Online Latin courses for university, from AP credit to the Latinum

In the United Kingdom and the United States, Latin is mostly part of the degree itself, for example in classics, ancient history or medieval studies. School qualifications count on the way in. The College Board compares AP Latin to an intermediate university Latin course in the third or fourth semester, and each college decides whether it grants credit or placement for the score.

In Germany, Latin works differently. Many programmes do not need it for admission, but their examination regulations require proof by a certain point in the degree. There are three levels: basic Latin (Lateinkenntnisse) equals about three textbook years, the Kleines Latinum certifies reading simple prose such as Caesar, and the Latinum certifies reading demanding passages of Cicero.

Theology programmes often also require the Graecum for Ancient Greek and in some cases the Hebraicum for Hebrew.

If you learn Latin during your degree, the workload comes on top of your subject's compulsory classes. The University of Regensburg shows how much time it takes. Its Latinum course amounts to 12 semester weekly hours (SWS), one SWS being one class hour per week over a semester.

On top of this, the university explicitly recommends daily study on days without class. The intensive phase falls into the semester break, when many subjects also set placements or essays.

Online preparation before your first semester eases this load. If you finish the textbook stage beforehand, meaning forms, core vocabulary and simple sentence structure, you can join the university course at the reading stage. Ask in advance whether the university offers a placement test for its Latin courses.

German universities offer Latin courses mainly to enrolled students. In Bavaria these courses prepare you for the state supplementary exam, an additional exam to the German school-leaving certificate, which you sit at a designated grammar school. University towns hold exams at the end of each semester, with registration by 15 January or 15 June. In North Rhine-Westphalia you register with the district government by 15 January or 15 July.

Online options fill the gaps of the university course.

A fixed weekly plan stops Latin from falling behind your subject classes. The example assumes the Regensburg model with three course sessions a week in the winter semester.

Review at growing intervals means testing a word again after one day, three days and a week. This method is called spaced repetition, and many vocabulary apps use it.

In the intensive phase of the semester break the focus shifts to reading. The private lesson then practises mock exams under time pressure, because candidates in Bavaria translate a text of about 180 words in 180 minutes.

If you work with Latin texts at university, you cite them by fixed rules. Ancient authors are not cited by page number but by book, chapter and section, which stay the same in every edition. Caesar, Gallic War 1.1 means book 1, chapter 1. The text itself comes from a critical edition, an edition that records the differences between the surviving manuscripts, such as the Oxford Classical Texts.

You will meet two kinds of translation. A working translation stays close to the Latin sentence structure and shows that you have understood the grammar. A translation into natural English or German conveys the meaning in idiomatic language, and that is also what the German Latinum asks for.

Digital aids make the work easier. The Perseus Digital Library of Tufts University analyses every word form of a Latin text. For quotations in an essay, check the wording against the critical edition your department uses.

The German Latinum tests translation into German, and the oral discussion also takes place in German. If you come to Germany from abroad, you therefore need confident written German in addition to Latin.

Foreign Latin qualifications do not replace the Latinum automatically. That applies to a British A level, to AP Latin from the US and to Latín II from the Spanish Bachillerato. German universities can recognise them after an individual check for equivalence. Austria and Switzerland set their own Latin requirements.