/lit/ - Literature » Thread #7301920

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Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 09:27:07 No.7301920 View Reply Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7301944 >>7302844 >>7302871

I want your opinions /lit/. I am a monoglot with no education in Latin or Romance languages, but I'm also pretty enthusiastic about amateur classics and want to learn Latin to keep up with my wonderful hobby.

However from a practical point of view would it be smarter to start with a modern language to "warm up" and get some basic linguistic skills and then think about getting into Latin? The alternative would be Italian, but I might consider French. That would obviously mean getting conversational experience I wouldn't get from Latin, I wouldn't have to explain to everyone why I'm learning a "dead" or "boring" or """useless""" language.

Thoughts?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 09:35:40 No.7301944 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7301999 >>7303772

>>7301920

OP here. If anyone knows, how does Greek compares to Latin? Their lit is much stronger but Latin seems more learnable and relatable to other languages.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 09:56:12 No.7301999 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7301944
There is a lot of good Latin lit particularly if you want to get into political dialogue and/or short poetry

Just learn it mate
It's not too difficult it's just a lot of memorization of endings

Fuck what people say about it
Latin used to be the regularly taught second language in America
Fuck the haters

Also pick up something in latin you want to read (I always recommend Catullus cause he's fun and pretty engaging poetry wise so beginners don't get bored)
Take a course (online or not) on the language it'll help quite a bit (especially if you've mastered memorization)

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 14:05:09 No.7302844 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7301920
>However from a practical point of view would it be smarter to start with a modern language to "warm up" and get some basic linguistic skills and then think about getting into Latin?
This would be a waste of time; you should go directly to Latin if you're serious about it. There's nothing linguistically "modern" or "ancient" about particular languages. And, in any case, there's s much accumulated difference between Latin and the modern Romance languages that they won't help you much, at least not in any way that will be worth time invested. The vocabularies and grammar are really just similar enough to throw you off.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 14:15:46 No.7302871 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7303059

>>7301920
Go directly to Latin. It's pretty easy to learn and it will shed a lot of light on words in the English language. It will also make it easier to learn the romance languages.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 14:18:28 No.7302878 Report Delete

Quoted By:

Since you're starting from scratch, learn Latin first. It'll help you to learn the grammar of language which is often forgotten or unheard in English, but is much more necessary to most other languages in Europe. It'll help with the etymological roots of more vocabulary in Romance languages, but since Latin grammar is often revised to fit a rigid form, it's the best to learn the basics of grammar through.
Keep in mind as you progress that these rules are not as hard and fast as initial readers will make out, and Latin has a very complex set of nuances and phrasal changes in grammar once you sink your teeth into real texts. The same thing will happen with living languages, but the complexities will be more upfront and confusing because of it being alive and spoken. Having a basic underlying grasp of grammar from Latin before undergoing immersion in other Romance languages will help you pick up those rules more easily from both grammar readers or just immersion.

Greek involves a lot more up front memorization and so can be discouraging because it takes longer to see the progress. Once you have the basic memorization of endings done however, you can read more widely more quickly. It's just the heavy initial learning compared to Latin discourages more people from pursuing it than Latin will. A basis in Greek however has similar benefits as a starting block to German and Russian as Latin does to Romance languages.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 14:23:03 No.7302889 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7303227 >>7303543

Not OP, but would learning Old English (to read) help learn German later? or would doing it the otherway round be better?

I'm monoglot, and I'd like to learn a new language, but I lack the time to truly devote myself to it -- I think learning an older form of English would be easier than learning German, especially as I would only be learning Old English to read.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 14:24:33 No.7302892 Report Delete

Quoted By:

It is NEVER more efficient to learn a similar language first to aid you in learning a language

Unless of course you want to learn both anyway, then that could make sense.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 14:25:36 No.7302895 Report Delete

Quoted By:

You can do both. Latin will demand that you understand how grammar works, which will make a romance language seem very easy. There is also significant overlap in vocabulary.

It is, however a lot more difficult than romance languages. Sentence structure will fuck you over, and you won't be able to read fluently for a very long time.

A romance language will be much less demanding, but if you're enthusiastic Latin's fun

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 14:37:11 No.7302936 Report Delete

Quoted By:

I guess it depends on what you plan to do with Latin. Here, a classical education consists of French, Latin and Ancien Greek, learnt simultaneously at least four hours a week each, with a strong emphasis—but not restricted to—on history, philosophy and literature.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 15:16:57 No.7303059 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7303203

>>7302871
>It's pretty easy to learn
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I had to study latin for two years in my school and it was probably the most difficult subject I had at the time. I honestly don't know how I got a passing grade there...

Ok, the teacher's approach might have been bad and I wasn't interested in the language at all, so that might have contributed to the difficulty. But even if I ignore those things, it still is a complicated language. There's a gazillion different word endings that you have to know and recognize, genders, countless verb variations...

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 16:00:04 No.7303203 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7303059
There aren't that much word inflections and most of declensions have a recognizable pattern. o/am most likely marks the first person, (ab)at the third and so on. If you think learning a couple of—by the way of a great regularity—endings is “difficult”, what are you going to do when learning French or German conjugations? Chinese and Japanese ideograms? Ancient Greek's far bigger and more irregular declensions? Most people masters the bases in a year or so.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 16:06:45 No.7303227 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7303237

>>7302889
Not really. It would help more to learn Frise at best. Learning Icelandic first and then Old English might even be easier than learning German from Old English.

Learning German is probably easier if that is your end goal. If you want Old English to learn further languages, learn that and then Nordic languages; German won't be easier because of it.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 16:09:17 No.7303234 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7303543 >>7303634

For those who know, how does the difficulty of learning Latin compare with Arabic?

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 16:09:53 No.7303237 Report Delete

Quoted By: >>7303280

>>7303227
Cheers; Old English is something I'd like to learn to read Anglo-Saxon poems and chronicles -- perhaps I'll save it for when I'm older. How difficult is German to learn? I remember some basics from school but I've no idea where to start learning it. Are there any books that teach you? I've looked at DuoLingo but it's not very in-depth.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 16:18:23 No.7303280 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7303237
I found German easier to learn, but it's because you can do immersion more easily with that. I highly suggest you get audio recordings to read along with for Old English because it's much easier to make sense of a language you can hear (or at least it is for me). The same with German, once you learn the grammar, start reading fairytales and children's books with a dictionary, and tv without English subtitles.

I don't really know about online resources besides youtube definitely has readings of Old English. (And songs from the chronicles which are fun to listen to also.)

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 17:43:24 No.7303543 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7302889
What are your goals? As has been said to everyone here, learning one language to help with learning another is horribly inefficient. I'd recommend just learning German, as there are far better learning resources and a lot more you can do with the knowledge.

>>7303234
For a monolingual English speaker? Latin would be much easier.

Anonymous

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 18:10:36 No.7303634 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7303234
I have/am learning both. Latin is very easy for an English speaker.

Arabic will fuck your shit up.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO Heraclius.jpg, 2MiB, 2202x2441

Anonymous Fri 30 Oct 2015 18:57:45 No.7303772 Report Delete

Quoted By:

>>7301944
Greek is the superior language

t. Roman

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