Jerry Toner - Latin Key Words: The Basic 2000 Word Vocabulary Arranged by Frequency. Learn Latin Quickly and Easily.

the basic 2,000-word vocabulary
arranged by frequency in a
hundred units with comprehensive Latin and
English indexes JERRY TONER The Oleander Press The Oleander Press 16 Orchard Street Cambridge CB1 1JT www.oleandepress.com 2017 Revised and Updated 2002 Jerry Toner and The Oleander Press Cover image: Annabelle Orozco This ebook has been optimised
for viewing in landscape format. It was when I learnt the Latin for screech-owl in my first lesson that I first thought there must be a better way. Some twenty-five years later, I have designed Latin Key Words as an efficient, logical and practical computer-based word-list for English-speaking learners of Latin in their first and second year. It is also a valuable revision tool for more advanced students. The basic two thousand key words are so called because by learning these the student acquires the basic knowledge to open up the whole world of Latin literature but also because they unlock the door to many thousands more words: plurals from singulars, feminines from masculines or neuters, and verb endings from the principal parts. The purpose of this technique is simply to stimulate confidence in the learning of Latin by beginning with the most common.

Nothing is more daunting to the beginner than to face the canon of obscure words that traditionally greeted the learner of Latin (screech- owl was merely the forerunner of such handy words as harpago, grappling hook, mugil, mullet, and vannus, winnowing-fan). Latin Key Words is intended to be used with a conventional grammar and a conventional dictionary, but a massive dictionary has been found in practice to unnerve the beginner, while most available readers introduce too early words or ideas which may be arbitrary or advanced. At this sensitive phase, where interest in learning Latin can be so easily discouraged, it is suggested that the student should learn words in units of about twenty key words each, thus mastering two thousand such words by the end of the first or second year. Only then will the student be able to accumulate arbitrary words of low occurrence, many of which will in any case be related to words already learnt. Computer-based methods are common to nearly all walks of life now, but statistical sampling has hitherto been rarely practised in language-learning.

Each of the hundred units is self-contained, Unit 1 including the twenty most common key words, Unit 2 the next most common and so on. Each of the hundred units is self-contained, Unit 1 including the twenty most common key words, Unit 2 the next most common and so on.

The key word is followed by an indication of its part of speech: adj., adjective; adv., adverb; conj., conjunction; c., common noun; f., feminine noun; m., masculine noun; n., neuter noun; interj., interjection; num., numeral; part., particle prep., preposition; pron., pronoun. Verbs are shown with their principal parts if irregular or if clarity demands. Common alternative forms are given in brackets. Where a verb lacks a principal part a space is left. Deponent verbs are indicated by the abbreviation dep. Many Latin words can be translated by a number of English equivalents.

It would be counter-productive, in a work designed to stimulate interest rather than to clog the memory, to list all such equivalents, so only the most common have been cited.

The two indexes permit the reader to use Latin Key Words as a basic dictionary, but let it be repeated that a small dictionary should be used in conjunction with this book. A concise and basic grammar should also be used. Another fascinating usage of the indexes is to discover how frequent and useful each Latin word happens to be. Of course the frequency level applies only to the Latin words: nothing is implied about the relative frequency of their English equivalents. The first 10 words are so common that they account for 16% of total occurrences in a huge lexical universe; the first hundred account for 40%; and the first thousand for 68%.

The full 2000 key words represent 75% of all Latin words in a corpus of nearly two million. It is therefore evident that anyone who masters the vocabulary in Latin Key Words is three quarters of the way to mastering the entire corpus of Latin texts.

Latin Key Words focuses on the Classical authors favoured by Examination Boards and Universities. It includes the major works of the following authors: Caesar, Catullus, Cicero, Horace, Livy, Ovid, Suetonius,Tacitus, and Virgil. Extra weighting has been given to works according to their frequency of appearance in public examinations in the UK and USA. Extra weighting has also been given to poetry so that the more common poetical words also appear in the list.

Finally, I should like to thank the Oleander Press for giving me this chance to give newcomers to the wonderful Latin language a means of putting the screech-owl behind us all. Jerry Toner

First Conjugation	Ambulare, to walk
ambulo	ambulare	ambulavi	ambulatum
I walk	to walk	I walked	walked
Second Conjugation	Habere, to have
habeo	habere	habui	habitum
I have	to have	I had	had
Third Conjugation	Regere, to rule
rego	regere	rexi	rectum
I rule	to rule	I ruled	ruled
Fourth Conjugation	Audire, to hear
audio	audire	audivi	auditum
I hear	to hear	I heard	heard
First Conjugation Deponent	Auxiliari, to help
auxilior	auxiliari	auxiliatus sum
I help	to help	I helped
Second Conjugation Deponent	Vereri, to fear
vereor	vereri	veritus sum
I fear	to fear	I feared
Third Conjugation Deponent	Uti, to use
utor	uti	usus sum
I use	to use	I used
Fourth Conjugation Deponent	Partiri, to divide
partior	partiri	partitus sum
I divide	to divide	I divided

et conj.	and, also
esse	to be
sum esse fui
qui, quae, quod pron.	who, which, what, that
in prep. + acc. & abl.	into, in, at
quis, quid pron.	who, what
ego pron.	I
non adv.	not
ut adv., conj.	that, so that, as, how
hic, haec, hoc pron.	this
tu pron.	you
is, ea, id