Hello all, I have a few questions, that I'll sort of roll into one post.
I'm currently enrolled in a technical school, but I've had two years of Henle Latin and hated it, even though I love the Latin language and want very much to learn it and become as fluent as I possibly can. (My ultimate goal is to be able to effortlessly think and converse in the language ---modest, I know!) I'm thinking my best bet is to purchase the Lingua Latina books and read/study them religiously, over and over, supplementing them with other Latin stories, old theology books, etc. to gain more confidence and ability in the language. Ideally, I would also like to listen to some spoken Latin. However, for the last several years, I've very carefully nurtured an Ecclesiastical pronunciation, such that it's very difficult for me to listen to classical recordings. Obviously, going for fluency, as much immersion as possible is best. To that end, does anybody have any suggestions? I know many in the Classics field tend to look down on the Ecclesiastical pronunciation, but I am a Catholic, and my main interest is the gigantic corpus of mediaeval Latin writings, as well as day-to-day conversation. So, for me, Ecclesiastical Latin (basically, the heir today of Mediaeval Latin) makes the most sense. I haven't been able to dig up much online.... it seems that almost everything is recorded or filmed in Classical pronunciation.
Thank you all for your help!
Eric