The School of Letters & Tongues · language, literature & writing
Classical Languages
The languages that wrote the ancient world, taught for readers who want the originals.
Declensions, conjugations, and real Latin read from the first week — fables, inscriptions, graffiti.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~45 hours
Unit I — Reading from Day One
Restored classical pronunciation · First and second declensions · Sum and the present tense
Unit II — The Case System
The accusative and the direct object · Genitive, dative, ablative · Prepositions and their cases
Unit III — Verbs in Motion
The four conjugations · Imperfect and future tenses · Questions and commands
Unit IV — Adapted Readings
Fables and inscriptions · Roman daily life in simple Latin · Derivatives: the Latin inside English
The second year of Latin — real prose and verse, sight-reading method, and the hexameter heard aloud.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~40 hours
Unit I — Caesar
The Gallic War, Book 1 · Military narrative style · Indirect statement
Unit II — Cicero
The First Catilinarian · The period and Roman rhetoric · The subjunctive in context
Unit III — Vergil
Aeneid, Book 1 selections · Scanning dactylic hexameter · Simile and allusion
Unit IV — Sight Reading
A method for unseen passages · Dictionaries and when to trust them · Building reading speed
The Greek alphabet, the article, and the first paradigms — ending in real fables read whole.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~50 hours
Unit I — Alphabet and Accent
Letters and breathing marks · Accents: acute, grave, circumflex · Reading aloud from the start
Unit II — First Paradigms
The present tense of omega verbs · The definite article · First and second declensions
Unit III — Building Sentences
Adjectives and agreement · Prepositions · The imperfect tense
Unit IV — Real Greek
Aesop, lightly adapted · Inscriptions and graffiti · Toward Xenophon
Homer in the original — epic grammar, the hexameter, and the quarrel that opens Western literature.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~40 hours
Unit I — Homeric Grammar
Differences from Attic Greek · The augment, often missing · Formulaic epithets
Unit II — Iliad, Book 1
The quarrel, lines 1–100 · Scanning the hexameter · Particles and their force
Unit III — Deeper into Book 1
The speeches of Achilles and Agamemnon · The gods on Olympus · Oral tradition in the evidence
Unit IV — Reading at Speed
Book 6: Hector and Andromache · A vocabulary strategy for Homer · Using a scholarly commentary
The aleph-bet, the strong verb, and Genesis read in its own words by the end of the course.
Syllabus · 4 units · ~45 hours
Unit I — The Aleph-Bet
Consonants and final forms · Vowel points · Reading and writing practice
Unit II — Nouns and the Verbless Clause
Gender and number · The definite article · Construct chains
Unit III — The Strong Verb
Qal perfect · Qal imperfect · Vav-consecutive narrative
Unit IV — Reading Genesis
Genesis 1, guided · Using a lexicon and parsing tools · From pointed text toward fluency