Learn to read Latin
Latin is the language of Rome, and for a thousand years after Rome it was the language of European learning. You can start reading it far sooner than a grammar book suggests.
Start reading Latin
Free, no account. Your first line takes about three minutes.
What Latin is like
A Latin word's ending tells you what it is doing in the sentence, so the words can come in almost any order. This takes getting used to, and it is also what makes Latin poetry possible. Thousands of its words already live in English, which gives you a head start on vocabulary.
The texts here run from the most famous opening lines in the language to the Latin Bible, and down to what ordinary people scratched on the walls of Pompeii.
How Urling teaches it
- You start with a real line from a real text, in your first few minutes.
- Each lesson teaches the words that unlock more of a text you want to read.
- Short exercises rebuild real sentences, and words you miss come back later.
- Grammar comes as short notes when you meet it, not as a wall of tables first.
Famous texts to start with
- Catullus 85: Odi et amoCatullus 85 in the original Latin with an English translation and word-by-word notes. “I hate and I love”, two lines, and a good first Latin poem.
- The opening of the Aeneid: Arma virumque canoThe first 11 lines of Virgil's Aeneid in Latin, with an English translation, word-by-word glosses and notes for beginners.
- All Gaul is divided: the opening of Caesar's Gallic WarThe first sentences of Caesar's Gallic War in Latin, “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres”, with translation, glosses and beginner notes.
- What people wrote on the walls of PompeiiReal Latin graffiti from the walls of Pompeii with translations: insults, boasts and a cheating innkeeper, spelled as they were written.
- Catullus 5 in Latin: “Let us live, my Lesbia”Catullus 5, Vivamus mea Lesbia atque amemus, in the original Latin with a literal English translation, word-by-word glosses and notes.
- “Quo usque tandem”: Cicero against CatilineThe most famous opening in Latin oratory, Quo usque tandem abutere Catilina patientia nostra, with an English translation, word-by-word glosses and notes.
- “Carpe diem”: Horace's original LatinWhere carpe diem comes from: lines from Horace's Odes 1.11, with the snowy opening of Odes 1.9, in the original Latin with an English translation, glosses and notes.
- The Lord's Prayer in Latin: Pater nosterThe Pater noster in Latin, line by line, with an English translation, word-by-word glosses and notes. An easy first text if you know the prayer in English.
New to the grammar? Read the short guide to Latin grammar.
The letters
Latin uses our alphabet. The line over a vowel marks it as long, and textbooks add it to help you. Roman writers did not use it.
| ā | a, as in father |
| ē | ay, as in say |
| ī | ee, as in see |
| ō | o, as in go |
| ū | oo, as in moon |
| æ | eye |
| œ | oy, as in boy |
| ë | e, said separately |
| c | always k |
| v | w, in classical Latin |
Also in the course
The course has 53 texts in all, including:
- First words of Genesis in Latin
- John 1:1-5 in Latin
- Prodigal Son in the Latin Vulgate
- Good Samaritan in the Latin Vulgate
- Sermon on the Mount: The Beatitudes
- Fables of Phaedrus (The Wolf and the Lamb, The Fox and the Grapes)
- Founding of Rome and the first kings in Eutropius
- Pliny's eyewitness account of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79
- Epic tempest scene from Aeneid 1
- Conspiracy of Orgetorix among the Helvetians
- Cicero confronting Catiline in the temple of Jupiter Stator
- Catullus on Lesbia's sparrow, Sapphic love, and brotherly farewell
Start reading Latin
Free, no account. Your first line takes about three minutes.