Pen^3 wrote:At what point should I be understanding the Latin as it is rather than translating in my head
I'm worried that maybe I'm doing something wrong here?
For some unilingual adults, it is too late to learn to think in another language.
For some unilingual adults, it is too late to learn to think in another language.ragnar_deerslayer wrote:Difficulty does not equal impossibility.
Nesrad wrote:You wrote that you were becoming disheartened until someone told you what you wanted to hear, but you shouldn't stop second-guessing yourself. If you persist in a less than optimal method for your situation, you're likely to become discouraged when your progress slows. When that happens, please consider switching textbooks.
ivanus wrote:I really tried to work with Familia Romana solely in Latin as an independent learner, but I could not make it work. The first few chapters were seductively easy but when the ramp came it was steep and frustrating. I very much needed a grammar and, better still, an instructor to begin to understand the language. While I see fluency and thinking in Latin as the goal, I also see translating as a necessary step for myself. I would also point out that it allows for comparison and validation of understanding when you only know fragments of the language. I can't imagine, for example, any new student of Latin being able to ask a question here without reverting to their native language.
scotistic wrote:I very much disagree that Orberg is overrated. The reason it's touted so highly is because people finish Wheelock or the equivalent only to find that they still can't read Latin, while when they finish Orberg they can.
That said it is certainly a mistake to think that Familia Romana alone is going to make you fluent easily. Anyone wanting to really learn Latin, especially without a teacher, needs to commit to using a wide range of materials. For myself, I worked through Wheelock, then the four Henle volumes, then "Reading Latin", then all the Orberg books, over a number of years, all the while reading whatever else in the way of simple texts I could get my hands on and looking at a very large number of other textbooks. In my opinion Orberg is far and away the best, followed by Henle. That said my Latin was already pretty good when I started Orberg, though it had improved vastly by the time I was done. For a self-learner a grammar and some explanation in English is certainly an essential supplement to Orberg; but Wheelock alone is also a totally inadequate preparation for reading. Henle takes more or less the same approach as Wheelock but is far, far better in my opinion, and I think it's a shame he isn't more well-known.
But I'm skeptical of those who claim that they can actually think in Latin with Orberg without mentally translating into their native language.
Gregarius wrote:My hope is that I'll be able to read idiosyncratic Latin works like "cum" and "ut" as "cum" and "ut", and not worry about the half dozen English translations they each have.
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