/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17159499]

Do any of you know anything about learning Latin by working with a text and dictionary? Is this method at all possible?
It strikes me as difficult because, while it would be easy to find what the words themselves mean, the aspects of voice/tense/case seem too complex to pick up without at a cursory knowledge of the systems of grammar. Also, the complexity seems made even more complex given that there exist many different dialects within the language. All this makes me think that I would need to just keep working through Wheelock's section by section.
I really want to pick up Latin so I can read the epic poets, definitely Ovid and Virgil. Something about a language that makes such precise use of grammar within the morphology itself is so beautiful to me. أأ

The other night I had a dream that I was reading a Latin poem about a king and it was so beautiful.

[Anonymous No.17159569]

>>17159499
I did a course in high school where we read Latin poems and shit. It was incredibly difficult, and that was after 3 years of learning Latin grammar and vocab.

The biggest issue is that they can change the grammatical constructs and word order for poetic purposes. Studying these artistic choices is a whole separate endeavor from grammar/vocab.

Once you unpack all of the writer's choices, it's certainly beautiful and meaningful. But it feels like no matter how advanced you get, you'll still need a companion text with every Latin text you read, or you may miss the meaning entirely.

[Anonymous No.17160475]

>>17159569
But /lit/ told me I could be translating Ovid in 6 months.

[Anonymous No.17161338]

>>17159569
Yep same with greek

[Anonymous No.17161436]

No, you need to learn the basic grammar first. The ablative has a dozen different uses, and multiple verb forms are ambiguous and you have to infer by context what form it is, and beyond that, there are rules for syntax that cannot be inferred from morphology alone. For example verbs/clauses in a certain mood change their meaning based on what preposition introduces the clause. How can you know any of that if you don't know the grammar?

All a textbook is, is a series of texts that have been custom selected or constructed by experienced readers to be relatively easier to learn than going into a random text "cold." If you go into a random text, and let's say you get lucky and it's an easy enough one, it will still be unevenly easy/hard. It may rely mostly on standard vocab and straightforward grammar but like anybody speaking/writing in their own language, it will contain sprinkles of higher complexity and rarer vocabulary or obtuse meanings. And you won't know the easy parts from the hard parts, because you're learning, so everything is still "hard" to you. You won't know which parts to gloss over because they're unusually and idiosyncratically hard, and which parts to focus on and really master because they are standard and necessary to know.

The purpose of graded readers and textbooks is that the experienced teacher knows what level you are at as a learner, so he can take such a text and elegantly elide or simplify the needlessly difficult parts. He still wants to give you an ascending progression to the peak, but he strategically removes sudden spikes in altitude, smooths out the path, and makes it fun and easy to traverse. There is no essential difference between this and reading original texts, other than the "levelling out" performed by the teacher/editor for your benefit. All they are doing is ensuring that you read passages that contain lots of useful repetitions of core concepts you are learning, at the time you are learning them: the chapter on subjunctive clauses will have lots of nice, easy subjunctive clauses e.g.

[Anonymous No.17161445]

>>17161436
That doesn't mean textbook texts aren't boring sometimes, sometimes you just don't jive with them etc. You should absolutely go offroad and try reading real texts. You will probably learn just as much by doing that as you are using the textbook. It's absolutely vital to keep your motivation up. The textbook people will try to keep your interest by varying texts and selections, and giving you historical information etc., but maybe you don't give a fuck about Plautus. A lot of textbooks assume you want to read poetry but I hated poetry and wanted to read nothing but historians.

Just look at the textbook as a skeleton of grammar rules, with extra meat (core vocabulary + grammar practice) to get you started. Technically all you "need" from the textbook is grammar, so if you don't jive with some of the meat, it's fine to get it elsewhere. You're gonna learn what capere means regardless of whether wheelock tells you or you encounter it 50 times in something else and have to look it up. Vocab is vocab. Wheelock only has it in the first place BECAUSE it's so common. Likewise you are going to have to read a trillion ut clauses in your life. Wheelock only forces you to read edited selections from some author with lots of ut clauses BECAUSE they are so common.

So the only thing you absolutely need from a technical book is the grammar. And there are things just called grammars, you can read a technical reference grammar and learn that way, a textbook is just a nicefied version of that. Back when people had more language skills, like they already knew Latin and maybe Greek just by going to school, they could often learn a language with just a grammar, dictionary, and lots of exposure, but that's because they already knew the grammar and only had to learn its "local" modifications in whatever language they were learning.

>>17159569
This too, learning the particularities of style and idioms of an author/period is a whole other ballgame. There is a kind of discouragement for people who master the textbook and then feel like it didn't prepare them for the real thing when they hit a real text and it seems to be made up of more "exceptions" than "rules." But you get used to it quick and that's just the way it goes with language.

You will definitely always need companions. Especially with poetry! All classical poetry needs to be interpreted, it will never flow like water for non-native modern learners.

[Anonymous No.17161474]

>>17161436
>>17159569
>>17161445
Thank you for the info friends
I will be back to discuss later

[Anonymous No.17161534]

>>17159499
I literally just cracked my phone screen and this painting speaks to me in every conceivable way right now.

[Anonymous No.17161741]

it is possible but not ideal a lot of the time. it should work great for latin though. clearly you're already familiar with it conceptually, that's enough.

learn a language don't learn about a language, engage with it such that you're constantly in a state of mental exertion trying to think in the language, comprehend and construct sentences naturally. if you can leave behind the language as a subject matter and break through the threshold into fluency, then not knowing inflections very well or many words doesn't matter because you will acquire them easily from that point (all you need to do is call up that fluency, not memorise as such just use the language).

treat inflections as their own words, if that makes sense, don't identify the words, ignoring their inflections and making guesses about their relations (grammar). take it all in as a whole and don't shy away. it's all systematic enough that learning them in isolation can be somewhat crippling as it doesn't have everything together as an interrelated whole. e.g. when you learn so and so inflection naturally you are also learning how exactly to use it (no description is a substitute for this competency).

start with latina per se illustrata, don't need a dictionary for it either. classical texts will be hard for other reasons, maybe read new latin texts first.

[Anonymous No.17161766]

>>17161741
btw the best method is balancing this natural method with economical grammar study. the important thing is to treat the actual language as the thing you're learning and not the textbook descriptions of it, meaning treat grammar study as a learning aid. you can learn a language like a baby does but you don't need to because it's quite slow and you're an adult with tools at hand, but there is danger in thinking of it as studying a textbook.

[Anonymous No.17161770]

>>17160475
KEK

[Anonymous No.17163080]

>>17161445
>You will definitely always need companions
>>17159569
>But it feels like no matter how advanced you get, you'll still need a companion text with every Latin text you read, or you may miss the meaning entirely.
So would these companion texts have all the info I need, not only vocab definitions? I'd figure that there would be some sort of online thing nowadays for classical texts like Ovids' with all the grammar info in margins/scrollovers.

>>17161741
>>17161766
I like the way you think. You share my attitudes. I find a lot of joy in just picking up phrases alone. I understand that going through it is arduous, but if I have to work at one book of Metamorphoses while studying my grammar, I wouldn't mind the time it took. Really there is so much meat and art in these texts that one page is enough to keep my occupied and interested. Rip i just spent part of my studying today reading an entire page of Wheelock's consonant pronunciations oy vey!

What do you think of Wheelock? I'd hate to abandon the text I have at hand but if you think this 'latina per se illustrata' is the way to go then i'll trust. I meant to imply by my main post that I wanted to use classical texts with the addition of economical grammar study.

[Anonymous No.17163334]

>>17163080
Companions/annotated versions generally assume you know the language reasonably well and are trying to study the texts directly, so they contain help on philological issues, variant interpretations, glosses of incredibly difficult or obtuse passages etc.

Not the LLPSI I say stick with whatever you enjoy, again motivation is key so a mediocre book that excites you for some intangible reason is better than a theoretically perfect book that you don't feel inclined to pick up for whatever reason.

If you don't mind translating things slowly for fun and practice, you could also try having a relatively literal English translation open alongside the Latin and checking your own understanding against how the translator understood it. That always helps me.

>>17161766
I agree with this, my head was too in the textbook and I procrastinated real engagement with texts for too long as a result. But I see many people go the opposite route and think they can learn by immersion alone, which is a myth.

I always say it's like math. You need the explanations and you need lots of practice. There is no one magic book or method or problem set. You need to actually understand the problem/solution abstractly and you need to have practice applying it hundreds of times. Both are necessary and everything else is secondary.