by Leonidas300 » Mon May 10, 2010 10:26 pm
This is a good thread.
adrianus, I think that what you are doing is admirable, and I understand your motives completely. I hope to one day have the mastery of Latin that you demonstrate in this thread.
I am somewhat of a cliche on this site I am sure; I studied Latin in school where I found it fascinating, but I chose to go elsewhere for my academic thrills. I have returned to the subject and I would dearly love to be able to write in Latin with the skills of adrianus.
I would like a little advice though, and I think many of us out here would like the same; forgive me if this has already been requested.
Given the free texts on this site and bearing in mind what is available on the Perseus project, is there someone that could write a definitive list of texts, running from easiest to hardest in terms of difficulty, but that is also mapped to the learning stages of D'Ooge's Latin for Beginners et al. that the aspiring classicist could attack and digest?
I for one would love to be able to put a marker at a stage in D'Ooge or any other learning text that said "Attempt 'X'", knowing that I would have a fairly decent chance of translating a little original material, and not the Latin equivalent of "Where's Wally" found in the learning texts themselves, which I find to be demotivating. I know that to run, you need to be able to walk, but it would be nice to have a target to aim for.
The same would be great of Greek too, and if it hasn't been done already, I think that this ordered text reading plan could be a great thing for those of us motivated by the thought of reading the original texts in the original languages.
Any help at all on this would be much appreciated, even if it is just a starter for ten, as I'm sure there will be debate on what the order of texts would be.
Leo