This trainer was created mainly to allow the user to practice Latin nouns inflections. Each inflection (or mutation as reffered in this Trainer) consists of the noun-root and the tense-inflection. The user is given a mutation and is required to inflect it. For example for the noun “mensa” and “acc_s” (accusative singular), the correct inflection is mensam.
The correct answers were taken from Wiktionary. In several cases there is more than one attested option for inflection. For example, according to Wiktionary for “navis” and “acc_p” there are two options: naves and navis. The Trainer supports both options from the user.
The Trainer uses 12856 nouns from wiktionary. This is by no means the attested number of Latin nouns; yet, a noun missing from the Trainer is probably quite rare.
With respect to the gender, there might be errors (for example in folia), and in many other nouns gender is missing for no apparent reason. so when using gender feature take it with grain of salt.
There are 3 ways to select noun to practice on:
In order to use the automatic generator, you have to specify a level . The level parameter basically tells the automatic generator which nouns are entitled to be generated. The goal of this parameter is to generate nouns that the user is likely to be familiar with, rather than complete random nouns from the list. To achieve this, the nouns were sorted by frequency . Thus, selecting “Top 10%” option means that the nouns will be generated from 10% of the nouns which are the most frequent (pool of 1250 nouns). The beginner may find this tool helpful for increasing his vocabulary of frequent nouns.
The nouns were sorted by frequency using the Perseus Vocabulary Tool’s weighted frequency attribute. the documents pool contained docs of prominent authors (full list).In terms of frequency, the Trainer does not distinguish between differnt nouns of the same root like volo(irregular) and volo(first): they both have the same frequency for the Trainer. (the highest of the two).
Inflection selection is quite straight-forward. It should be noted, however, that the inflections which regularly use the perfect passive participle (such as indicative passive perfect), are missing from the Trainer for all nouns, and can’t be selected. To practice those, you can use the participle itself. You can select more than one inflection.
Many nouns cannot be inflected in all forms. The noun moenia, for example, is missing singular.
In case a noun was selected, which is not in the Trainer list, it will be noted in the window. It can happen either when the noun is simply not existing in the Wiktionary, or that Trainer expects parentheses for this noun.
The Trainer has two modes of operation: practice or exam. The two modes are similiar in nature: in both the user is given mutation and required to inflect it correctly. The user should submit his answer by pressing Enter key. After an answer was submitted, the Trainer will indicate the user wheather he was correct. When the user is correct, the correct answer will be displayed in green, else the correct answer will be in red. Moreover, at the right side, the user can see his stats so far, as well as the “mutations left” which indicate the number of different mutations that might be displayed to show the user how far he is from completing the practice or the exam. To change mode, the user should click on the mode switch.
In practice mode, the mutation in question is selected semi-randomally (bias towards mutations the user was wrong in recently). In this mode a given mutation might be asked many times without limit; thus, theoritically, the practice might last ad infinitum. It is under the user responsibity to prevent a mutation from being asked again: to do so, instead of submitting an answer, he should press the right arrow key (→). After pressing (→) the user should see appropiate message, and the number of “mutations left” (in the right side) going down. The user is adviced to do so when he is sure of the correct answer (The Trainer will tell the user to consider pressing (→) after he was right three times in a row, yet the final descision is always under the user discretion: he might do so before or after that). Ideally, the practice will end when the user pressed (→) to all the mutations, but the user might switch to exam mode or select other nouns/inflection any time he wishes. The user is encouraged, especially in this mode, to click on the noun in question when he is unsure of the meaning of the noun or want to see the full conjugation table.
Exam mode should be used when the user feels confident about the inflections of the selected nouns, and he wants to test his level. In this mode every mutaion is asked only once (no need to press (→). At the end of the exam the user wil see his final score.
Selecting the inflections and auto nouns-generation settings might be tedious, especially when we are using them for long. In order to avoid re-selection of those parameters each time we open the Trainer, the selected parameters are saved in address bar of the browser. Every change of the selected inflections or every click on “generate” button, will trigger a change in the address bar that will contain the newly-selected parameters. If you want to save the settings, simply copy the line of the address bar and save it for future use. When you use that link, the Trainer will be opened with the selected parameters, and with the nouns already generated - so you can start practice right away.
If you want to save the nouns themselves (rather than the nouns-generation parameters), you should copy the text in the nouns box, and save this text for future use. To use the saved list, you have to paste it in the nouns box.