Latin

[Alexander III]

Just a nuisance of curiosity, but who here knows Latin, or rather knows latin to such a degree that they can read the ancient latin texts with only minor difficulty. If so when and where did you learn it?

[Sionn Harrow]

I've studied latin for five years, but it still takes me hours to get through even a couple of pages of the old texts :P

[kasie]

I learned enough to get through what was then 'O' level and can sort of struggle through a text or an inscription. I shed tears of blood over it at the time as I had a very short time to study the course and pass the exam as I needed the pass to be able to apply to read English at all but four English universities in those days.

Strange that you should post this today - I received a monthly Newsletter this morning from the National Botanic Garden of Wales, just down the road from me here in SW Wales. As usual it was bi-lingual but towards the end of the English part, it suddenly went into Latin - for no reason that I could make out! Maybe it was a ploy to find out if we were reading it right through to the end.

[dfloyd]

I can count to ten in Latin and translate Veni, vidi, Vici, I think. Seriously though, it is good for everyone to take a couple of years of Latin, preferably in high school. Not to be able to translate Virgil, but for a better understanding of English and the Romance languages.

[Buh4Bee]

Translated the Aeneid for HS AP Latin. Couldn't easily translate anything now.

[Seasider]

Took it to A Level though I found it difficult at the time...learning the grammar was a grind. When I got to read Latin literature especially Virgil and Livy I loved it and I am sure my English benefited enormously. I struggle with it today but I am determined to get through Book 4 of the Aeneid before the spring comes.

[Wilde woman]

I took four years of Latin in high school as well, and translated portions of the Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses.

But to find someone of the caliber you're describing, I think, you'd have to look for a Classics major.

[mortalterror]

Try these guys, Alexander. http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php

[kiki1982]

Also took two years in secondary school. The first three quarters of the first year were fine (even with all the grammar :p), but the last bit of the first year the teacher suddenly realised that she was a bit behind on the programm, so started firing conjugations and declensions at us (we hadn't done anything beyond capere/amare and rosa-avus-domum) every day. :eek: So that was me done, I gave up. Had to do the second year, but couldn't understand due to the bl**dy teacher of the former year:(.

I am still determined to learn it one day :).

I have known a woman from Hungary (teaching at the university of Budapest now, PhD in English and soon in Theology) who could actually read and understand Latin. Though that was only inscriptions as far as I know, but pretty long. So maybe she could 'just' read the Aeneid.

[hanzklein]

Anyone know why Latin is supposedly so hard? I can make sense of some fragmented phrases/passages and I have literally 0 experience with the language. I realize there are cases and all that, but I heard that people can spend years at Latin and still not understand it fluently like maybe they would English, rather they work it out like a math problem with the grammar to see what its saying. Is the problem only the cases and inflected forms? Just how complex are they and why?

[Seasider]

I can only speak for myself, but my method of decoding a sentence in any language is to look at the meaning of the words and where they appear in the sentence. That is not useful in Latin as there is no rigid word order and the language is inflected which means that the form of the words changes according to their grammatical function in the sentence.

An elementary example:
In English word order is important and usually takes the SVO form as Subject followed by Verb followed by Object.

The girl loves the dog would be
Puella canem amat.
but
Puellam canis amat
would translate
The dog loves the girl

because canis is in the nominative case which means it is the subject of the verb and puellam is in the accusative case which means it is the object of the verb.

So you must identify the form of the word as well as its meaning to come to an understanding of the sentence.
I scarcely dare admit how long it is since I learned Latin. Suffice it to say it was more than a half century ago, so I hope they haven't changed the rules in the interim. :smilewinkgrin:

[Wilde woman]

Hanzelkin - The cases and inflected forms are difficult enough. Even if you're fluent in one of the romance languages, few of them really have case changes anymore, but when you hit Latin you've got four conjugations and five declensions (and really the ablative could count for double that number, because you've got a bajillion forms of the ablative). For native English speakers, it's even harder because our language has so few inflected forms. I remember trying to wrap my head around what the hell declensions even were as a high school freshman, and it was pretty mind-boggling.

Secondly, word order in Latin is not stable. Because you've got so many declensions and conjugations, it allows for writers to jumble around the order of their sentences quite a bit, and especially in poetry. That's why classicists have to "work it out like a math problem". I can think of a couple poetic devices that specifically play with word order to achieve their effect.

Third, Latin is not spoken anywhere so it's hard for the Latin student to get any practice speaking. I don't know anyone who's fluent in Latin, though I could name a few who are literate in it, which is pretty damn difficult.

But the upside of learning Latin, even if you never becoming competent in it, is that you come away with a much much better understanding of grammar. I learned most of my grammar from Latin, rather than from English.

[Seasider]

I once saw a TV documentary about a Seminary in Rome and the American priest who fronted it taught Latin and spoke it fluently. Whether it was Classical Latin or the Latin more associated with the Catholic Church I don't remember. I understood that Church Latin was a simplified form of the language but that may not be true.

[Wilde woman]

^ Church Latin is medieval Latin, which is another beast altogether. Medieval ecclesiastical Latin is highly variable because the writers disagreed on certain grammatical issues. But that seems to be the case with most of the medieval languages; they're all in flux and all of them have many dialects, which makes it difficult to pinpoint or teach a standard version.

[Lokasenna]

I did two years of Latin at school, many years ago now...

I can just about cope with Latin, but I'd really like to get more proficient.

[kiki1982]

About a year ago I decided to learn Latin again. I stopped because I was learning Russian at the same time, and it was a bit much. But I gathered a few things.

There are the cases, the conjugations and the declensions. That is all very straightforward, though, because once you have learned them, you know them. The key is to understand straight away. I have done that with German and Russian. No problem, but Latin proved more difficult.

Everything is all in one. As there are no articles, there is no second chance to understand the case of a word. In simple sentences that is already a challenge in the beginning, but certainly in more complex sentences. Because... if I say, 'He said that he is coming to the party.' In Latin I would say 'He said' and then put 'he is coming to the party' in the accusative because it is the direct object and I would put it in the form 'he he is coming to the party said'. That is still quite simple, but put in there 'this morning' and 'this evening' and it gets confusing about when he said it and when he is coming to the party. (if you see what I mean).

That also goes for verbs. The simple past is another form like in English, but so is the present perfect and the passive and the future, the perfective future etc. They all have the same stem, of course, but carry another 'interfix' (equivalent of a suffix, a group of letters, but putting it not on the end of the word, but in the middle). Before you know it you have the wrong end of the stick.

There are prepositions, but there is also another possibility: the abblative. If you say, for example, 'the square is surrounded by a wall', you can put 'the wall' in the abblative case and the reader must understand that it means 'by a wall'. Also for example places would be in the abblative.

Then there are verbs which have their direct object not in the accuative which would be normal, but in the abblative. :rolleyes:

If you have there a sentence of several lines, I can imagine that it becomes kind of a mathematical problem of trying to figure out which piece of the sentence belongs to which other one, rather than just read it. Not even in Russian sentences would be put in another case because of their function in the main sentence. I found that the most confusing and I had only started. I found that one could say an awful lot in that language using a very small amount of words, just by doing cases and adding letters. Pretty daunting to learn it.

[Seasider]

Oh dear if there weren't enough problems already I read that the Romans did not indicate the end of a sentence with a full stop but simply continued in continuous prose without capital letters except for proper nouns to the end of the paragraph when you look at inscriptions on monuments etc that seems to be the case no wonder people have problems with them I remember trying to decode an inscription in Saint Maria Maggiore about a Bishop and I had to give up on it much to my chagrin

No wonder that so many students in so many ages have had difficulty learning the Latin language it makes one appreciate Pope and Dryden more not to mention Queen Elizabeth the first who spoke Latin as fluently as she spoke English that must have helped her in her conversations with the diplomatic representatives of the other nations of Europe

But perhaps I was misinformed, as Philip Marlowe once said.

[hanzklein]

Hanzelkin - The cases and inflected forms are difficult enough. Even if you're fluent in one of the romance languages, few of them really have case changes anymore, but when you hit Latin you've got four conjugations and five declensions (and really the ablative could count for double that number, because you've got a bajillion forms of the ablative). For native English speakers, it's even harder because our language has so few inflected forms. I remember trying to wrap my head around what the hell declensions even were as a high school freshman, and it was pretty mind-boggling.

Secondly, word order in Latin is not stable. Because you've got so many declensions and conjugations, it allows for writers to jumble around the order of their sentences quite a bit, and especially in poetry. That's why classicists have to "work it out like a math problem". I can think of a couple poetic devices that specifically play with word order to achieve their effect.

Third, Latin is not spoken anywhere so it's hard for the Latin student to get any practice speaking. I don't know anyone who's fluent in Latin, though I could name a few who are literate in it, which is pretty damn difficult.

But the upside of learning Latin, even if you never becoming competent in it, is that you come away with a much much better understanding of grammar. I learned most of my grammar from Latin, rather than from English.
I see. Im planning on learning [just to read, anything else would be pointless] this language eventually.

(directed at kiki1982)
I'm also studying Russian right now too, its coming easy to me because I already speak a Slavic language and English, so that makes up much of the vocabulary and lets me understand some grammar immediately. I can already understand some full sentences without going to a dictionary after a week, and haven't even got a book yet, just trial and error on my own. how are you doing in your study with Russian? One of the main reasons i'm learning this is so I can read the Russian greats in their original: do you know if Dostoevsky and Tolstoi are overly complicated? Right now, my goal is to read one of their books after a year and at this rate that may be possible.

[kiki1982]

Sadly, I do not speak any Slavic languages yet. So need to learn everything from the start, but I find the German and French influence in the Russian language quite interesting.
I am also doing it so I can read the Russian greats. I have the impression that Dostoyevski is a bit more complicated than Tolstoy, but that is maybe because Tolstoy's characters sometimes speak French, which I understand ;). Dostoyevski seems more descriptive. But that may be only an impression from an ignorant person. ;) I have completed my husband's former learning book from uni called Russian for Everyone. Great book, although it focuses ore on grammar than on vocab, which is a bit of a downside.

I am still far off my aim, though. I'll have to get cracking on stories again :).

[kasie]

.....I read that the Romans did not indicate the end of a sentence with a full stop but simply continued in continuous prose without capital letters except for proper nouns to the end of the paragraph ......

As I remember, the main verb was placed at the end of the sentence so it was (comparatively) easy to see where one sentence ended and another began.

I can't say I found the cases, declensions etc difficult in themselves - perhaps I was well taught by Classicists - and once learnt, the knowledge worked wonders on my English and German.

[hanzklein]

Sadly, I do not speak any Slavic languages yet. So need to learn everything from the start, but I find the German and French influence in the Russian language quite interesting.
I am also doing it so I can read the Russian greats. I have the impression that Dostoyevski is a bit more complicated than Tolstoy, but that is maybe because Tolstoy's characters sometimes speak French, which I understand ;). Dostoyevski seems more descriptive. But that may be only an impression from an ignorant person. ;) I have completed my husband's former learning book from uni called Russian for Everyone. Great book, although it focuses ore on grammar than on vocab, which is a bit of a downside.

I am still far off my aim, though. I'll have to get cracking on stories again :).

Yeah, but I heard that Dostoevsky wasn't too difficult, hopefully that's true. I heard that the "Penguin new russian course book" was really good, and the one I will be personally using so you may wanna check that out if you need resources. Good luck in your pursuits.