- Home
- language arts & disciplines
- Ossa Latinitatis Sola Ad Mentem Reginaldi Rationemque
Preparing your PDF for download...
There was a problem with your download, please contact the server administrator.
Ossa Latinitatis Sola Ad Mentem Reginaldi Rationemque
The Mere Bones of Latin According to the Thought and System of Reginald
by Reginald Foster and Daniel P. McCarthy
Imprint: Catholic University of America Press
From the first encounter with the Latin language to it full presentation, the objective of Ossa Latinitatis Sola is to get people into immediate contact with and understanding of genuine Latin authors, and for these encounters to grow into a love and use of the entire language in all its literary types and periods of time and authors of the past 2,300 years.
By eliminating terminology and complicated introductions to the language, we emphasize what things mean, not what they are called, how the language functions, not artificial rules, so that people may have immediate access to real solid, natural Latin which they can then imitate and use.
Reginald Foster's method of teaching the Latin language is the result of over forty years of helping people in Rome to grow fast and solidly in the knowledge, use and appreciation of Latin by anticipating their questions and preempting their future problems. The complications and obscurities of certain other methods are hereby necessarily avoided.
Outsiders will discover that Latin is supremely teachable and loveable and that every fear and terror about the so called insurmountable difficulties of Latin are non-existent and that its destination for only whiz-kids is sheer nonsense. Students will find clear explanations given in narrative form to be grasped and absorbed even in the comfort of a beach chair. Teachers will find the logical reasons why Latin functions as it does and consequently a ready instrument for teaching and a fresh method for communicating with students, supporting everyone in the learning process.
Reginaldus Thomas Foster is an American Catholic priest and friar of the Order of Discalced Carmelites. He formerly worked in the "Latin Letters" section of the Secretariat of State in the Vatican and was the Papal Latinist from 1969-2009. He continues to teach Latin classes at his own school in Milwaukee.
Daniel Patricius McCarthy, a student of Foster's, is a monk at St. Benedict's Abbey in Atchison, Kansas, and teaches Latin in London and Rome.
"Foster, a larger-than-life figure in the world of Latin education, has written a larger-than-life Latin textbook, Ossa Latinitatis Sola, or the Mere Bones of Latin… It is his life's work condensed to just over eight hundred pages, each one filled with enthusiasm for and meticulous study of the language to which Foster has dedicated his life. The ssa is impressive in scale and scope... The Ossa is a treasure, and is recommended reading for both Latin adepts and the Latin curious."
~University Bookman
"Father Reginald Foster, considered by many the worlds finest Latinist... and one of the Vatican's most colorful characters."
~Catholic News Service
"Inspirational educator, the Rev. Reginald Foster is a master classicist who has devoted his life to saving Latin from extinction."
~New York Times
"One of the world's foremost scholars in Latin."
~BBC News
"Foster is the Vatican's leading expert on Latin - expert enough to be charged with the official translation of papal documents into what was until 40 years ago the official language of the church."
~USA Today