After Orberg's Lingua Latina Revisited

[pin130]

I know this has been discussed before, but every case is different...A year ago I finished Wheelock's,
doing it fairly thoroughly. I felt I needed a review. Someone suggested Lingua Latina. Now I've finished
Lingua Latina, also doing it fairly thoroughly. And once again I feel the need to review. The problem is
that by the time I've reached the subjunctive, I've already begun to forget the indicative. Not that I
don't recognize most forms when reading, using context as an aid, but the whole thing can get jumbled
in the brain. My experience with languages has been that if you don't speak the language, but just read it,
you have to spend a few hours a day for many years to get fluency. And since I don't have a few hours a
day to read Latin, the whole project may be doomed. In any case, for lack of any other idea, I've started
M&F's Latin Intensive for review. It has quickly showed me how much I've failed to retain from the
previous books. Aside from its rocket-like ascent into Latin, it doesn't include supplementary reading and
online blogs to help the cause, as Wheelock's and Lingua Latina do. Anybody have any ideas where to
go from here?

[swtwentyman]

Have you tried Roma Aeterna? It's the sequel to Familia Romana and, while I've never used either book, from reputation and from posts here it looks like it should get you to a fairly high level.

The only way to internalize, consolidate, and build more fluency is to read. Trying some real Latin will get you farther than going through textbooks over and over again, even if you haven't mastered the material (you won't until you do some reading). You'll probably feel totally adrift at first but you'll get better.

(also with the textbooks: you're likely to spend a great deal of time with the basics and a comparatively small amount of time, as they're later in the book and won't be encountered as much, with more complex topics that are very important)

[pin130]

Thanks for the advice. Yes I have the material for Roma Aeterna, but it is notoriously difficult ( I haven't actually tried it)
What specifically do you recommend to read at this point, when as I've said, I keep forgetting the
basics? You didn't read Roma Aeterna, but what did you read which you felt moved you along?

[swtwentyman]

I have two student editions that seem like they'd be good entry-level ones, though I didn't use either until I had a bit more experience:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/08651600 ... tute+latin (though I see from one of the reviews it doesn't have a huge amount of grammatical help)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/08651680 ... chia+latin (bear in mind that the first sentence is the hardest in the entire work)

I went through the Wheelock's Latin Reader right after Wheelock but it probably isn't all that effective without a teacher, or at least a translation, which can be hard to find because many of the individual selections are excerpted. On the plus side it's chronological, which means it gets easier as it goes along as the Latin becomes more like a Romance language.

Caesar's Gallic War is, or at least has been, the standard introductory text. I used the Loeb, which doesn't have grammatical/lexical help, but does include a translation to check your work against. There are probably better editions out there but I never had a need for them, having learned about student editions only after having been through this and the above (I've made progress a lot more rapidly after using them and posting here, though I'm not at that high a level yet). The knock against this work is that it's boring and self-serving but I kind of enjoyed all the marching around and fighting. Some sections can be rather difficult.

(Caesar is very direct and concrete, making him ideal for building skills, and uses a variety of syntax that demonstrate a lot of concepts found in introductory textbooks clearly.)

[pin130]

I have Steadman's selection from Caesar's Gallic War, a student edition, which I could try together with the Loeb. I don't know which is the best student edition out there. If anyone knows I'd be interested in hearing about it. But how long did you spend per day on reading Latin in order to make progress?

[swtwentyman]

First I must say I have a ways to go in Latin; I usually don't answer posts but I feel comfortable answering this because I've been through it. I don't remember exactly how long a day it took; I've tried now and again to maximize my time by blocking out an hour a day and reading all I could in that time, but that can leave you without a good stopping point and I've always regressed to marking out a set amount of text (they're divided into shorter sections) and working through that in however much time it takes: sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. Don't be afraid to experiment: after starting Greek a little over a year ago I struggled with how to read and to balance the two languages, and it took me until just the other week to figure it out (hopefully). You'll find through experience and trial-and-error what habits work for you.

Others would probably know more. Check out horus92's post here:

http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-foru ... =3&t=65816