Anyone here speak Latin? How difficult was it to learn?

Anyone here speak Latin? How difficult was it to learn?

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very few people speak latin - ost people read it.

>read
Fairly easy. I'm a native slav though, so it was easier for me to understand latin's case-based grammatical structure, anglos would have to rethink their habits
>speak
nearly impossible, it a ded language after all so you get zero practice space

Vocabulary shouldn't be too hard since the majority of rootwords can be found in english (or any romance language if you speak those), grammar is a major hurdle, I suggest to rote memorize it with dowling method (www.jonathanaquino.com/latin/) and then just read a lot

You shouldn't even plan to read it unless you can find a few others to speak it to.

And even then, most people that can speak Latin can only speak Ecclesiastic Latin.

It is easy to learn.

It's easy to learn the forms and the basics of grammar, it's hard for most people to reach a point of reading comfortably. Latin is very terse and compressed, certainly moreso than Greek, and although it is inflected many of the noun/adjective forms are ambiguous, and because its verb system is so defective there are various work-around constructions that add another layer of difficulty. Many clauses in Latin can be interpreted two or more different ways, with one being obviously correct, but it takes a good amount of practice to be able to comprehend the correct interpretation immediately without stopping and thinking, and often getting stuck.

The vocabulary is also about as easy as can be, as easy as French. You can take a big chunk of Latin and find hardly any word that has not been productive in English. This isn't enough to offset the difficulties inherent in its syntax, though.

I took a couple years of it in high school, fairly easy language and helps you a lot on the SAT

It's an easy class to pass and easy to learn the basics, easy to read Caesar and Cicero and other writers with a simpler prose style, but it's not easy for an English speaker to fluently understand sentences like

>Numenio inter philosophos occultorum curiosiori offensam numinum, quod Eleusinia sacra interpretando uulgauerit, somnia prodiderunt uiso sibi ipsas Eleusinias deas habitu meretricio ante apertum lupanar uidere prostantes, admirantique et causas non conuenientis numinibus turpitudinis consulenti respondisse iratas ab ipso se de adyto pudicitiae suae ui abstractas et passim adeuntibus prostitutas.

Or

>In hac epistola quicquid deflendo potius quam declamando, uili licet stilo, tamen benigno, fuero prosecutus, ne quis me affectu cunctos spernentis omnibusue melioris, quippe qui commune bonorum dispendium malorumque cumulum lacrimosis querelis defleam, sed condolentis patriae incommoditatibus miseriisque eius ac remediis condelectantis edicturum putet, quia non tam fortissimorum militum enuntiare trucis belli pericula mihi statutum est quam desidiosorum, silui, fateor, cum immenso cordis dolore, ut mihi rerum scrutator testis est dominus, spatio bilustri temporis uel eo amplius praetereuntis, imperitia sic ut et nunc una cum uilibus me meritis inhibentibus ne qualemcumque admonitiunculam scriberem.

Let alone the tougher poets.

I took a semester of it in uni, OP. I think that I got more out of French, but it does help one learn how to decipher the occasional latin phrase. On the other hand, if you plan on entering graduate school, it would be very useful in some disciplines such as law, literature, anthropology, classics (obviously required in this case), etc.

>prostitutas

woah hey

It is talking about prostitution too, to paraphrase it:

Dreams informed Numenius, the most curious of the philosophers after occult matters, of the offense of the gods, because he had interpreted the Eleusinian mysteries, as he seemed to see the Eleusinian goddesses dressed as prostitutes standing before an open brothel, and when he asked them whence came this turpitude not fitting to gods, they angrily responding that he had dragged them from the sanctuary of their modesty, and that they were now prostituted to any that passed by.

I have done some spoken Latin in the past; this past summer I spoke just Latin for a whole week at a seminar put on by University of Kentucky. Spoken is hard for the first little bit b/c you're generally gonna be unused to it if you've had the traditional curriculum of Latin education (at least here in the States). The main ways you can practice are through events with UK, the Paideia Institute, and/or (if you're young enough) Accademia Vivarium Novum. Most of these guys like you to know most/all Latin grammar beforehand though, even if you haven't done spoken before.
> zero practice space
It exists, you just have to look for it. (See above)
The new SAT took off the vocab section though, so it's no longer the emolument it once was
>not using v for consonantal u

The syntax is pretty difficult for Latin. That is probably why I quit after the first semester. I'm not sure that I quite get the gist of that sentence.

Yeah, it's a very different headspace to get into actually. If you can get used to it by reading enough though (one of the main emoluments of Oerburg) you will start to internalize the typical order, making reading comprehension a good deal easier

Paraparaphrased: Numenius the Nepolatonist wrote in one of his treatises about the interpretation of the Eleusinian mysteries. Because of this desecration he had a nightmare where he saw the Eleusinian goddesses dressed as whores, and they accused him of having prostituted them.

This is all in the context of discussing why philosophers use allegorical stories and why it's okay for a seeker of truth to speak in fables. It's from Macrobius' commentary on the Dream of Scipio, which is a portion of Cicero's Republic corresponding to Plato's Myth of Er.

I completely agree.

>consonantal u

I agree on this too but I was copy-pasting and din't feel like going through the whole thing just for that.

I studied it for 8 years in elem and high school and can read it easily with a dictionary besides me, but there's no way i'd be able to speak it fluently - that's not the point of learning Latin anyway.

Some writers are super easy to read, and some are super difficult, just like in any other language. They tend to construct large sentences with weird word positioning and syntax which might seem unnatural.

On the other hand, the cases and verb patterns are super easy. Latin is like a polar opposite of Ancient Greek in that matter.

What are some authors that are easy to read?

>Ου λεγειν Ελληνιkά

Δοkεις νεπιος εταίρος εμός

Caesar, Livy, Petronius (though his vocab can be hard), Catullus, the Vulgate
Read all of Oerburg first though if you haven't

i can read it and speak it but i'm italian so i guess it's easier for me

> (OP)
>>Ου λεγειν Ελληνιkά
>Δοkεις νεπιος εταίρος εμός
Hellēnikēn, my friend. It's accusative.

Ps. Latin learner for about 15 years. As far as languages go, it's one of three easiest out there. Grammar is pretty easy, just the vocabulary takes time to accrue.

i think in aristotelian greek but cannot write it

Is the number of great literary and philosophical works in latin big enough to justify learning a dead language?


>greeks use triangles as letters

>O
We use circles as letters.

I'm taking an introductory German course right now, for about a month studied Latin grammar independently (and still have all my notes on it), and have a introductory Latin course next term. I presume this will make it a fair bit easier, am I correct in this thinking?

>Latin is like a polar opposite of Ancient Greek in that matter.

Yeah, Greek morphology is pretty difficult but once you've got those hundreds of verb forms and irregularities committed to memory, and have got a decent vocabulary, it's generally easier to read.

Yeah, it was written continuously for 1,500 years.

Cicero's philosophical works, some of Cicero's speeches (e.g. De Imperio, In Verrem), Cicero's letters if you have notes to explain the context, what's left of Varro, Ovid is the easiest poet imo but none are all that easy for a beginner, Isidore's Etymologies, Ampelius' Liber Memorialis, Pliny the Elder, the Vulgate (though its vocabulary can be unusual), Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri, Rhetorica ad Herennium, De Inventione, I could go on. Of those Isidore is probably the simplest and also a good author to read in general if you're interested in this sort of thing. There are lots of fairly easy authors those are just a handful of ones not usually mentioned in these contexts.

Sure, of course the prior Latin experience will help you with more Latin. The German won't really, other than being an introduction to how case works.

Thanks a lot user!

Fucking wrecked im m8, even if Greek is the Vietnamese of European languages.

It's easy if you have the time to dedicate to it. There are two good books with different styles of teaching, that I know of. Wheelock's Latin and The First Year of Latin by Gunnison and Harley.

What makes you say that?

>tfw you country's shit-tier education can't even properly teach your native language let alone other languages

I really envy people who had the proper chance of learning latin in school.

>native slav
>learning latin
Why don't you turn into your regular activities like beating up homosexuals and pissing into vodka bottles?

>can only speak Ecclesiastic Latin.
What exactly is the difference between this and other types? I've heard that seminarists HAVE to speak latin in congresses, since it's the only language guaranteed to be common to all of them.

>and often getting stuck
Isn't this the case when learning any language, in this case with the added difficulty that there are no native speakers?

To all of you out there I wholeheartedly recommend you download and install this
>gameofbay.org/torrent/7810643/Lingua_Latina_per_se_Illustrata_I__II_and_supplements
It's a Latin course in the fashion of most other language courses. You follow a Roman family in a day-to-day basis and all the situations that arise in the domus. They even have slaves!!

Dude, what the fuck. Chill.

>ecclesiastical latin

It's a meme, good ecclesiastical latin is just classical latin with some words for Christian concepts not found in the pagan authors and an Italianate pronunciation.

>Isn't this the case when learning any language, in this case with the added difficulty that there are no native speakers?

Yeah but I was referring specifically to the ambiguity. A word in -a might be the subject, might be a neuter plural subject or object, or might be the ablative of a 1st declension noun, which ablative itself could have any of at least half a dozen meanings. A word that ends in -is could be the second person of a present verb, or the ablative plural of a noun in the first or second declensions, or the genitive singular, or accusative plural, or nominative singular or a 3rd declension noun, or even a nominative plural in some authors. When you have a big line of nouns/adjectives and not much vocabulary or experience and you're trying to read it as naturally as you can manage post-Orberg this can get really confusing for some, it certainly did for me anyway.

>post-Orberg
Please, elaborate

What you say about ambiguity is true for latin, but also for many other languages and you are absolutely correct in that it is a matter of vocabulary. In German, for example, another flexive language, the gender and number of nouns is a must in order to correctly understand and use the declensions properly. But I understand that Latin, being a dead language, has not really had the chance to evolve into a simpler version of itself, being now scattered through the languages it has seeped itself into and the ones it helped solidify a thousand years ago.

>post-orberg

I was referring to Orberg's LLPSI; even though it trains you to read Latin naturally there's still a shock when you hit "real" Latin authors. Volume II would help the transition a lot but I didn't use it myself.

There's another element to this "ambiguity" that I should have mentioned: it's often possible to interpret an individual group of words in a clause or sentence in a way that is technically grammatical but makes a mess of the meaning of the passage. I only have experience with English speakers learning Latin but this comes up all the time.

A random sentence, again from Macrobius because that's what I have in front of me:

"Neque enim corpus proprie plenum dixeris quod cum sui sit inpatiens effluendo, aliena est appetens hauriendo."

A beginner would be liable to take that "quod" as a causative, which is technically grammatically possible, but would make a meaningless sentence:

"For one would not say that a body is full because, as it is intolerant of itself in its deteriorating, it must take matter from outside itself"

as opposed to the right reading

"For one would not call that body full that, intolerant of itself inasmuch as it deteriorates, must take matter from outside itself."

And that's just a tiny simple sentence. In a long complex sentence, especially one talking about something foreign to the modern reader, like a Roman court case, errors like this can pile on top of each other etc. I don't think any of the Romance languages or German or even ancient Greek are as bad as Latin in this respect.

I understand what you mean, and I have only practiced the first handful of chapters of LLPSI, but I believe this is a matter of distance from the source material. As you say, English speakers might have a real hard time translating that or any other sentences, a problem that ANY reader might have, but when you say

>any of the Romance languages or German or even ancient Greek are as bad as Latin in this respect.

I think you are closing Latin to the interpretation given to it by speakers of non-Romance speakers. Maybe, just maybe (since I don't have enough knowledge of Latin), it would be different for speakers closer to Latin in their respective native tongues.

I remember when I was younger I used to have the same problem with English. And it is a problem of translation as opposed to a virtue of immersion, which, in the case of Latin, is impossible outside echlesiastical circles, whose members are relatively used to Latin.

Many English-speakers, myself included, would have a hard time translating an "old" literary text, not because of a lack of understanding of the original source, but because some concepts, while understandable, simply do not exist in, or are difficult to traverse to, a different language. This, however, is not the exact case of your example, but helps illustrate my doubts.

Seeing that this thread holds not many participants, I'd like to know why you started learning Latin, and what you use it for, if at all.

Pic unrelated.

>mfw there are still people who read Orberg before learning grammar
DO NOT start from Orberg, first memorize grammar, syntax rules and declension cases from Wheelock before reading actual latin. God, we should make this a sticky. Why can't people seem to understand?

>Why can't people seem to understand
Can you elaborate without being too caustic on those who do not share your oh, so vast, knowledge?

There's nothing to elaborate smartass. You first start with grammar, and Orberg comes after then. Was it too hard for you to understand? Do you want me to explain it with an infographic?

Relax, you double nigger, and please elaborate on how grammatical comprehension SHOULD come before linguistical if you weren't taught your native language the way you are advocating.

>I'd like to know why you started learning Latin, and what you use it for, if at all.

I started learning it because I needed a language credit and Latin sounded neat. I really can't tell you why I love it, exactly, any more than anyone can truly tell you why they love anything. I would say the relative difficulty of Latin makes it beautiful for me (though there are plenty of difficult languages, Russian is easily harder than Latin, let alone the eastern languages etc, but Latin's the one that got me, and then Greek when I realized Latin lit was just a branch of Greek lit). I've reached a point of being able to read fairly flowingly but there's still this feeling that every sentence is a blossoming flower. When I read English, even great English, I understand it right away and lose some sort of mystery. I forget who said it first, but no one loves a language like a foreigner. I don't really use it for anything, my work has nothing to do with it.

>ould have a hard time translating an "old" literary text, not because of a lack of understanding of the original source, but because some concepts, while understandable, simply do not exist in, or are difficult to traverse to, a different language.

Yeah translating is very hard and annoying. I can understand what I'm reading but if someone asked me to say it in English I would have to think hard about how to render it. Even that sentence from Macrobius, I couldn't really translate it. Even abandoning the effluendo...hauriendo image, I made a very awkward sentence in English, when the Latin is perfectly elegant.

Why not do them simultaneously? I don't think you can up and "acquire" the grammar of a language like Latin just from reading, you need to study the formal rules, but I also don't see why you need to learn all the grammar first before working through an elementary textbook. I don't think it would be wrong but I don't see why it's necessary and it's not what I did or anyone else I know did.

Oh and I ought to ask, since I hardly ever meet anyone, in real life or online, with an interest in the learned languages, why you are studying Latin.

I'm really like the Heracliteans in Lucretius:

omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque,
inversis quae sub verbis latitantia cernunt,
veraque constituunt quae belle tangere possunt
auris et lepido quae sunt fucata sonore.

>>idiots love and marvel at everything that hides under complicated words, and think whatever is pleasant to the ear and dyed in a beautiful sound is true

Kind of shit translation "inversis verbis" means something not quite like complicated etc but you get the gist.

>A language credit
What did you major in?

In my case I've always wanted to learn latin. In my country's highschools there is the possibility of taking different "paths" as a preparation for uni, one of them being Humanities (History of Art, Latin and Greek, are the specifics, the rest being Language, Philosophy, English, and History), which, in my own, newly-constructed, scarcely-attended highschool was non-existent.
In university I studied Translation and Interpreting, graduated, been working ever since and now I've enroled Uni again, this time doing Philology on my own mother tongue, which has Latin for at least two years.

I don't know why I've always been interested in it. The grandfather of my tongue, the language spoken by all those statesmen and poets that set the basis for the western world (partly). Over the year's I've tried and gotten started, always failing to get anywhere near usefulness.

I've started reading the textbooks necessary for my course, and as someone has mentioned above (might well have been you), rote memory, while derided as a form of learning, is quite useful when first getting into contact with the declension tables.

>idiots love and marvel at everything that hides under complicated words, and think whatever is pleasant to the ear and dyed in a beautiful sound is true

Funnily enough, there is a saying in my country that goes:
>Lies said in Latin sound true.
Which is more or less the case for both of us. We are suckers for anything that goes, or seems to go, deeper than its own words might imply.

Also, are you familiar with the Dolorem Ipsum? It should be taught in elementary school in this age of instagram, facebook and gender-bullshit. Might be this sentence is unrelated. I am sort of drunk.
>In vino veritas.
Could be.

Jeez, you are dense. Here let me solidify a bit. Y'see, learning a language is like structural engineering. And like structural engineering, choosing at which place to build your development comes at first. If you neglect or miscalculate the factors, it'll most likely fail in the long run. Grammar is that ground. If your grammar has a solid, sturdy base, you can build and design the latter parts with less stress and with more efficiency. Now, that's why learning grammar comes at first because you can't survey and start to build at the same time.

>you can't survey and start to build at the same time.
I don't think this is the case with languages. Of course, one can't study two things at the same time, since one can't read to things simultaneously, but the can be done interchangeably. You can't get as far as passive voice in future subjunctives in a purely grammatical form without prior working knowledge of easier structures, working here being practical (if Latin were any other language, practical would not only mean read, but heard and spoken). So I still believe that grammar is not an essential prior knowledge to vocabulary or texts, but important, as far as learning a language goes. The intricacies and minutiae can be left for later in the learning process.

Also, you could have replied this in conjunction with your first post, instead of being an uppity bitch of a faggot that need to adhere insults to opinions. This second paragraph comments on the form of your previous posts and is therefore superfluous.

As to your metaphor, learning a language is not like structural engineering. At least not for me. For me learning a language is like getting to know somebody. You don't need to know about their past, motivations and fears in order to feel comfortable talking to that person. But really, learning a language is like learning a language, or like any other thing: an experience in and of itself.

So you're Italian then? Not like I know the educational systems of every country in the world, though.

>What did you major in?

When I started school I wanted to be an engineer but I ended up majoring in classics.

I always thought the dolorem ipsum was nonsense Latin based on a real passage in something of Cicero's, or I may be wrong, or I may be misunderstanding you.

>We are suckers for anything that goes, or seems to go, deeper than its own words might imply.

Haha yup. Real truth transcends prosaic language anyway. Beauty is true, mere prose always lies. I consider myself a skeptic in the classical sense and that worldview has led me to this extreme sort of "mystical aestheticism", or however you would call it.

>age of instagram, facebook and gender-bullshit.

Yeah fuck all that. I'm not an arrogant cock, I understand there's more than one way to live your life, and I know plenty of wonderful people who have barely picked up a book since college. But there is something really perverse about staring at a tiny screen all day, wearing out your thumbs, having more or less complete control over what you're experiencing. Same goes for playing computer games, watching TV/movies all the time, clicking around the internet all day, etc. It's worse than staring in a mirror preening your hair. It really disturbs the hell out of me. Some people have always been fairly shallow but now we have technologies custom made to reinforce that very shallowness. These are very strange times. When things start changing dramatically, there are always some people who embrace the change and try to make it their own, and some who bury their head in the sand. I bury my head in the sand. That's why I'm so interested in these pagans from late antiquity. If you didn't know the time they were writing, and couldn't recognize the marks of late latin, you would think they were contemporaneous with Cicero.

I'm rambling, I've been drinking too. Utinam ne mane scripti me paeniteat. I'll be going to bed but if you want to reply or say anything else I'll check this thread tomorrow.

He's right though, latin is unlike english in a sense that it has many cases for the same word. In english the most you need to learn about a word is its basic form, it's irregular plural for nouns, and it's irregular past for verbs. In english nouns carry only two bits of information - meaning and plurality, verbs carry meaning and sometimes tense. In latin the words are much more 'loaded', nouns carry meaning, gender, plurality, person, and role in a sentence, verbs carry meaning, plurality, tense, person, and mood. In other words, you can't just 'jump' into latin without getting extremely confused, it makes more sense to familiarize yourself with grammatical structures first

Fucccccc off boi, why not learn a language that you can actually use to talk to people. And don't be like 'ohhhh but it's about the literatoor' because (controversial statement here) Latin American Spanish literature is better than anything in Latin.

>triggered

I might blow you mind here, but you are actually allowed to study more than 1 language

Sure, but don't expect to be fluent in more than four or maybe five. Beyond that it just falls apart and you cannot maintain all the languages you know. So I wound use that very limited number to learn languages where literature is actively being produced.

>Beyond that it just falls apart and you cannot maintain all the languages you know.
Why not?

It's not an either-or thing. Tiny children spoke fluent Latin without understanding anything about grammar. It's just important to study the grammar alongside the reading to make sure you're not getting any blind-spots or misconceptions without realizing it. It's not like memorizing your paradigms and learning basic syntax before Orberg would be wrong but I doubt it's better and most people can't sit down and memorize dozens of forms and grammar rules without the reinforcement that comes from reading. What's the sense in knowing fuerim is a perfect subjunctive when you don't know what a perfect subjunctive does or how the verb sum is actually used?

>most people can't sit down and memorize dozens of forms and grammar rules without the reinforcement that comes from reading.
No, that's exactly how people learned latin since centuries. Just grow some balls and finish that wheelock before trying to sound smart you faggot.

>Tiny children spoke fluent Latin without understanding anything about grammar.
Native languages are not an argument. Your brain no longer consumes the information as a growing inflant brain does. And even if it did, I think people really overrate the 'natural' leaning. An adult who spends 10 years learning a second language with analytic, systematic approach is likely to speak it better than 10 years old kid who learned it natively.

>Latin American Spanish literature is better than anything in Latin.
>Implying the XXth century ANYWHERE gets even close to holding a candle next to >1000 years of civilization

>actually falling for that shitty bait

>No, that's exactly how people learned latin since centuries.

No, it isn't. What do you know about Latin pedagogy? They would be taught grammar with something like Donatus by a teacher who spoke exclusively Latin, so they memorized forms while reading a sizeable work of real Latin, and hearing Latin spoken to them throughout the day. Then they would go onto something like the Distichs of Cato and on from there to whatever. The grammar-and-translation method is only ~150 years old and its results have not been very impressive to judge by the quality of modern undergrads with 4+ years of Latin who can't sight-read their way out of a paper bag.