Greek and Latin learning

[Anonymous No.13542030]

Hello lit, in this board, i constantly see, to learn philosophy, one should start with the greeks, and here and there i also see that some people went as far as learning greek and latin. So what books are there to actually learn those languages, actually study it and learn it, as a proper student learning german or french for example.

[Anonymous No.13542038]

>>13542030
my latin and greek are very bad but here is what I used

Greek- Hardy, Hansen, An intensive course
Latin- Wheelock's Grammar, and Lingua Latina per se illustrata.

Lingua latina is a special sort of book, it is entirely in latin, and has pictures, meant to immerse you immediately in the language, by starting with very simple phrases that you can infer from context, and building up. The other two books are typical grammars, which you just have to work through with a lot of exercises.

[Anonymous No.13542049]

>>13542030
Greek and ancient Greek ain't worth learning.
Better learn some romance language and read a good translation.
(btw, romanian counts too)

[Anonymous No.13542053]

>>13542038
thank you so much man, i will definitely check those out.

[Anonymous No.13542065]

>>13542038
Don't waste your money with Lingua Latina or Wheelock. Just read a free grammar book online. Then read the Vulgate Bible with Douay Rheims side by side. You'll pick it up eventually. Good luck, OP.

[Anonymous No.13542072]

>>13542065
For example, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15665

Free grammar textbook, easy to read and understand. Seriously don't waste your money with garbage Wheelock or LLPSI (both are low quality memes).

[Anonymous No.13542086]

>>13542053
no problem m8. It is immensely fun to learn languages, that satisfaction of seeing gibberish start to coalesce into meaning is beautiful. I have focused a lot more on French and Russian than the classical languages, which I sometimes regret, but any language with a decent literature will open to you an entire new world. Enjoy the process, and don't be discouraged if it is slow, the essential is to just study every day, and you will soon start to make great strides, even though the toil can be a bit painful at times. It's exactly like working out in that sense, it's slow and hurts, but it just keeps building on itself over time and you learn how to engage with it properly.

>>13542065
I downloaded those books lol, I barely ever buy physical books.Im not going to say you're wrong about them being bad books because I am the furthest thing from an expert, but they certainly taught me the fundamentals of the language, I just didn't follow through properly because I was working on a lot of other stuff at the time and life very much intervened. I intend to pick it up again at some point. I think almost any grammar will do if you just work at it.

[Anonymous No.13542095]

>>13542086
I just disagree with a natural reading method for Latin. Latin requires grammar study, esp. for an English speaker; however, OP might as try anything and see what works for him. :) So no problem trying LLPSI and Wheelock. Just he better not waste his money. I think LLPSI can be found online easily in PDF form. Idk about Wheelock but he can probably find it and save money.

[Anonymous No.13542106]

>>13542095
Im fairly oldschool about language study, I think doing shitloads of exercises combined with reading and translating is generally the way to go, but a lot of people get overwhelmed by how slowly that works at first, so it isn't necessarily bad to have something like LLPSI to just get you into it to begin with.
The Wheelock grammar is nowhere near as rigorous as the Greek grammar I posted but it does still make you go through the motions.

[Anonymous No.13542117]

>>13542106
Nice, nice. OP may as well try your recs. He might be old school too. I like a good deep dive into grammar before anything else but some people are more intuitive learners.

[Anonymous No.13542126]

>>13542072
>>13542095
thanks man, i had the feeling it would be crucial to study grammar, but as anon >>13542086 mentioned won't hurt to download his recommendations since i intend to get them for free lol.

[Anonymous No.13542148]

>>13542126
Based and comfy.

[Anonymous No.13542157]

>>13542117
>>13542126
I think we may have misunderstood each other. The Hardy Hansen is literally just grammar, it is very in depth, and the Wheelock is more modern but still focused on grammar. It's the Lingua Latina that is the weird one.

[Anonymous No.13542193]

>>13542038
is the greek book modern or ancient greek?

[Anonymous No.13542214]

we used sheldermine's introduction to latin in university and it was all very straightforward, you can also find the answer keys online for the exercises - cheers

[Anonymous No.13542241]

>>13542193
ancient greek of course, it's a great textbook, it has everything you could want from one

[Anonymous No.13542264]

Linguistics confuses me. Are you thinking in different languages? If so why have latin and greek enforced ideologically for centeries? Im still not seeing it.

[Anonymous No.13542266]

>>13542241
Who the fuck are you having dead language conversation with?

[Anonymous No.13542284]

>>13542266
single-handed conversations with the ancient greeks, they are teachers anon. Wrong about much, but they were an entire civlization, different than us, who can teach us much in their difference.

[Anonymous No.13542319]

>>13542284
Why bother with their teaches. We aren't living in ancient Greece.

[Anonymous No.13542325]

>>13542319
because God does not differentiate between periods or places, he is in all

[Anonymous No.13542346]

>>13542325
I'm just curious about the application. What use is a langueage no one speaks? Might as well be aramaic or cuniform, anglo saxon or old english. Why greek?

[Anonymous No.13542561]

I would avoid Lingua Latina until after you've done a more normal Latin grammar book, and then see if you still give a fuck about Lingua Latina. Honestly, Latin just isn't hard enough to require an "immersion" method that will inevitably make the process vaguer, because you won't have concrete milestones of progress. With a more standard book, you know what you know (because if you don't know it, you can't progress), and what you need to know.

Also, immersion is better served by just picking up a relatively straightforward text and working with it. Once you hit a decent level of basic knowledge, which will happen quickly, why not just jump right into Caesar or Cornelius Nepos or the Vulgate or something else? It will be slow at first and won't feel like "reading," but just keep doing it out of a genuine love of what you're reading, and you will naturally be assimilating vocabulary and learning different quirks. Do this alongside more traditional textbook practice (until you're done with the textbooks anyway) and you will have plenty of immersion and motivation to stay invested.

There is a great online annotated version of Nepos designed for first-timers but I can't find it. Here's a similar thing at least:
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/cornelius-nepos-life-of-hannibal-latin-text-notes-maps-illustrations-and-vocabulary

Learning an ancient language is a good way to learn how to learn a language most efficiently for this reason. You can't be bogged down and distracted by listening to 500 hours of tapes of three faggots talking to each other about spaghetti and bibliotecas. You have to learn grammar and syntax and then you have to hack your way through real texts with a machete until you assimilate enough vocab to feel at home. Once you do this, you can do it in any other language and blaze past your retard peers as they spend 5 years saying "I sort of know German???" but not really knowing whether they know German.

Use redundant textbooks. Be willing to re-do and revise the textbook. Be diligent but don't be a perfectionist. Don't be frustrated if certain things require multiple passes. Learning is 50/50: 50% conscious work to conceptually grasp and remember new things, 50% unconsciously learning/remembering three other things in the background without trying for every time you were struggling with something consciously. Enough redundancy and anyone can learn.

I recommend combining Shelmerdine and Cambridge for Latin, though you might only need one if you're really diligent. Cambridge has more and easier texts, Shelmerdine is more schematic and upfront with the grammar. Wheelock is probably fine, never used it though.

For Greek, Hansen & Quinn is maybe the best but it's brutally hard. Learn Latin first unless you have a very good reason to do Greek first. You will spend AGES memorizing morphology, a lot longer than with Latin, but the language is easier imho once you get to real texts.

[Anonymous No.13542574]

>his internal monologue isn't entirely in greek or aramaic

[Anonymous No.13542754]

>>13542346
well, it is recurring in Hannah Arendt's Human condition an in depth study of greek concepts just based on the root of a word.
It is very common the use of neologism in greek philosophy so it would explain her deep understanding the difference between some words that now can have very similar meanings (labour, work) because of our culture, but back then had different meanings .
The Bible if i am not mistaken was originally written in greek, so some translations could have interpreted some versicles in a number of a different ways.

[Anonymous No.13542772]

>>13542030
start with
[Lingua Latina per se Illustrata] Hans H. Orberg - Pars I_ Familia Romana

[Anonymous No.13542983]

[Anonymous No.13543009]

>>13542346
>What use is a langueage no one speaks?
Once something becomes useful it loses all its attraction for me

[Anonymous No.13543026]

>>13542030
Find a real high school Latin teacher and pay for classes.

[Anonymous No.13543090]

>>13543026
But I'm 30 years old

[Anonymous No.13543115]

>>13542346
>aramaic or cuniform [sic]
One of these is a language, the other is a writing system
>anglo saxon or old english
These are two terms for the same language
I'm going to call bait on this because I hope nobody this ignorant actually posts here

[Anonymous No.13543182]

>>13542065
>>13542561
You can go through Familia Romana in the course of few months. I don't see why you should torture yourself trying to build intuition through ancient texts.

[Anonymous No.13543214]

>>13542772
and don't forget to get Neumann's College Companion (or a translation of Latine Disco in your language)

[Anonymous No.13543400]

>studied Latin for six years
>can't sight translate anything beyond 'see Spot run' level sentences
>even with a dictionary and unlimited time, accurately parsing any literary sentence is hit or miss
At best, it feels more like Chinese Room style artifice than the lucid, freewheeling sensation of working in your native language. On some fundamental ontological level I can't comprehend the state of actually being fluent in more than one language. What is it like? When you think of something, do the variant words come up simultaneously, or in succession, or just from one preferential language and you have to make a conscious effort to switch into another one?

I've just given up on Latin at this point. I think my achilles heel is the combination of countless homophonic inflections across word classes with the loose sentence structure, which just leaves everything a sludge of morphemes.

[Anonymous No.13543492]

https://youtu.be/VgVc0t9yOHg
https://youtu.be/AVpRn0aVMwo

[Anonymous No.13543588]

>>13543400
why are you having so much trouble?
I'm a spanish speaker and to me latin is very accessible. by this I mean that six years is enough time to learn very decent spanish....

[Anonymous No.13543782]

>>13542049
>Romanian is worth learning over Ancient Greek

[Anonymous No.13543869]

>>13542346
usefulness is reddit

[Anonymous No.13544034]

>>13542030
I am a Classics PhD student, teaching both Greek and Latin and a large American university. I learned Latin from Shelmerdine and then read through LLPSI, and I learned Greek from Hansen and Quinn. I teach my students with Cambridge Latin Course (which is pretty good) and Alpha to Omega (which I don't like at all).

Basically, language learning comes down to 1) grammatical understanding and 2) comprehensible input. Most good textbooks will have both, but ancient language textbooks tend to be too heavily skewed toward 1. This is awesome if you can think abstractly and solve puzzles very well (hence the idea that these are "hard" languages), but for many people it never clicks. Hence, comprehensible input. LLPSI is only CI, which is why we suggest doing it as well. It is easy to find PDFs of everything online. Print them out; write words down. I use Anki flashcards to review.

That being said, the number one most important thing by far way more important than what book you use vital necessary thing is that you care and try and continue to care and try for years. I can't stress enough that there aren't really language learning shortcuts and that it will take time, dedication, and effort to learn.

Of course, the payoff -- reading Aeschylus or Horace in the original -- is beyond compare. Take that as motivation. You've just gotta practice every day.

>>13542561
You are fetishizing the labor of learning a language. There are way more fun and easier ways to get through texts than hacking through slowly with Perseus or some other dictionary in the beginning. However, OP, this poster is recommending basically what has been the standard method of Latin instruction in universities for a long time. It's something that works very well for ~20% of students.

>>13543090
If you are serious, email me at: outisreadsclassics at gmail dot com.

>>13543400
Read LLPSI all the way through three times, then LLPSI 2. You lack practice and comprehensive input, even if you theoretically have "six years" of learning. LLPSI 2 is mainly real real Latin with Latin-only explanations and illustrations. You'll "get it" soon, I promise. If that sounds daunting or boring, look up Steadman College Commentaries. Download a few of his texts and read through real Latin with ample notes til you're moving at a steadier pace. Basically, you just need to read waaaaay more (as in hundreds of pages, at this point) Latin as fast as possible.

Just keep working and keep your head up.

[Anonymous No.13544123]

>>13544034
Thanks for the effort post, friend. I discovered LLPSI here roughly a year ago, probably from one of your posts, and I've since worked through it and I'm well on my way to reading fluently, though I've still got lots of work to do.

[Anonymous No.13544145]

>greek and latin instead of mandarin and sanskrit

[Anonymous No.13544173]

learning both is kinda hard and time-consuming. Try archive dot org - it has plenty of old free books on learning both.

Readings: Latin - Satyricon (Petronius); Greek - A True Story (Lucian)