Can Philology Drills Be Liberating?
Finally, there is a program called Liberation Philology from Canada, which has both a Mac and a DOS version for Latin. It also has versions for a number of other uncommon languages, such as Sanskrit, Catalan, Dutch, and Portuguese. There are three main sections to choose from: 1) nouns, adjectives, and pronouns, including agreement; 2) verbs; 3) vocabulary. This program is also not tied to a particular textbook, but it uses 1900 vocabulary words on the elementary level; and it is one of the very few which offers optional macrons. These are marked with carets(^) over the vowels, and they can be created by the user with the shift key or several other methods. The format of the forms drills can be straight parsing, “reverse-parsing” (create a specified form), or a randomized combination of both. It will include all correct possibilities in the parsing format. Once again, this is an open-ended drill: you decide when it’s over. When you do quit, you receive a comprehensive, percentage score
