10 ms·

Any advice for someone like me who has never taken Latin but would like to learn?

nyi 9y ago
Labor omnia vincit!
petertotleben 9y ago
Lingua Latina by Hans Orberg. https://www.hackettpublishing.com/lingua-latina-per-se-illustrata-series https://www.hackettpublishing.com/lingua-latina-per-se-illus...
scop 9y ago
Go for it! Here is a good quote from the article from Fr. Foster: "Latin is the best thing that ever happened to humanity. It leaves you zero room for nonsense. You don’t have to be a genius. But it requires laser-sharp concentration and total maturity. If you don’t know what time of day it is, or what your name is, or where you are, don’t try Latin because it will smear you on the wall like an oil spot."
- jhbadger 9y ago
  I have a fondness for Latin myself, but this is absurd. There are lots of languages with a similar case-driven grammar and nobody makes such claims about those. Russian is about as case-driven as Latin and non-indo-european languages like Finnish and Estonian actually have more cases.
- throwaway7645 9y ago
  Would love to hear details on why this is true compared to other languages.
kawera 9y ago
My suggestion would be Hans Ørberg's Lingua Latina per se Illustrata series, it's brilliant and you can start from zero. https://www.hackettpublishing.com/lingua-latina-per-se-illustrata-series https://www.hackettpublishing.com/lingua-latina-per-se-illus... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_%C3%98rberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_%C3%98rberg
- tardo99 9y ago
  Thumbs up for this suggestion.
bshimmin 9y ago
My advice would be to have reasonable expectations. Latin isn't easy to learn - you can't practise talking to real people, it has plentiful grammar, there isn't so much vocabulary (relatively) but many words have a vast variety of meanings depending on context, and sentence structure is entirely alien to English speakers. It is, essentially, quite hard (though easier than Classical Greek). I studied Latin to degree level a decade-and-mumble years ago, and to my great shame have not kept it up at all. On the rare occasions that I am required to translate some Latin - an inscription in a church, for instance - I try my best, but I am usually a far cry from Indiana Jones. (I do have a moderately extensive selection of pretentious phrases in Latin that I can deploy when necessary.) We used Kennedy's Revised Latin Primer and The Cambridge Latin Course at school; I think the latter starts pretty much from the basics, and the former covers probably all of the grammar you'd ever need to know. I think you can get some of the Harry Potter books in Latin, if that sort of thing takes your fancy. Once you've acquired a moderate mastery, you will find something like Caesar's Gallic Wars to be quite an easy read (though stylistically he ain't much cop).
- InitialLastName 9y ago
  To add to that, the grammar (and thus the meaning) is sometimes driven by the meter, which is a concept pretty much entirely foreign to many familiar with English prose.
  - bshimmin 9y ago
    Quite. Though, if by any chance you have reached a sufficient mastery of English prosody to understand the iambic pentameter, the dactylic hexameter really isn't such a stretch, notwithstanding one being based on stress and the other weight.
    - InitialLastName 9y ago
      I so enjoyed the pattern-matching puzzle that I found preparing for the AP Latin (Virgil) exam to be.
  - 9y ago
jkingsbery 9y ago
I took Latin in college (having not taken it in high school), and found the Wheelock text book pretty helpful (https://www.amazon.com/Wheelocks-Latin-7th/dp/0061997226 https://www.amazon.com/Wheelocks-Latin-7th/dp/0061997226 ). If you're looking for Latin texts, check out the Perseus Project (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/ http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/) and the Latin Library (http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/). If you get stuck on something, swing by the Latin StackExchange (https://latin.stackexchange.com/ https://latin.stackexchange.com/).
jamesash 9y ago
Current Latin learner here. I found the Great Courses Introduction to Latin by Hans-Friedrich Mueller to be helpful. 35 audio lectures, plus 35 chapters of exercises. It's a good introduction that covers all the basics, and has set me up quite well for working through selections from The Gallic Wars.
JoeDaDude 9y ago
This is a stretch but there is a cottage industry that churns out translations of children's books into Latin. Search for "Winnie Ille Puh" or "Cattus Patasatus" and that will lead to several others. This was likely started by Charles Schulz and company who had a Latin version of the Peanuts Philosophy published, a version which is now a rare collector's item. [1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/Peanuts-Philosophers-Latin-version-2-book/dp/B003850S7E/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1500143768&sr=1-1&keywords=peanuts+philosophy+latin https://www.amazon.com/Peanuts-Philosophers-Latin-version-2-...

nyi 9y ago

Labor omnia vincit!

Lingua Latina by Hans Orberg. https://www.hackettpublishing.com/lingua-latina-per-se-illustrata-series https://www.hackettpublishing.com/lingua-latina-per-se-illus...

scop 9y ago

Go for it! Here is a good quote from the article from Fr. Foster: "Latin is the best thing that ever happened to humanity. It leaves you zero room for nonsense. You don’t have to be a genius. But it requires laser-sharp concentration and total maturity. If you don’t know what time of day it is, or what your name is, or where you are, don’t try Latin because it will smear you on the wall like an oil spot."

jhbadger 9y ago
I have a fondness for Latin myself, but this is absurd. There are lots of languages with a similar case-driven grammar and nobody makes such claims about those. Russian is about as case-driven as Latin and non-indo-european languages like Finnish and Estonian actually have more cases.
throwaway7645 9y ago
Would love to hear details on why this is true compared to other languages.

kawera 9y ago

My suggestion would be Hans Ørberg's Lingua Latina per se Illustrata series, it's brilliant and you can start from zero. https://www.hackettpublishing.com/lingua-latina-per-se-illustrata-series https://www.hackettpublishing.com/lingua-latina-per-se-illus... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_%C3%98rberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_%C3%98rberg

tardo99 9y ago
Thumbs up for this suggestion.

bshimmin 9y ago

My advice would be to have reasonable expectations. Latin isn't easy to learn - you can't practise talking to real people, it has plentiful grammar, there isn't so much vocabulary (relatively) but many words have a vast variety of meanings depending on context, and sentence structure is entirely alien to English speakers. It is, essentially, quite hard (though easier than Classical Greek). I studied Latin to degree level a decade-and-mumble years ago, and to my great shame have not kept it up at all. On the rare occasions that I am required to translate some Latin - an inscription in a church, for instance - I try my best, but I am usually a far cry from Indiana Jones. (I do have a moderately extensive selection of pretentious phrases in Latin that I can deploy when necessary.) We used Kennedy's Revised Latin Primer and The Cambridge Latin Course at school; I think the latter starts pretty much from the basics, and the former covers probably all of the grammar you'd ever need to know. I think you can get some of the Harry Potter books in Latin, if that sort of thing takes your fancy. Once you've acquired a moderate mastery, you will find something like Caesar's Gallic Wars to be quite an easy read (though stylistically he ain't much cop).

InitialLastName 9y ago
To add to that, the grammar (and thus the meaning) is sometimes driven by the meter, which is a concept pretty much entirely foreign to many familiar with English prose.
- bshimmin 9y ago
  Quite. Though, if by any chance you have reached a sufficient mastery of English prosody to understand the iambic pentameter, the dactylic hexameter really isn't such a stretch, notwithstanding one being based on stress and the other weight.
  - InitialLastName 9y ago
    I so enjoyed the pattern-matching puzzle that I found preparing for the AP Latin (Virgil) exam to be.
- 9y ago

jkingsbery 9y ago

I took Latin in college (having not taken it in high school), and found the Wheelock text book pretty helpful (https://www.amazon.com/Wheelocks-Latin-7th/dp/0061997226 https://www.amazon.com/Wheelocks-Latin-7th/dp/0061997226 ). If you're looking for Latin texts, check out the Perseus Project (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/ http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/) and the Latin Library (http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/). If you get stuck on something, swing by the Latin StackExchange (https://latin.stackexchange.com/ https://latin.stackexchange.com/).

jamesash 9y ago

Current Latin learner here. I found the Great Courses Introduction to Latin by Hans-Friedrich Mueller to be helpful. 35 audio lectures, plus 35 chapters of exercises. It's a good introduction that covers all the basics, and has set me up quite well for working through selections from The Gallic Wars.

JoeDaDude 9y ago

This is a stretch but there is a cottage industry that churns out translations of children's books into Latin. Search for "Winnie Ille Puh" or "Cattus Patasatus" and that will lead to several others. This was likely started by Charles Schulz and company who had a Latin version of the Peanuts Philosophy published, a version which is now a rare collector's item. [1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/Peanuts-Philosophers-Latin-version-2-book/dp/B003850S7E/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1500143768&sr=1-1&keywords=peanuts+philosophy+latin https://www.amazon.com/Peanuts-Philosophers-Latin-version-2-...