Anyone else ever try teaching themselves Latin?

Pretty much the entire /clg/ - Classical Language General
They TRY, but rarely do teach themselves

>>24564543 (OP)
You cannot teach yourself Latin. You can only learn it. *smokes pipe*

>>24564543 (OP)
esyay , ityay asway ifficultday , utbay ellway orthway ethay effortyay

Spanish is my second language, a Latin language. English is my first. Because of this, I can read basic Latin and Italian to a degree. It is definitely not as commonly taught as it once was. Not in public schools, much more rarely these days in private schools and mostly Catholic ones. It is a tradition that goes all the way back to the Roman Empire and medieval Europe.

On that note, German language book burnings were a thing during WWII as well as internment camps for Americans of German descent. German was once much more commonly taught in public schools. I'm learning German and Arabic, the former to reclaim my lost heritage and the latter for religious reasons.

Look, I'm going to level with you, kid. There is only one way that anyone has ever really learned Latin, and that is to memorize thirty chapters of De Bello Gallico.

https://archive.org/embed/talkswithcaesard00newy

>>24564543 (OP)
Nope. Nobody ever.

Yes but I realised I didn't care about Rome nor Latin literature that much and stopped studying it for French instead
Glad I did that

>>24566126
ya french is better a lot of good ass lit plus practical cuz like half of africa speaks it

>>24564543 (OP)
Yes, I wanted to learn any language and I found an old Latin textbook (if not for this I would've tried to learn LITHUANIAN for fuck sakes)
Cambridge Latin is a good series. I've never been stuious about learning Latin but at this point it's 'useful', mainly limited by vocabulary, but I could have a productive conversation in halting Latin, probably. I have never had the chance to try. I learned grammar, and how to learn a language though, and I guarantee I'd have gotten nowhere if I tried studying Lithuanian or German without a textbook then.

If you want an easy language, go for Dutch or German, since they're so like English. They're also a little bit useless because all the Dutchies and krauts speak English anyway.
Latin is only useful for reading very old books untranslated, sounding fancy, being a grammar nazi, and playing make-believe with other people who learned Latin on things like the Latin Wikipedia where you can pretend you aren't just doing glorified linguistic schoolwork.

>>24564543 (OP)
Yes, but then I got distracted by other things.

You could work through the Ecce Romani books, but for what purpose? Why not go to a tutor?
I know loads of people who’ve downloaded those lingo apps, but not one of them can actually speak the language yet. It’s laziness - appearing to learn without actually learning

>>24566702
If you want an easy language go for Esperanto, unironically.

>>24566702
Dutch is just sober Glaswegian

>>24566746
I think the best way to learn Latin on your own is LLPSI.

>Cambridge Learning Latin triple book set
Gold standard

>>24564543 (OP)
I have Wheelcocks Latin but I never looked into it

>>24566754
That's the same problem as Latin but on steroids. Nobody ever learned Esperanto for practical reasons, it's all language nerds, except now there's no back-catalogue and there never was a homeland, and everybody you can speak to is a communist.

>>24566759
why it's so easy lol, have a few drinks, learn that "het" is dutchie for "the" and you can basically read a third of dutch already.

>>24566802
Hey, there's a network of Esperanto speakers who will put up other Esperanto speakers when they're traveling, that's a practical reason. (Also I have absolutely met anti-communist Esperantists even if the community skews somewhat leftward.)

>>24566702
>Dutch
On paper it's similar to English but you often run into these problems:
>Only the most basic English vocabulary has cognates in Dutch
>Any English word that comes from French (like 60% of them, especially technical words) have no cognate in Dutch
>Dutch people speak incredibly rapidly which makes them impossible to understand as a learner. They do not distinguish morphemes in speech making a spoken Dutch sentence sound like an single entire word
>In English, vowels aren't distinguished except for the stressed syllable. In Dutch if you don't clearly pronounce vowels and dipthongs correctly natives will not understand you
>Weird alternating SVO-SOV word order depending on clause construction
>they insert epithetic vowels in between clustered consonants while speaking ("werk"-"weruk")
>after all this, most people will simply speak to you in English for efficiency's sake once they detect a single mispronunciation or hint of an accent

another related thing I've noticed is that the meme of "in germanic countries they speak better English than WE do!" only applies to older people. zoomers often speak poor, stilted or almost zero English while boomers are completely fluent and are delighted at the opportunity to use it in practice

>>24566828
>>Any English word that comes from French (like 60% of them, especially technical words) have no cognate in Dutch
Dutch does have some loanwords from French even if not as many as English, you know.
>They do not distinguish morphemes in speech making a spoken Dutch sentence sound like an single entire word
That's every language.
>>Weird alternating SVO-SOV word order depending on clause construction
Similar to German, no? So not that hard to grasp.
>>after all this, most people will simply speak to you in English for efficiency's sake once they detect a single mispronunciation or hint of an accent
You could just pretend to not know English.

>>24566759
Afrikaans is Scots but slighter drunker

>>24564543 (OP)
It's my plan to do it. I downloaded Wheelock's Latin.

>>24566917
There are better books you could choose.

>>24566922
such as what

>>24566948
Familia Romana?

>>24566953
>let's tell this anon that I KNOW there are better books
>but hey I don't actually know so let's put a question mark
kys fucking retard, your shitposting belongs on /b/

>>24566958
The question mark is meant to suggest a less harsh, decisive tone, and frame it more as a suggestion. I am familiar enough with FR to know its merits and demerits. (The main merit being that you will be learning to read Latin rather than transverbalize it.)

>>24566965
fuck off

>>24566828
Wow, the same 60% of English words that are the rarest? Truly a massive loss.
In other news, I can bullshit my way through some of a Dutch wikipedia article without studying any dutch. Since Dutch is so hard and far from English, surely, I must be able to do it in Japanese and Swahili too?

Learn to spot cognates and German becomes 100x easier (same for dutch)

>>24566967
Jesus, is there anything you won't criticize?

>>24566971
You didn't read Wheelock's Latin. Fuck off retard.

>>24566975
If you have to result to insults, you lost.

>>24566975
I have seen enough of it, and about it, to know that it teaches you to transverbalize Latin, not read it. Do you dispute this premise?

>>24566976
Nope, it's clear you didn't read it, so fuck off with your "better books" advice.

>>24566981
I'm not who you were arguing with, I'm a bystander.

>>24566989
then even more reason to fuck and kys

>>24566992
You resort to insults and it's over for you. Nobody will take you seriously.

>>24566996
I'm not here to argue a position, I'm just here to tell you if you don't actually know anything about the book in question, and yet tell people there are "better books out there" then you're a fucking idiot and should fuck off.

>>24567001
I (this is the anon you were arguing with above again) know that it teaches you to transverbalize Latin rather than read it. Again, do you dispute this premise? Yes or no.

>>24567002
Learn to fucking read, I told you it's my PLAN to read it and I have downloaded it.

You're the one here who needs learn how to fucking argue and how to fucking write.

Instead of your retarded fucking posts with "there are better books" yada yada and your retarded nonstandard use of question mark, learn to fucking argue and write in a way that's fitting for /lit/ or go back to /b/ where you belong.

Unsubscribed from this shit thread.

>24567015
lol @ this mad fagot

>>24564543 (OP)
Yeah. I'm at the level of reading Livy and Augustine right now if that means anything.
>read a good graded reader like LLPSI, maybe do a chapter every couple days
>read a bunch of other graded readers and easy stuff, I think I read over half of the Vulgate
>make an anki deck for vocab and do it every day
>actually sit your ass down with a textbook and learn the grammar
>memorize paradigms

>>24564543 (OP)
Roma in Italia est

>>24566746
Why do you need a tutor? Almost all of the work you need to learn a language has to be done outside of the classroom anyway. Tutors can be a helpful resource, but you can get free help online, and even bots like ChatGPT can serve most of the purpose that a tutor would if you don't fly to close to the sun, so to speak.

>>24566769
>>24566702
I've recently read through book 1 of the Cambridge Latin Course, books 1 and 2 of the Oxford Latin Course, and all three volumes of Ecce Romani. All of these textbooks are structured in similar ways, and I believe they all call themselves "reading method" texts. In my opinion, they all suffer from the same sort of problem. There is just too little Latin text for the amount of vocabulary and grammar the book is trying to teach you. The size of the book is deceptive because most of the book is occupied by English-language articles about Roman history and culture. LLPSI is a much superior book in this regard. Also because there is such a dearth of Latin text compared to the vocabulary, the student is going to be spending a lot of time hopping between the text and the word list. Additionally, LLPSI is written in a didactical way that the vocabulary can always (in theory anyway) be understood or puzzled out from the Latin text itself. I could say more about it, but one more thing that stood out to me is how the narrative in LLPSI feels a little edgier and more authentic than the trio of "reading method" books. In sum, I don't see any reason, especially with the purpose of self-study in mind, to recommend any of those other series over LLPSI.

>>24566917
>>24566953
Even if you use Wheelocks (or some other grammar-translation book), you can also use LLPSI as a supplemental reader. In fact, LLPSI works well as a reader to accompany any course because it assumes no prior knowledge of Latin and systematically builds its own grammar and vocabulary from the ground up.

>>24566965
Actually the question mark makes your post sound sound more arrogant that it would with a period. It's like you're implying he's stupid for not having heard of Familia Romana before. (Even if that wasn't your intent.)

>>24567341
>read a bunch of other graded readers and easy stuff, I think I read over half of the Vulgate

That's the way to do it.

I'm an archivist so I had to study a bit of Latin, mainly in regards to diplomatic. In school we had classical Latin also but medieval Latin can be quite different

>>24567540
Could you (without doxxing yourself) be a little more specific about the kinds of materials you work with professionally? Could you share a sample of anything in particular?

>>24567531
But anon the Cambridge one comes as a three with one being the reading, one the grammar and one study guide. I think they're not too bad but you're write about the lack of source material. In conjunction they're okay.

I've worked through Familia Romana and Wheelock's Latin over the summer; FR will leave your grammar understanding flimsy and Wheelock's lacks reading input, but they supplement each other.
I'm a quarter of the way through Roma Aeterna and just read the Aeneid for the first time (via Dryden), and I must say I was not hugely impressed. That's not to say I can't appreciate it as great literature or that I didn't find its imagery unmemorable; simply that I don't see it as justifying learning the language, being the pinnacle of Latin poetry and all. I'm pretty conflicted as to whether I should continue or not. If anyone would tell me what works and authors justify the language to themselves, I'd gladly hear it

>>24564543 (OP)
I've been interested in Latin for some time but I can't bring myself to study another language. Is there another use I can give to it other than impressing women?

conatus et quem statui propositum nanctus sum ne omnino perculsus sim quum in quosvis legere mihi statuam oculos coniciam
veritati autem ut morem geram praestant Graeci eorumque lingua, si cupitidas vos umquam ceperit Graecissandi mei similes, facile eo res veni potest ut Latinos fere omnino deseratis, cavetote Achivos!

>>24567550
Sure, during my studies we had to register old charters, that is to summarize the main legal contents of the document so that they're easier to find. The charters looked somewhat like that: https://www.bavarikon.de/object/bav:GDA-OBJ-0000000000000003 although they were mostly from the 15th century or younger. The contents varied very widely, transfer of goods or rights, court rulings, everything related to private law really.

>>24564543 (OP)
I went to grammar school, so we covered the basics up to translating Livy, but now and then I study a Latin grammar book and the texts within them.

>>24567799
>FR will leave your grammar understanding flimsy
But it literally explains the grammar?

>>24567799
Did you get into the Livy chapters in Roma Aeterna yet? Those are much more interesting (IMO of course) than the Vergil chapters.

When you said the Aeneid, do you mean you just read the Dryden translation, or do you mean that you used the translation as an aid to reading through the Latin text? The Aeneid is more valuable for its language than for the story it's telling. Did you at least enjoy the chapter about the fall of Troy in Roma Aeterna?

Another thing to consider--how much effort do you have to exert to read through these texts? You might find that as your reading abilities improve over time, you come back to texts you've read previously and find that they are more engaging now that you don't have to work as hard to read them.

>>24568285
Based on his post, he said he speedrunned learning Latin "over the summer," working through both Wheelocks and Familia Romana. Even if you very generously reckon summer from the beginning of June, that means he completed those books in a span of about 7 weeks. Or possibly he's Australian, and by "summer" he means winter, but in that case, it's still a period of 3 months, or thirteen weeks. Either way, it would be a very impressive amount of work to complete just one of those textbooks in such a short time, and he completed both. Now, if he was starting learning Latin from scratch, is it any wonder if he didn't fully internalize all the grammar taught in Familia Romana? And while Familia Romana does teach grammar explicitly in the main text (in Latin!), it doesn't explicitly teach all the grammatical points present in the chapters, and he probably wasn't using one of the companion guides that explain grammar in more detail.

>>24566828
to my ear dutch is the most english-sounding foreign language ive heard but it sounds like they're talking complete gibberish

>>24568765
This reminds me of when I was listening to Welcome to Night Vale and the weather one episode was a Dutch rap song and the whole time I felt like I was having a stroke because I was struggling to make out any words in what sounded very much like English to me. (Not helped by the fact that they sprinkled in a few English words throughout the track.)

>>24568285
Familia Romana doesn’t explain the grammar that well or in-depth. You’re able to stumble along understanding what’s said through context and not because you actually know how all the verbs are conjugated. I’ve found Wheelock’s to be helpful in fixing this, after having gone through Familia Romana, its workbook, and supplementary texts. I would still recommend Familia Latin though for its large vocabulary and ability to make you comfort with reading in another language.

>>24568709
For clarification, I read Dryden's translation. And, while I get that the summer is a relatively short period of time in terms of language acquisition, I never thought of myself as "speedrunning"; I simply did one chapter of each book every day. After which I started to reread the last ten chapters of FR and began Roma Aeterna, as well as taking a crack at De Bello Gallico (Although, I've recently become employed, which put an end to my NEET streak).
I guess the point of my post was that I find Greek literature is more appealing as a goal, and I felt pangs of remorse upon finishing the Aeneid, however ridiculous that may be. Although, as a sidenote, it's true that once you learn even a little latin, you will begin to see it everywhere in English

>>24564543 (OP)
I don't see the point of choosing it over Greek when I have only a limited amount of time.

>>24569195
Working through a chapter a day in a Latin textbook is definitely speedrunning compared to most people. It takes time and repeated exposure for material to really sink in.

I think the most important thing is whether you have some kind of love for the Latin language. If your goal is just to be able to read enjoyable literature, you can find plenty of that to read in English. But the one thing that Latin works that English works don't have is that they are written in Latin. I strongly recommend reading the Livy chapters in Roma Aeterna, since it sounds like that's about where you stopped. There's a lot of things written in Latin outside the Aeneid, and you can't fairly judge the Aeneid (much less the Latin language as a whole) merely from having read an English translation of it. If you decide you don't have any love for Latin, and that you really are interested in Ancient Greek, at least you have the consolation that some of that Latin knowledge will carry over to Greek.

https://ryanfb.xyz/loebolus/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TugURNkc0461IQoToKIlE4hnnbRykRYYxvrfl2X90No/edit?gid=0#gid=0

The Cambridge Latin course is better than LLPSI. Doing EVERYTHING in Latin for a textbook is a gimmick. I've tried both, I'm about halfway through LLPSI part 1 but I've done 4 years worth of Cambridge textbooks, because the Cambridge ones flow easier. My one dislike, is that I have to spend a lot of time thumbing to the back of the book to look up meanings I forget for five times in a row, but that's better than LLPSI when it dumps a page of repetitive grammatical sentences to slog through, "'pars' est nominativus, non genitivus, non ablativus ....". Cambridge gives you a table and a quick explanation what it means, then you get back into an actually worthwhile Latin story to see it used.
I kinda get LLPSI on vocab, it's good for memory sometimes to just have a picture, but I haven't figured out their side text in the margin and a word is either obvious from context or just annoying if they don't explain it clearly. Hence I'm still focused on Cambridge and using LLPSI as just secondary reading comprehension practice, which it's great for desu.