When learning Latin, for very obvious reasons, most people tend to concentrate on the grammar.  There are declensions and conjugations to be memorized and it’s very important to know these in order to be successful at reading and translating Latin.

    It’s also important to learn the syntax of Latin.  The word syntax comes from the Greek: syn together + tassein to arrange and is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language as “the study of the rules whereby words or other elements of sentence structure are combined to form grammatical sentences.”  Grammar gives you the parts and syntax helps you put those parts together in order to convey meaning.

    19th century grammarians divided syntax into 2 parts: Concord and Government.  In this discussion, we’ll be considering Concord first, which refers to the agreement of one word with another.  When you are learning all those declensions and conjugations, you are learning just one half of what you need to read and translate Latin.  You also need to be able to put these pieces together.  A good Latin program will consider both grammar and syntax, hopefully taught in context.

    Old Latin grammars will generally give you four rules of agreement, which they call the Four Concords.  If you go and look at a bunch of old Latin grammars -- visit your local university library and look for books with a copyright date in the 1800s -- you’ll find that most mention these Four Concords, but they never seem to give them in the same order.  They all use different language to describe them as well, some more technical than others.  I’ve tried to express them as simply as possible, and want to emphasize that I don’t think you need to memorize these before you undertake your study of Latin.  I just think that you should keep the concept of agreement in mind as you learn the language.  The point that I am trying to make is that while you are learning the grammar of Latin, you need to keep in mind that the grammar goes along with the syntax of Latin, or how all the pieces are put together to form a whole.  As you learn from a Grammar-Translation text, your program should teach you these rules, so it’s not necessary to memorize them now without knowing what they mean.  Just keep in mind that when you are learning all the parts, it helps to learn how they go together as well.

1. 1)Adjectives agree with their substantive (noun or noun equivalent) in gender, number and case.
   

2. 2)A verb agrees with its subject in number and person.
   

3. 3)Relative pronouns agree with their antecedent (the word, phrase or clause the relative pronoun is referring to) in gender, number and person, but not necessarily in case.
   

4. 4) Nouns that are in apposition -- words that refer to the same person or thing in a sentence -- agree with each other in Case.  More simply put, substantives agree with substantives.
   

    As you learn from a Reading or Direct Method textbook, the designer of the course should have carefully graded the material so that you internalize these rules while learning how to read the language in a natural word order -- that is, from left to right, and not skipping around on the page.  (For example, if you take a look at the Scope and Sequence of the Cambridge Latin Course or Jeanne Marie Neumann’s Lingua Latina: A College Companion Based on Hans Oerberg’s Latina Disco with Vocabulary and Grammar, you’ll see that the authors of these textbooks wrote the Latin in the courses in such a way that you gradually encounter and learn a specific syllabus of grammar.)

    For practical advice on how to take all this Grammar and Syntax and turn it into an ability to read Latin, especially if you are trying to teach Latin, here are some very good references:

Latin, How to Read it Fluently by Dexter Hoyos.  Available from the Classical Assocation of New England.  59 pp.  $7.  Includes Hoyos’ Basic Reading Rules that will help you use syntax to recognize word groups and recognize the relationship between those word groups.

Ginny Lindzey has created a free downloadable poster with these basic rules.  It really helps to have the book in order to really understand these rules, but the poster is nice to have at hand to remind you.  She also has designed some downloadable bookmarks and reading cards that you can print out and laminate.

When Dead Tongues Speak,  edited by John Gruber-Miller.  Available at Amazon.com or through any major bookseller.  See especially the essays by John Gruber-Miller and Daniel McCaffrey.  The articles in this book consider current research in learning languages while providing concrete activities that you can use with your students.

Teach the Latin, I Pray You by Paul Distler.  Available at Amazon.com or through any major bookseller.  Lots of concrete, useful ideas for teaching grammar and syntax in context, specifically applied to teaching Latin.

    A good Latin Grammar and Syntax is always helpful.  They can sometimes be a bit overwhelming because they’re usually full of charts and declensions and conjugations, but once you realize that these books are really there to be a useful reference tool and not to scare you, you’ll appreciate them a lot more.

Try one of these:

Essential Latin Grammar: Bennett’s Grammar, Revised.  Revision edited by Anne Mahoney.  Author Charles Bennett.  Originally published in the late 19th century, this is the 2007 revision.

The Shorter Revised Latin Primer (for beginners) or The Revised Latin Primer by Benjamin Hall Kennedy.  Kennedy was a 19th century bestselling author when it came to Latin instruction!