Sonechka's Ultimate Guide to GCSE Latin

20

Salvete omnes! :banana:

Well done for choosing what is officially the most awesome GCSE subject :h:

now comes the slightly harder part...succeeding in it! I'm an A-level Latin student and I recently got an A* in my GCSE, so I thought I would share a few tips which helped me on my way. If you have any more questions or need some guidance, I’ll be happy to help you out :smile:

VOCABULARY:

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GRAMMAR:

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LITERATURE:

read me

Reply 1

MystG123

9

Hey thanks for this! I am in Year 11 currently and I don't feel like I'm doing well in Latin that I feel that I might drop it! But I think your tips have given me the extra boost to carry on with it.

Reply 2

username2959698

10

Hey I was wondering how to translate latin when there are adjectives in a sentence. For example I always place the description on the wrong person such as 'Caecilius announced happily to the citizens' when in fact the real answer is 'Caecilius announced to the happy citizens'.Also how do you figure out word order when it is a really complex sentence, I can never figure out which word goes with which person or thing.

Reply 3

EEA

7

Hi Sonechka - you don't happen to know where I could get the translation of Tactius' Last Stand do you?? I'm desperate. Thankyou for any direction you can give me

Reply 4

enjcltaire

4

With the adjectives, you have to look at which noun they match. Adjectives match 3 things: case, gender and number. For example, Caecilius in this sentence is nominative, masculine and singular. The citizens are dative, common and plural. If the adjective laetus was in the form laetus (nominative, masculine and singular), it would match with Caecilius. If laetus had a dative plural ending it would match the citizens, meaning the citizens are happy, not Caecilius. It works the same for long translations, you have to match the words up according to their gender, case and number mostly. Break it into bits and go from there :smile:

Reply 5

Quirky Object

OP

20

Original post

by Jman10101

Hey I was wondering how to translate latin when there are adjectives in a sentence. For example I always place the description on the wrong person such as 'Caecilius announced happily to the citizens' when in fact the real answer is 'Caecilius announced to the happy citizens'.Also how do you figure out word order when it is a really complex sentence, I can never figure out which word goes with which person or thing.

Omg sorry I never saw this :/ someone replied above. Basically you just need to memorise (roughly) your noun declensions and work out which words go together in gender, case and number; it might help to number each word so that you know what order to translate in and remember which adjectives agree with which nouns.

Original post

by EEA

Hi Sonechka - you don't happen to know where I could get the translation of Tactius' Last Stand do you?? I'm desperate. Thankyou for any direction you can give me

Sorryy I'm not sure, that isn't one of my set texts :frown:

you could check on the website Perseus? They have decent, if slightly archaic, translations of most well-known texts.

Reply 6

euphrosynay

15

@EEA i have a translation of the druids' last stand which is hopefully decent; i could pm it to you if you like :smile:

Reply 7

EEA

7

Original post

by euphrosynay

@EEA i have a translation of the druids' last stand which is hopefully decent; i could pm it to you if you like :smile:

That would be great , would you mind?

Reply 8

euphrosynay

15

@EEA not at all!

Reply 9

username2959698

10

Original post

by euphrosynay

@EEA not at all!

Please may you send me the druides last stand translation as well?

Reply 10

euphrosynay

15

@Jman10101 sure!

Reply 11

Hansom

5

Thank you so much for this! I'm going to have to self-teach Latin GCSE and sit my A-level exams alongside of it.

Reply 12

euphrosynay

15

Original post

by Hansom

Thank you so much for this! I'm going to have to self-teach Latin GCSE and sit my A-level exams alongside of it.

good luck! i hope it's as fun and rewarding for you as possible :smile:

Reply 13

Hansom

5

Original post

by euphrosynay

good luck! i hope it's as fun and rewarding for you as possible :smile:

Are you sitting it this year or something?

Reply 14

euphrosynay

15

Original post

by Hansom

Are you sitting it this year or something?

..yes, and i love it! i was simply wishing you luck with doing latin alongside your other a-levels, and that you're able to enjoy it and not find it too stressful since you're teaching yourself rather than being a member of a class.

Reply 15

Hansom

5

Original post

by euphrosynay

..yes, and i love it! i was simply wishing you luck with doing latin alongside your other a-levels, and that you're able to enjoy it and not find it too stressful since you're teaching yourself rather than being a member of a class.

Thanks! I heard it's one of the hardest GCSEs and is only taught in a few and exclusive schools. I've been looking at the syllabus and thinking of going with prose literature B and verse literature A for the optional components. I'm guessing it helps a lot if you have a teacher?

Reply 16

euphrosynay

15

Original post

by Hansom

Thanks! I heard it's one of the hardest GCSEs and is only taught in a few and exclusive schools. I've been looking at the syllabus and thinking of going with prose literature B and verse literature A for the optional components. I'm guessing it helps a lot if you have a teacher?

from my own judgement and those of the people around me, i'd say that latin is indeed quite a difficult gcse, especially if you're planning to study it over two years or less. it's quite exclusive in terms of the number of schools that teach it, but it seems that schools who do teach it well.

it can help if you have a teacher, for advice and extra insight into the literature texts, and being in a class under a teacher can help when people want to pool their knowledge together and structure it into responses to a question. however, the gcse is possible without one if you immerse yourself in your texts and keep a sharp memory of your vocab. there are online resources, both official and unofficial, to help you learn, and you're always welcome to ask around on this website!

with that said, we have the same literature options (assuming that you'll be taking the gcse this year or the next); i have gained some experience of studying the texts, and shall soon gain some experience of taking the exams for those texts, so don't hesitate to ask for tips if you need them :smile:

Sonechka's Ultimate Guide to GCSE Latin

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