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/lit/ - Literature

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[ERROR] No.19201800 [Reply] [Original]

>thinking of learning latin
>ask how other people learned it
>"yeah bro I did XYZ and now after 3 years I can read simple passages of Cicero with the help of a dictionary!"
Jesus. What's the fucking point?

>> No.19201804

>>19201800
LLPSI is reddit, just memorize declensions and conjugations

>> No.19201806

Reading simple passages of Cicero with the help of a dictionary

>> No.19201808

>>19201800
the best way to learn a language is to hang around with people who speak it

maybe find some latin americans

>> No.19201809
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>>19201800
Just keep studying

>> No.19201810

>>19201800
reading Horace in like 20 years

>> No.19201815

>>19201800
i learned vietnamese in about a year and i'm a drop out retard

i believe you can learn latin, anon, you're probably smarter than me

>> No.19201824

>>19201806
>>19201810
OR I could learn 3 different living Romance/Germanic languages over the same period of time if it's going to take several years before being able to read the Latin authors I'm interested in.

>> No.19201848

>>19201824
If you are able to learn 3 languages in 3 years, you will not have to spend 3 years on Latin alone. Also Cicero is notoriously difficult. You can be satisfied with your German while still not being able to fully comprehend Hegel

>> No.19201855

>>19201848
>Cicero is notoriously difficult
kek

>> No.19201866

>>19201848
Somehow I doubt Cicero's defence speeches to the Roman public were as difficult as fucking Hegel.

>> No.19201871

>>19201824
No. Living languages take just the same time. I don't see why they wouldn't. You have a skewed perspective because you see those youtubers claiming they learned German in 3 months and are now going around impressing natives. They just redefine 'learning a language' as 'being able to say a few formulaic sentences to patient natives'. With Latin you can't pull this kind of bullshit because there is only one possible destination, which is reading well.

But three years for getting to the point where you can decode with the help of a dictionary is too long. If you work on it intelligently one or two hours a day you can get there in 6 months (same as a modern language). Between this level and real fluency, unfortunately, there is a chasm that can only be bridged by reading thousands of pages.

When I'm interested in a language I set myself this goal of getting to the point where I can decode. It's not a big deal and can be completed in a matter of months. At that point, if I enjoy doing it, I just keep doing it and some day I magically realize I've become fluent. If not, I can still appreciate discussions about the merits of different translations, check the original text for something I'm unsure of, or get back to decoding when there is a text that particularly interests me.

The sad truth is that learning a different language is a huge investment of time, and has usually no practical value besides personal enjoyment and interest.

>> No.19201876

>>19201848
I'm no expert on Latin, but wouldn't there be at least some level of change over time anyway? Early surviving latin texts must be at least somewhat different from late imperial Latin which im assuming was different to scholastic Latin with a transitional period between.
I'm more familiar with how english changed over time and while I'm pretty sure latin hasn't been as malleable as english it must have had some change over the Roman period, right?

>> No.19201880

>>19201866
One must distinguish between difficult language (mainly big variety of non-top-frequency vocabulary, but also difficult style and use of less common grammar / expressions) and difficulty of content. Philosophy books, when abstracted from the latter kind of difficulty, are usually pretty easy to read. They contain a small set of abstract vocabulary, rather than an enormous set of concrete vocabulary like fiction.

>> No.19201884

can i just start with LLPSI or should i read anything beforehand?

>> No.19201888

>>19201876
Everyone after the Augustan age autistically modelled their Latin on those canonical authors, so it didn't change much at all.

>> No.19201902

>>19201888
Interesting. I've seen books on scholastic latin so I assumed there was some change, was it a case of new vocab being added and the language otherwise remaining the same or are the books just not necessary?

>> No.19201918

>>19201884
Yeah, it is meant for absolute beginners. You may benefit from reading the Companion to Familia Romana alongside it if you want to approach it less casually

>> No.19201927

>>19201884
It's designed to be read without any prior engagement with Latin

>> No.19201945

Could anyone explain to a retard when we're saying Rōmā instead of Roma?

>> No.19202325
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So anyway if Latin is too long and time consuming before reading good authors I was thinking of learning French first. Is that a good idea anon?

>> No.19202330

>>19202325
yes definitely

>> No.19202353

>>19202325
No. If what you're after is reading any kind of literature without having to use a dictionary or mentally translate, then French is going to take a lot of time too. Start with the one you are interested in. If anything, a good idea would be:

- get as fast as possible to the point where you can decode Latin with the help of a dictionary

- start decoding Latin texts that interest you. It will take years of this before you reach complete fluency. While this slow but automatic task goes on in the background, you can start learning French if you want

>> No.19203104

>>19201888
This is false. You can't read Latin or you haven't read anything after Sedulius if you believe this.

>> No.19203129

>>19201945
we are never saying Roma. Rōmā is the ablative case of the first declension feminine noun Rōma

t. been studying latin in a uni for a month

>> No.19203199

>>19201866
>>19201855
Cicero wrote in an intentionally obtuse style to dab on plebs. He actually talks about this in one of this works, ironically.

>>19201945
Latin had strong and weak vowels; for example, "a" can make both the sound in father and in cat. The Romans DID make attempts to distinguish the two via macrons and diacritics, but that practice was not universal. It's helpful to do this for English learners of Latin because the case system is already something that you have to learn on top of the fact that without marking strong vs weak vowels many of the declensions are actually identical. For example, "agricola" is both "agricola" (nominative singular) and "agricolā" (ablative singular).

>> No.19203217

>>19201800
Just ignore anything said here
You will not find a single person who used that book that can read Latin

>> No.19203276

There is no point in learning Latin, that's why it's dead and no one teaches it anymore. Learn Chinese, it's way more rewarding. China is the only country on the rise, every other language will fall before Chinese.

>> No.19204025

>>19203217
a lot of people have, actually. what method do you propose? wheelock? complete shit.
>>19201800
check out the dowling method:
https://www.wcdrutgers.net/Latin.htm

>> No.19204036

>>19201800
translations are more like x-rays or recreations of the original work, so learning to decode the original on your own lets you get a better understanding of what the author's original intent was without the lens of the translator.

>> No.19204058

>>19201800
I could read cicero after about half a year with lingua latina and its resources its not that bad

>> No.19204089

>>19201880
This is very true. E.g. I'm learning Russian and I could read rather complex theoretical texts sooner than Tolstoy - precisely because of the vocabulary, as you describe.

>>19201855
>>19201866
Even meme pages about antiquity make fun of his complexity.

>>19202325
Yes, vocabulary-wise French is the major language closest to English, so it should make things significantly easier for you than, say, Russian.
Not that it will be easy, of course, only easiER.

>> No.19204109

The reason redditors try using LLPSI and fail is because they spend 15 minutes a day on it. They have the right materials but they treat it like duolingo.
Check out deka glossai's YT video on Latin or his self-published book on language learning. He came at it from the same desire of not wanting to be a bitch mechanically translating words in his head, and he correctly identified LLSPI as a tool to begin to actually learn the language because of its large quantity of graded text.

>> No.19204114

>>19201800
Hey I started learning Latin today! I got two books out from my library, one is the Cambridge method and the other is some grammar guide. The Cambridge method is really fun because it gets you reading simple sentences like "Cerberus in via dormat" or "dominus ancillam laudat". The stories are somewhat comical so they encode rather quickly. That damn Cerberus and how he intrats the culina while coquus is dormat. Mater was iratus!

>> No.19204240

>>19204114
>mater
>iratus
Anon...

>> No.19204246

>>19204240
What? For real I'm just trying to remember it off the top of my head.

>> No.19204250

>>19204246
not him but you used a male adjective. Mater irata erat.

>> No.19204261

>>19204250
Ah epic. I haven't gotten to the sex specific stuff yet. That's something I'm not looking forward to, god damn I hate pointless aspects of language.

>> No.19204273

>>19204261
its quite easy in latin compared to something like german, just wait til you get to the subjunctive

>> No.19204291

>>19204273
Tbh I don't even know what a subjunctive is but I have heard Latin grammar is brutal. Can't be much worse than learning Japanese was.

>> No.19204297

>>19204261
it's as pointless as any other grammar, anon...

>> No.19204303

>>19204297
I disagree, nothing is added to the language, no new concepts can be conveyed. What does English lack by being a neutral language?

>> No.19204313

>>19204303
English is not a gender neutral language.

>> No.19204316

>>19204303
its for aesthetic value, its a singsongy poetic language

>> No.19204330

>>19204313
Yes it is. Are you just trolling?
>>19204316
Englishes biggest drawback has always been how weird it sounds sung, I'll agree

>> No.19204338

>>19204330
tho one could say italian improves on it with how its pronunciation works but I like the rough edges of latin consonants and the vowel length

>> No.19204340

>>19204330
>Yes it is. Are you just trolling?
>I love my mother. It cares a lot about me.

>>19204316
Why do you post such retarded nonsense?

>> No.19204347

>>19204340
pronouns are not the same as gendered adjectives, the "gender" of them originates from indoeuropean where it was moved and unmoved or something like that and not sex related, hence why "it doesnt make much sense for a word to be male or female"

>> No.19204359

>>19204340
Yeah you're trolling. For future they.

>> No.19204414

>>19204347
>hence why "it doesnt make much sense for a word to be male or female"
adding "hence" is not a replacement for logic, which your post lacks entirely - grammatical gender is an entirely normal thing that makes plenty of sense (especially helpful in languages with freer word order)
>pronouns are not the same as gendered adjectives
Both can suggest or not suggest the gender. In both cases the grammatical gender is a significant element.
The origin is irrelevant when discussing what a phenomenon does within a particular language. We're discussing Latin, not PIE, it is Latin that is relevant here and not how it is different from PIE or some other proto-language.

>>19204359
I'm not the anon who was originally asked if he's trolling. I'm simply showing that, as the anon said, English is not a gender neutral language. Gender plays a role in it too, only a reduced one.

>> No.19204463

>>19204414
What? Gender neutral doesn't mean you can't explain genders, it means non pronouns aren't gendered.