A beginner begins.

[jadenbane]

Hello!
I've been lurking around on Textkit for a little while now and thought I should introduce myself to everybody. For the past couple weeks I've been following the Dowling Recipe for Disaster and have been spending quite a bit of time flipping through the Greek and Latin textbooks on Textkit. I've decided to teach myself these two glorious languages as part of my plan to become an erudite and eccentric madman one day. They're both fascinating and have always been on my mind. From an early age I was obsessed with language and kinda licked at dictionaries incessantly because "words are hot."

Being Canadian I've been educated to be (theoretically) bilingual - But I have to scoff at the way they teach languages these days because I think that in my ~8 years of French education I've learned next to nil. The lion's share of my French came from my parents and my independent study/traveling. Now I think I am ready to move onto Greek and Latin.

I want to study them both concurrently and independently (as there are no courses available to me at this time.) I've set a couple goals for myself, with respect to what I want to be able to do with the languages:

With regards to Latin:
-I want to be able to read ancient texts like Virgil and Livy in the original.

With regards to Greek:
-I want to be able to read Plato's Republic, or Homer's Odyssey in the original Greek.

With regards to the whole project:
-I wanna have fun.


Oh and just for curiousity's sake I have a couple questions:
i) Has anyone had any experience with Philosophical Greek by Francis H. Fobes?
ii) How long would you say it would take to work through D'Ooge and White - if one were working ~1.5 hours a day?
iii)What is the single most rewarding experience you've had studying Latin and/or Greek?

[antianira]

I had started off trying to learn both Greek and latin, but eventually decided to focus on Latin for awhile. After about a year, I'm nearly finished with the Do'oge book, but I'm having a hard time with the more difficult sentences. However, I am now getting back to learning Greek as well.

I think it is possible to learn both at the same time, just do a little bit every day. My initial knowledge of grammer was pretty dismal, so I was having a hard time with the basics. But now I have a pretty good understanding of genetive, dative etc and I think I can handle both.

My interests are pretty similar. My main reasons for learning is to read the mythology, Homer, Hesiod etc. and in Latin, Ovid and Vergil. With a bit of work and some good footnotes, I can now chug through a book or two of the Metamorphoses.

While I sometimes regret not taking Greek or Latin in college, I think I prefer learning it on my own, at my own pace and reading the material I enjoy.