfect tense forms as these intransitive 2nd conjugation verbs can be formed by simply inserting the augment "-sc-" before the final "-o" of principal part 1:
e.g.
umesco, umescere, umui -     to become moist, to begin to be moist
rigesco, rigescere, rigui - to become stiff, to begin to be stiff

(these latter verbs are known as _inchoative _(that is, 'beginning to') verbs

Furthermore these verbs almost always produce permanent adjectives in "-idus (etc)
e.g. 
umidus, umida, umidum (etc)  - moist, wet
rigidus, rigida, rigidum (etc) -  stiff

(occasionally - but rarely - a declension 3 adjective is produced:
e.g.
from vireo, virere, virui, - to be green  
       viresco, virescere, virui - to become green

       virid*i*s (masc and fem) virid*e* (neuter) (etc) - green

Finally they also produce a declension 3 masculine noun in "-or"(nominative), "-oris" (genitive_
e.g.
umor, umoris 3 (m.) wetness, moisture.
rigor, rigoris  3(m.)   stiffness

I have quoted here only two or three; there are dozens of such examples of this pattern and, once the pattern is seen and on of the four instances of the pattern is known, the rest can  confidently be postulated. As with all your brushes with the real world, you will very occasionally be surprised by a tiny exception but the exception proves the rule.

Virgilio


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## jd015

Search google for "win with words".  Its a vocabulary contest website, so there are some good resources there.


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