I really do. I don't know why, actually, but I'm just in love with that language. People ask me why would I want to learn Latin, if it's a dead language. Maybe I see something in it that they don't? I just know that, although it's quite useless for communication, there's something in that vocabulary, in that grammar that makes me so eager to learn it. Or maybe I'm just a nerd with too much time on my hands (I don't think that's the case).
Is there a language that you've always wanted to learn? Most of us here use English (which is like, the commercial language by excellence), so why do you want to learn another one?
P.S: BTW, Latin is not the only one. I also want to learn a long list of others... one each year, to be specific. ;)
justop26 posted on Sep 24, 2006
| views: 2409
Comments
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silverwhisper said on Sep 24, 2006....
latin is interesting but difficult to learn for most. i studied a tiny little bit once upon a time, enough to remember that the latin word for girl is puella and sword is gladius.
just so long as you weren't interested in any practical applications, more power to you. :>
ed
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Uocjat said on Sep 24, 2006....
Yay im not the only one!
i got this idea into my head sometime ago aswell no idea why
i browsed the net a bit and found a very good site program thingy (here)
well the program it self is quite costly (about 100£) but they have a very nice demo there that is supriseingly effective didnt take me much more then 5 minuts before i started catching on to the basics
if i had the money i'd buy up all 30 languages they offer
oh yer and by the way this isnt an ad i just think it a good place to start
also there an english - latin Dictionary here that i use to mess with some years ago i dont know how accurate it is but it seems trust worthy
good luck =)
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missb said on Sep 24, 2006....
I used to want to learn latin when I was younger. In fact, my goal was to master atleast 5 languages.
Days go by.... I tried learning French, quit on the first level because of this vicious teacher.
German in school, too busy chatting with my school mates. (I've always been a chatterbox :/)
Mandarin, went to Taipei, learnt the basic stuff, got carried away in the student life, came back home, and forgot most of the stuff :(
Ah well, at the end of the day, atleast I can say that my English is good enough ;)
Of course, now I've come to realize that language is a life time learning. I'm just gonna keep polishing my English, lah :)
Cheers!
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totally_cd said on Sep 24, 2006....
como usta usted!
totally_cd
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jakedp said on Sep 24, 2006....
I too have wanted to learn different languages. It is a mark of the curious and intelligent. On and off I study Latin, to know Latin is to improve your English. About 50-60% of English words are derived from Latin, scientific names are too derived from Latin. Plus, Latin sounds better and looks better!
Latin is not that difficult, the teminology of the structure and grammer of Latin can be a little difficult to grasp sometimes. If you are good at English, Latin will not be too hard to learn.
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sigroid75 said on Sep 24, 2006....
hi juststop! i just answered your comment in my
post and praised you for being a diligent student
and now i read that you want to learn latin! wow!
amazing!
anyway, i also would like to learn some Latin words,
if only that I may better understand my bible well.
additionally, i will want to name my children hebrew
names with biblical meanings so that will come in
handy as well.:-)
God bless you! may you know and learn more about
God in the process...:-)
oh i like to learn French and Fookien chinese...my
future in-laws speak Chinese at home and don't
want to be left out.:-)
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Zayda said on Sep 25, 2006....
i've been interested in learning latin for awhile now too. i think simply because it's the root of so many languages.
i can speak spanish, but truthfully, i write it and read it far better than i do speak it. this is, however, most likely because my speaking of spanish gets used so rarely.
i also wouldn't mind learning german, french, or italian since currently my grasp of either of those languages isn't really passable.
my parents both speak a smattering of japanese from when my dad was stationed in japan; i have managed to pick up a handful of the smattering that my father knows and have thought about trying to learn japanese as well.
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JadeLondon said on Sep 25, 2006....
Latin lives on in many of the romance languages. I applaud your effort. I know some French, and am currently learning Spanish. It is something of a hobby of mine.
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louthomas said on Sep 25, 2006....
Back in the Dark Ages, when I was going to high school, I ran across a very old Latin textbook. Some poor soul had neatly written on the flyleaf: "Latin is a dead language, as dead as it can be. It killed the ancient Romans, and now it's killing me."
Congratulations on your urge to learn.
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Uocjat said on Sep 25, 2006....
since when can a language be held responsible for killing people off ?
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gingersoul said on Sep 25, 2006....
I studied Latin from 6 grade to college and being my major in Philosophy i had to study several texts with passages in Latin.
I studied Ancient Greek in high school for 5 years as well.
They are part of our Italian academic courses and fundamental part of our last year examinations.
I was very good in Latin.
Greek was the most difficult one. Even though i loved more its literature. Compared to Romans, Greeks had a lot of poetress, very regarded and influental in their society. Saffo, the most famous one, for example.
We had to do cross-translations: from Latin to Greek, from Greek to Italian. Just for one single test. It was pretty exhausting. Our traslation test used to last forever.
But i know for sure that studying all that so called dead languages so hard gave me the basic for learning English and Spanish, that are my two other acquired languages.
I did study a little bit of French too and i put it to work pretty good when i visited Paris. But it definetely needs improvment.
Living in America gives me the opportunity to use in full immersion my English and i want to work better on my Spanish too. I would like to fluently speak French and i am very fascinated by Arab.
My suggestion: keep reading Latin.
Read some author like Ovidio, Virgilio. Cicerone is the easiest one.
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frak.me said on Sep 25, 2006....
i'm writing a fiction book right now, my third, that deals with issues of religion and wished to hell i could read and write Latin.
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gingersoul said on Sep 25, 2006....
Frak,
have you been published or you write for your pleasure?
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Apollo said on Sep 25, 2006....
Latin is an excellent choice because:
1. Certain differences in sentence structure force many learners to think in an entirely new way about how to say things.
2. It will augment you English considerably
3. You can say stuff in Latin, get admiring looks and feel like a real smartass!
Just remember Latin is meant to be read, despite its pedestal it is a human language. And the key to understanding is to read, read, read and almost never mindlessly translate. Although vocab. Memorizing is necessary.
You learn a language best like you did the first time as a child; speaking, hearing, reading simple stories and songs. Regard any teacher with suspicion if they say the best way to learn Latin is to conjugate and decipher an endless list of words as if it were some sort of code! A good text to start with is the Cambridge Latin Corse.
Beware of Spanish, not to disparage the language, people or cultures but where I’m from at least; it is considered to be the underachievers’ language. Take Latin first that way you will be able to get through the lower levels of Spanish at a good clip.
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justop26 said on Sep 27, 2006....
ed: I wish I can learn it... seriously, it's like those goals you make. There's absolutely no course in my school to learn it, so I'll have to teach it to myself. And... is there something you've never tried? :P
Uocjat: I also thought I was the only one! Guess not :P Oh, and I have that program, with most of the languages :) Hey, next time write the name of the program (for the ad to appear :P), so I get some cents. Thanks for the dictionary, I hadn't found any before.
missb: You and I seem to have the same goal, then, but you are closer to it than I am. I wish I could travel to each country and learn there, but I don't have money :(. I learnt English at school, and plan on learning all of the others by myself. Good luck on your English polishing :P
totally_cd: ¿Yo, muy bien, y tú? I think that's Spanish, not Latin :P
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justop26 said on Sep 27, 2006....
jakedp: Why is it that people always say that Latin and English are similar? I honestly haven't been looking for similarities, but I find it's more like Spanish than English. Oh, and yes, being that I chose to specialize in Science, scientific names are a daily thing... Knowing Latin will make it a lot easier.
sigroid75: Thanks for the praises *blushes*. We're alike! We want to learn so many languages! :P I just find it so interesting to know how to speak, read, and write different languages. I hope you learn your Chinese alright, so you aren't left out ;)
Zayda: WOW, first of all, YOU read one of my posts *shock*. If there were any mics here, I guess I would offer myself for you to practice your Spanish ;) Oh, and you also listed the same languages I want to learn, besides Latin. Add to those Russian and Portuguese :) I don't think life will give me enough time to learn all of that!
JadeLondon: Yes, those Romans really found a way to survive through the ages with Latin. I'm here for any Spanish practice you want. I can help you out with any "homework" you assign yourself :P
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justop26 said on Sep 27, 2006....
louthomas: Thanks for that quote! It's quite funny :P I guess that student was really suffering in that course. And thanks, I'll give it my best.
Uocjat: [It took me three shots before I got that nick right] I guess that was just an analogy to how the kid was suffering learning that language :)
gingersoul: You speak all of that? I ADMIRE you! I guess I should have been born in Italy, those tests really sound like something I would love doing (I'm not your typical teen :P). One day, when I travel, I also want to use those languages I learnt... That's my goal. I'll take your suggestion; I'll keep on reading. And thanks for metioning authors, when the time comes, I'll know what to pick up at the bookstore.
frak.me: Nice. Is it published? See, one more reason to learn Latin... Go ahead, do it :P
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justop26 said on Sep 27, 2006....
Apollo: It's an excellent choice? I always thought I was crazy for wanting to learn something that is barely spoken nowadays.
1. Sounds like the way Logic makes me think and express myself in new ways. :P I like mind challenges :)
2. Nice! So I guess I'll then get 0 problems in the English Grammar course :)
3. That's the one I really love! :D
That's why I like the program Uocjat mentioned before: The Rosetta Stone. Since I've got no money and no time to attend a formal Latin course, I'll have to do it by myself, and the way the program teaches (with images, sounds, examples) is really awesome. I got my first French ideas with it, and I've not forgotten a single word to this day.
Spanish the underachiever's language? That's really funny, since Spanish has a lot more rules and a much more complex grammatical structure than English itself. I'm a native Spanish speaker, and my English is learnt. Personally, I find English way more easy than Spanish... In my school, at least, people get lower grades in Spanish class than in English class.
I guess that's just an "advantage" of Latin I have no interest in. :)
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gingersoul said on Sep 27, 2006....
Just,
translate this one:
Si te ipsum ignoraveris, te ipsum perdes.
Its one of the first sentences I learned...dont' know why but i still remember it....
I found English easier than Spanish too, btw...
Anyway Italian is the most complicated one but richer in vocabulary terms, along with German... this last one is a language i never had any desire to learn...sorry for any Germans here but the sound of it is so unplesant....even though its literature and philosophy is greatly intersting...
yap, it seems you are not the usual teen ager...guess what? good for you! LOL
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Apollo said on Sep 27, 2006....
I studied Spanish for 2 years, so I know it a little. And you not the first of my Hispanic friends so say that Spanish was tougher.
Environment is everything, the reason I say “underachievers’ language” is that for what ever reason in the formal schools I have attended, Spanish was the language for those who really did not want to learn any other language. That combined with a large percentage of fluent Spanish speakers that really just wanted an easy grade, and a chance to screw around with their friends made the class environments less then adequate.
As I said environment is everything; it could be vary different in a different local.
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Apollo said on Sep 27, 2006....
Ok please don’t correct me on that last post, lazy writing. ( Eyes fall in shame)
BTW I just read “I messed it up... or did I? ( Your English teacher that sucks)”
Yours sounds worse, but this is my experience:
I once got a 0 on an extremely well written paper, the teacher actually wrote: “extremely well written” on top of the paper. Why the 0? 6 misspelled words! 6! You know what else she wrote on the paper:
“You are going to grammar hell!”
She was later kicked out of the school, though not because of that.
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Uocjat said on Sep 28, 2006....
hehe give it up for names impossible to remember or pronounce
your welcome for the dictionary hope it'll come in handy
and on a general note Latin seems to be alot like most every languages out there
i live in denmark and the tiny bit i've messed with latin so far i've already come across alot of words and terms that are pretty much the same for both Latin and Danish
i guess this kind of makes sense since as far as i know Latin was ment to be an international language inorder to remove the barriers of everyone not understand each other
so in that light it does make sense that they would have used words from every other language around
aswell as later alot of words would have been taken from latin and used in other languages
so while latin in it self might be dead and close to gone
it did almost succeed in its goal of becomeing international
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jakedp said on Sep 28, 2006....
Impious Porcus! Ah, an insult only the Romans would appreciate. People look pretty confused when I say these words to them.
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Apollo said on Sep 28, 2006....
My favorite Latin insult is: ignavus. It means both lazy and coward, you see the Romans considered laziness and cowardliness to be the same thing. Vary interesting view!
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Apollo said on Sep 28, 2006....
My favorite Latin insult is: ignavus. It means both lazy and coward, you see the Romans considered laziness and cowardliness to be the same thing. Vary interesting view!
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justop26 said on Sep 30, 2006....
gingersoul: Although I'm still just about warming up to start learning, I will translate it since it looks pretty easy:
"If you ignore yourself, you lose yourself"
Is it like that? Really? Do you find German unpleasant? :P
Yay! Good for me :D
Apollo: I think that, after reading it for the 25th time, I made sense out of your first post :P J/K Yeah well, seems like over there Spanish was just a class to fill a gap, but over here it's quite tough.
Only for 6 mispelled words? She was a Grammar fascist! I'm glad that she was later kicked out, there's no way someone like her should be teaching...
Uocjat: I finally learned to spell it right the first time! :D Oh and yes, today was my first official Latin class (with my PC :P ) and a lot of words were really similar to their counterparts in Spanish. Now, I didn't know that bit of information about Latin... Was it really meant to be the unified international language? I thought that it got so widespread and eventually led to all the romance languages because of the ancient Romans and their gargantuan empire. What I do know is that it's a language of excellence in Science... That naming system for species is just amazing, no confusion!
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justop26 said on Sep 30, 2006....
jakedp: Sounds excellent. Does it translate to "Evil Pig"? That's what my common sense (... in Spanish) tells me. Well, they should! :P I bet they don't even know what language you're speaking in! LOL
Apollo: Ignavus. Nice. I'll write it up, sounds like a very powerful insult. Not because it's an insult by itself, but the connotation it carries. And yes, it's a very interesting view!
Thank you all for enlightening me and encouraging me to learn Latin! :) BTW, I felt it's a lot easier than I thought it would be...
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Uocjat said on Oct 01, 2006....
justop26:
as far as i know latin was just one of many attempts to make a world spread language another one was "volapyk" or atleat thats what we call it in danish i guess the english name would be "gibberish" - im not kidding this use to be a language but it never gained as much success as latin so nowadays i guess all that remaind of it is what we say when we cant understand a word of what someone is saying
but then again that saying makes alot more sense when you think about that it was suppose to be another multinational language
(but then again my knowladge of anything pretty much comes from random places)
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Apollo said on Oct 02, 2006....
justtop,
I would be interested to know where “over here” is, don’t be too specific though.
I consider it to be tragic that public education Spanish teachers have such a hard time in my part of my home state, AZ.
I was lucky enough to have a Spanish teacher that spoke at least 5 other languages and did not put up with BS from the students. His favorite way of instilling discipline was to make the trouble makes do pushups or sit-ups.
If the students weren’t that fit he would make fun of them, as they struggled.
And if they could do a respectable amount he would work them to the point of exhaustion.
He was vary judicious about it, he always did what ever he made a student do ( he was the soccer coach) and he only resorted to such punishment after repeated infraction or blatant disrespect. I learned quite a bit form him, including how to do a lot of pushups!
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evillinclinations said on Jan 12, 2007....
I want to learn latin, too. -
anonymous said on Jun 13, 2007....
The Latinum podcast, http://latinum.mypodcast.com has a growing and wide ranging series of lessons for teaching Latin, based on the idea that learning should be active - the emphasis is on speaking and reading aloud. The podcast offers formal grammar, ESL style Latin lessons, and vocabulary assistance, in addition to a wide and growing offering of Latin texts read aloud by experts. The main textbook used for the spoken Latin component is G.J.Adler's textbook for speaking and writing Latin, written in the mid 1800's. -
kwhitefoot said on Jun 30, 2007....
I am transcribing Adler's Practical Latin Grammar. You will find the pages on these websites: http://kwhitefoot.t35.com/ http://kwhitefoot.freepchost.com/