Is anyone here fluent in Latin?
Is anyone here fluent in Latin?
Wilfred
Davus est iratus quod sextus verberat servus.
That is the extent of my recollection of the latin I took last year....
Told by a fool, signifying nothing.
No, but I wish I were. I've tried many times to teach myself, but that's gotten nowhere. I think it's a shame that they don't teach it in schools anymore.
If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft, and of thy slender store two loaves alone to thee are left, sell one, and with the dole buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.
How can one be 'fluent' in a dead language... Like you found someone to talk in latin to at the corner of every street
That said, I did 5 years of Latin at school and I don't remember much (I actually neve rmanaged to learn things like the verbs or the pronouns by heart, but since I have a good instinct I almost always got good marks). And no it wasn't optional. I think it's higly overrated. It surely helps a lot in developing logic and linguistics as they say, it surely is the basis of our culture, I'm happy to have it in my cultural background, but I can't find a reason why at school I had more hours of Latin than of English for example...
dead on the inside, i've got nothing to prove
keep me alive and give me something to lose
ha-ha. You guys had to study latin-lol. Carpe diem's pretty much all I know. Why spend your life doing something like that? Memento mori.
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
(Mark Twain)
See? You know all you need...
I did have to study Latin cos I live in a country stuck in the middle-ages where the high schools of literary kind (opposed to the ones that aim at giving more practical skills) have a good amount of Latin in their schedule, whether you want it or not. And I much preferred to do Latin than Economics or such, so I chose that school and tried to enjoy it anyway. Some of the Latin literature was ok (excpet for the fact that we had to translate it...), but the grammar was mostly a pain...
dead on the inside, i've got nothing to prove
keep me alive and give me something to lose
I've to study Latin 'cause I study at Faculty of Arts, as odd as it might sound. And I'm nowhere near to fluent, wish I were though. You'd never guess how much English words originate in Latin (well, you might have an idea...). I've been studying Latin for two years now btw. And I like it, it's just a "little" difficult... how come most guys tell me English is the second hardest-to-learn language in the world... it's kinda easy compared to Latin I think... The most dificult language to lear has to be German in my opinion, been there done that for four years, and sorry to anyone who happens to like it, major YUCK.
I have a plan: attack!
I find it funny that English has a lot of 'double words', I mean 2 words for the same meaning, one of which has latin origin: wish/desire, heaven/paradise... There are really many of these examples.
Jay, I think English is morphologically extremely easy, but being a rather rich language, it is hard to learn it very well... On the contrary, languages like Latin or German...or Slavic languages can be a real nightmare in matters of grammar...
I don't like German either, it has hard sounds... and crazy grammar (though I find Russian grammar crazy too, but in a funnier way)
dead on the inside, i've got nothing to prove
keep me alive and give me something to lose
YES, English is indeed a rich language, that's what I love that damn much about it.
Well, Russian's not difficult to learn in my opinion, been there, done that, also for four years. But that might be because Russian is a Slavic language as well, so there are things that Russian and Czech have in common.
I have a plan: attack!
English and Latin are the best two languages.
Wilfred
When I'm not that "green" in Latin, I'm most likely to agree with you there Wilfred.
I have a plan: attack!
Latin is great! I love reading Latin and trying to translate loosely into english. As far as grammer, verb congication, pronouns and the such, I'm totally lost, but I like Latin vocab. Foolonthehill, was your Latin sentence somthing like 'I know six random words'?
For a funny bit about Latin check out Monty Python's Life of Brian. Brian writes 'Romans go home' on a wall in Jerusalam, and is caught by a centurion who corrects his grammar at knifepoint and makes him write it 100 times. hehe
...Also baby duck hat would be good for parties.
Originally posted by Jay
Well, Russian's not difficult to learn in my opinion, been there, done that, also for four years. But that might be because Russian is a Slavic language as well, so there are things that Russian and Czech have in common.Erase that 'might', Jay... It's definitely like that! Slavic languages are nightmares to speakers of Romance languages... you can't even imagine how much we struggle.... maybe as much as how you struggle with Latin, which wasn't easy to me because of the awful lot of boring things to learn by heart, but surely closer to my native language...
IWilKikU, I think the foolonthehill's sentence means that davus is angry because sextus is uhmm whipping (not sure this is the word) a servant. This is not based on my memories of Latin, but on the similarity to ItalianAnd it can be totally wrong
dead on the inside, i've got nothing to prove
keep me alive and give me something to lose
lol Koa,
In my opinion Italian is the most close language to Latin than any other, so I think your guess should be right if you base the translation on the resemblance with Italian...
I have a plan: attack!
Well Italian is the language that comes most directly from Latin, so to say... But that kind of resemblances are very dangerous, I remember there were words I always had to check cos I was sure they didn't mean what I thought they meant, but I didn't remember the correct meaning...
dead on the inside, i've got nothing to prove
keep me alive and give me something to lose
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