ANCIENT LANGUAGES

Thanks. Also, how similar is it to Roman Latin? I mean, once I've learnt medieval Latin, will it be a lot easier to learn Roman Latin?

Is medieval Latin pretty much the same across all of Europe too, or are there regional differences?

I started Latin in sophomore year at my HS. I've kept it up with books I ordered or picked up at recycled book stores.

It's very easy to pick up for an English speaker, and I've always enjoyed it very much. My Latin teacher also taught Greek, but it was an after school thing, and I foolishly opted for hanging out with friends and playing sports instead.

If you're near any college towns that teach these subjects, try looking in second-hand bookstores near campus. I've found many hidden gems that way. Sometimes professors dump old collections, or you can pick up textbooks for small fractions of the price.

Well, since Latin is a dead language, what you'll find in textbooks and courses is a standardized version of the language, which will enable you to read through Roman, medieval, and Renaissance latin books. That, of course, doesn't mean they're all the same. Before modern times, Latin was a lot more common, and alive; the medieval setting of latin was basically the same all over Europe, since it was the academic/ecclesiastical language of the Middle Ages. People would normally have their mother tongue, and write/speak latin at the university, church etc. It's more or less what happens with English nowadays.

Oops. This was meant to be a reply to

I learned Latin out of curiosity and because I love language, but once I had learned it, picking up romance languages became easy as well.

You also gain a strong etymological foundation for English from Latin, and that is largely a byproduct of standard studies.

Possibly best of all, the history and culture of the Romans is fascinating! Culture and language are inseparable, so you really get a more layered understanding of the past when you delve into it's languages.

Learn an Ancient Language that can still be used today. Chinese.

Especially given that even with Simplified Chinese, there are publishers out there who convert the Classical symbols into Simplified.

thetao.info/tao/simplified.htm

Absolutely beautiful.

>Chinese

How relevant.

Most spoken language in the world. Powerful in STEM - which at least determines that there is going to be a whole load of important research that you're going to be denied from if you don't know the language.

And at the very least more relevant than Greek and Latin.

Nah. Still irrelevant.

Good luck with facing the future global economy friendo.

>caring about "the economy"

How normie can you possibly be?

Good luck with trying to fund a pseudo-intellectual aesthetic lifestyle while working a blue collar job friendo.

>working

I give up.

>And at the very least more relevant than Greek and Latin.

>being so ignorant that you think chinese is not relevant

fucking Veeky Forums

>being so autistic that you think that user is being serious

fucking Veeky Forums

If you think "normies" care, or know anything, about economics, you're very mistaken.

Also, if you don't know or care about the economy, you're either a plebian - and one who knows nothing of money, and therefore doomed to remain one, or worse - a Kardashianist, socialite leech who would make a better lawn statue than a human being.

Hey, any specific tips for learning Latin through Orberg? I have Lingua Latina and the college companion book by Neumann. I haven't touched Lingua Latina in months after I felt discouraged that I wasn't really sure of what I was doing. I was comprehending everything I read bit by bit and learning well enough.. then I read somewhere that the worst thing you can do when learning a language is translate the language actively into English for comprehension as you read.. and that kind of gave me a brain fuck, because obviously that was all I was doing, and I don't understand how else I'm supposed to make sense of Latin.

I don't know if I just heard shitty advice, or if I was doing something wrong, any tips either way?

that's Church Latin, you can get that from seminary.

I got my job mainly because of my Mandarin skills desu

Si Latinam nosti, Pharri librum De Homerica Graeca maxime adhibendum est, primo quia Homerica dialectica omnes alteros adflectat, secundo quod ipsa Homeri poemata praestantissima sunt in litteris Graecis. Graeca non tam difficilis est quam plures asserunt. Macte!

Then you should learn Classical Latin anyway. The best Medieval authors were writing something not all that different from the Latin of Cicero or Tacitus.

>medieval latin is a lot simpler than roman latin

Nah man, it runs the gamut just like Classical does. Try some Alaine de Lille, or Gildas, for example. Both of them wrote arguably more complex and difficult prose than anything from the "Golden Age". People get the idea that medieval Latin is easy because of the vulgate, hagiographies, etc. But there's a lot more to it than that.

Don't take his ideology too seriously. You need to learn the grammar in a traditional fashion alongside the texts. The texts are good because they give you lots of practice. There are these little grammar booklets that come with Orberg you can get. Or you could probably just get an Allen & Greenough and read up on the sections Orberg grazes on in those little grammar sections at the end of each chapter. When you're getting used to a language, of course you'll be subtranslating IMO. And with something like Latin, even academics who have studied it their whole lives are generally not reading it the same way they read English.

>Si Latinam nosti, Pharri librum De Homerica Graeca maxime adhibendum est, primo quia Homerica dialectica omnes alteros adflectat, secundo quod ipsa Homeri poemata praestantissima sunt in litteris Graecis. Graeca non tam difficilis est quam plures asserunt. Macte!
jesus man, are you learning Latin from a dictionary?

Thanks a bunch for the information, I hadn't ordered any of the supplemental grammar texts from Orberg but now I might. And thanks for clearing that up for me about subtranslating, I was a bit lost on that.

What's your beef? I don't think any of those words are misused or out of place. "Maxime" is colloquial. The primo ... secundo thing is barbarous, I realized as I hit "post". But what would make you say I was "learning from a dictionary"? They're simple sentences with simple words.

I ask out of curiosity, not any desire to exculpate myself. I pretty much never compose anything in Latin so it makes sense I'd be bad at it, but I wanna know how I was bad.

>Try some Alaine de Lille, or Gildas, for example. Both of them wrote arguably more complex and difficult prose than anything from the "Golden Age"

You're exaggerating. If those examples are more complex, it doesn't make the whole thing more/as difficult. In general, medieval latin is much easier.

I haven't read enough medieval Latin to say whether it's Generally easier or harder, but if you're Generally interested in medieval Latin lit you'll have to read some fairly difficult authors, like the two I cited, and others I didn't, like Fulgentius or Martianus, or Scotus' translation of pseudo-Dionysius.

I would argue that all of the strictly "Classical" Latin prose authors (Cicero, Livy, Suetonius, Caesar, Nepos, Tacitus) are relatively easy compared to those guys.

I don't see how you can say "yes there are difficult medieval authors, but it's still mostly easy". What corpus of works are you referring to? Because the authors I've cited are all pretty important. If you're only interested in chronicles and hagiographies, then I'd agree that it is mostly much easier than Classical.

You need to read more Cicero, and other natural Latin.
It's obvious you have the basics learnt, but it's like when someone who learnt English perfectly from a book says, "How do you do?", or "I am very well, thank you," it sounds robotic.

Reading more in Latin will take the edges off, but especially Cicero because he advises on where and when to use phrases/words depending on your company.

The main thing that stick out is that it sounds like a Veeky Forums post talking about "the Greeks" being translated; read anything in Latin about acquiring things from the Greeks, and they don't talk about them like Veeky Forums explains everything with "the Greeks". Or acquiring anything from the French or anywhere else.
>tl;dr- read more rhetoric and orators
>moar danaus less Greeks

Cicero's way better at puns than Scotus and probably some of the highest level Latin you'll ever read.

The Romans actually had a word for someone like you: ficosissimus.

I've read every one of Cicero's speeches, half his philosophical works and maybe a quarter of his letters.

Is there any community apart from the vatican liturgy knitting forums that uses exclusively latin?
If not, can we start one?

nope, we can't.

People like you are grass waiting to be mowed down.

Stay pleb. PS, normies > you.

>people seriously suggesting learning chinese itt

fuck off to sci or biz

>5000 year old civilisation known for its poetry
>sci or biz

was forced to learn it in school.

failed every text in final year, only graduated because the guy that oversaw my compensation test took pity in me and ended the test early.

would not recommend to get forced to learn latin in school.

What about greek? Not OP, but I'd like to learn it as well...

Got ISBN numbers?

Learning Latin is still standard in German Gymnasium and some schools (Humanistische Gymnasien) offer Greek and Hebrew and stuff

My school only offered Latin, had five years of it. I've forgotten everything by now unfortunately.

Pic related are my old Latin schoolbooks.

However, it did give me the ability to understand scientific terms borrowed from Latin or Greek without looking them up.

>Got ISBN numbers?

ISBN - 978-0-521-69852-8, grammar.

ISBN - 978-0-521-69851-1, text and vocab

There's also an extra book that has the solutions to all the exercises, but I never bought it.

Ta very much

I'm waiting for some recommendation too

Literally the 3rd post in the thread.

In Portugal they're teaching kids ancient greek/latin again.

Certe, incipiamur facere

I've attended four universities and taught at another for a while and they all had someone in their English department who was both familiar with Greek and Latin, and willing to tutor. This includes a couple of podunk places.

Usually it's the old, conservative Catholic guy that every English department also seems to have.

I study Classics prose composition at Oxford and I'm currently in my 4th year. Having spent 4 years writing Latin prose at arguably the most prestigious classics institution in the world I can't see anything particular wrong with his Latin. It's simple, readable Latin prose. You're just trying to sound cleverer than you are. Why don't you give us an example of some original Latin prose in the style of Cicero and we can see how much better you are

Any reference material you'd recommend to an autodidact?

For what level?
If it's beginner Latin, I'm not really sure (I learned Latin years ago with the Cambridge Latin Course but I was like age 11 and it's probably not suitable for adults). For beginner Greek, the Reading Greek series is undoubtedly the best but I would also highly recommend "John Taylor - Greek to GCSE" if you can find it, it's a great beginner's textbook.

For reference grammar, the best Latin grammars are Kennedy's Latin grammar (for basic stuff) and Gildersleeve's Latin grammar for the more obscure stuff. Kennedy covers basically everything but every now and again a really obscure grammar point might require you to check Gildersleeve.
For Greek grammar, Abbott and Mansfield's Greek primer is the best by a mile.

If you're talking Latin/Greek prose composition the gold standard is still North and Hillard's Greek/Latin prose composition books. If you can deal with the slightly antiquated English they are by far the best.

rekt

>4 years of latin
>doesn't know Cicero's style or who writes after him Erasamus and Grotius
>doesn't recognise Virgil's version of the Greeks on Latin
>when even PPE students know timeo Danaos et donas ferrentes
>thinks Oxford, even Greats, still does comp
oh i am laffin m9 i can't really top tibi nullum periculum esse perscipio for this

I'm an expert memer and 4channer since 2006, truly you are the one who is inferior and butthurt in this discourse

>memers don't even know who their quoting when they say 'i see no problem with that'
>not even a dfw
i've seen better memers too

You are in wrong, he is clearly superior in terms of intellecutalism, you are desperate just desperate..

A pathetic pleb !

>tfw user tries to make you publius clodius pulcher
>still can't quote cicero
i got my dress on and everything, m8, and it's tribune of the plebs to you

>implying Veeky Forums knows any language other than english

I do. I speak Norwegian, English, German and Icelandic, and I also know Ancient Greek, hence why I am in this thread.

And you want to be noticed by everyone.

textkit dot com

Japanese. I read light novels.

I used to use this book when i was assisting to ancient greek classes

dropbox.com/s/rdy21gapfcpxdij/From Alpha to Omega - A Beginning Course in Classical Greek.pdf?dl=0

Best place to start with Ancient Greek? What book and so on?
Same, but for Japanese?

Are you able to read greek now?

>Best place to start with Ancient Greek? What book and so on?

not that guy, but I think it's generally agreed that Reading Greek is the best course nowadays. You can find plenty of resources at textkit.com as referred by

read manga

I wish there was a greek version of Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata :(

Me too :(
It's harder w/ the alphabeta being different though and with the pitches

If you're still around, where? I was born in Lisbon and I haven't heard about that.

Assimil is the closest you can get, anons.

Lookk retard. I'm learning chinese with a chink friend. That shit is 10000% bullshit. Chinks are learning english, not the otherway arround. Unless gommies remove hanzi from the face of the planet and adopt vomit induncing pinyin there is no way the mandarim is going to be of any use. But guess what? Everyone hates pinyin. Even Mao hates pinyin. His poetry book was so dense, antique and 4deep8u that surprised people.

>And you want to be noticed by everyone.

Which is a problem how exactly? :^)

I have the same textbook and ame doing a section of a chapter a day (3-6 sections in 35 chapters). Also if you follow this textbook the work book that goes with it is invaluable to understand not only WHAT but HOW you should be understanding the new information that's being presented to you.

I know English and German, have reading French and am learning classical Latin -with the interest in learning Attic Greek.

Anybody fancy helping out this retard on which book that is?
I'm seeing 40 different results when I search for it.

Your chink friend is the least chink chink I've ever heard of.

And pinyin is infinitely superior to characters although it still sucks beyond anything aesthetically.

He is taiwanese. He is true chink :^). Also, zhuyin>>>>>>pinyin.

He is Uruguayan. And Taiwan is worst China because it is best China.

Well almost the same thing as a airplane babby. Give the guy a rest, he just spent one week in urgay

Being a bitch is a problem.

"PLEASE NOTICE ME"

Lingua Latina per se Illustrata, by Hans Orberg. First volume is called Familia Romana.

Should I spend five years learning Japanese or Mandarin?
I like poetry, if that should matter at all.

Try LOEB Classical Works, they have quite a list of good books, left side is the original language and the right one is in english, that can be quite helpful.

"5 Years"... you can learn another language in one month with the right material, depending on how much effort you put into it.

I recently went to study Aristotle and got Categories from the library of my uni. It was missing a couple of sentences in the second chapter. I had to look up at the Clarendon translation to understand what Aristotle was saying.

Tha'ts nice.

Oh, and yes, the first translation I read was from the LOEB colletion.

Holding the book in my hands right now and there's no sentence missing

>It's hard and not really useful
I really hate this fucking meme. If someone has a genuine interest in something, then learning it is automatically useful.

>Most spoken language in the world

Maybe in terms of native speakers, but English far surpasses it if you include second language learners.

Here in italy at the Liceo Classico we learn both Latin and Ancient Greek