[B-Greek] Comenius and Greek/Latin Pedagogy
Louis Sorenson
llsorenson at hotmail.com
Mon Aug 31 12:50:56 EDT 2009
One more note. Take a look at the vocabulary book entitled Orbis Sensualim Pictus. http://ia360603.us.archive.org/1/items/orbispictusofjoh00comeiala/orbispictusofjoh00comeiala.pdf It teaches 2000 vocabulary words by introducing related pictures in complete sentences. This was the basis of all the following books in Comenius' series. (The picture book reminds me of Buth's Picture book which is the first book of his grammar and the basis for the rest of his course). The following is a description:
This book (Orbis Sensualim Pictus) is Comenius'
foundation textbook, and it covers in a very basic format, all the main
areas of knowledge as they were understood in the seventeenth century –
biology, physics, geometry, trades, philosophy, music, recreation, law,
politics, etc. This book was written for six to seven year olds, but it
serves quite well for adults as well, although each topic is of course
only treated in the barest of outlines.
Each lesson is an
‘object lesson’, and all the words given are illustrated in drawings
that accompany the lesson, aiding in memory and understanding. The
lessons are interesting historically, as they describe the processes of
long extinct trades, adding to your store of Latin words related to
everyday life.
The pictures are intriguing. Try translating a few into Greek. It's harder than you think.
Louis Sorenson
From: llsorenson at hotmail.com
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Comenius and Greek/Latin Pedagogy
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:40:59 -0500
I just ran across another very interesting set of books by John Amos Comenius (1592-1670) Wikipedia . Comenius wrote a number of language primers for Latin and Greek (some may have been translated into Greek). The features of these books are:
1) A graded reader approach (from simple to complex)
2) A picture/action pictures approach (quite novel for the 1600's) - even many modern books lack this feature.
3) A side-by-side parallel translation (Modern Language || Ancient language)
4) Rich content - covering fields of geography, animal husbandry, science, etc. rather than out of context sentences which manipulate the grammar. These could easily be used for home schoolers.
Many of Comenius' books are now on Google. There is a site associated with his language books Latinum's Comenius' Project. It is at http://knol.google.com/k/molendinarius/latinums-comenius-project/4s1j8rpi2dvv/13# That site has links to many of the books.
His English-Latin primer book could be easily translated into Greek and would even be of value today. His fourth book in the series, The Janua has a Latin/Greek translation.The Latin and Classical Greek by Theodoro Simonio can be found at http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9VMTAAAAQAAJ .
Louis Sorenson
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