So, I don’t know if anyone of you here got a scary good memory and remember me from two years ago, but at the time I studied latin at the University of Stockholm, and struggled with hexameter and Cicero's first oration against Catiline. Depression, sadly, caught me and with that most of my motivation shrunk to the bottom of the ocean. I did not study enough, the pedagogic methods in the study of Latin was not, i.m.o. very good, and I had a hard time concentrating so it all went to hell, pardon my french. But, since I am registered, and actually completed half of the course, now that I feel very much better and am almost out of the ’blues’ I am thinking that I should not let all this time go to waste and I am planning to take up my Latin studies again.
Since I’ve read so much about it, I decided to ’get hold of’ LL to se how it was, and I really liked (and got impressed) with how the book is laid out. So I bought it and I do not regret it. Since I have studied Latin grammar for 10 weeks the beginning of the book is quite simple – but if I flick to the end I’m completely lost (which of course is a good thing – it means that I will learn stuff!). There are some words, whose meaning does not reveal themselves through the context: but I can always look them up in my dictionary. And if there are any grammar points I don’t get I am familiar with those big, scary grammars, and I’m not intimidated to search them. So I wonder: are the ’Latine Disco’ of any use for me? I haven’t had the possibility to look it through.
My goal is, of course, to be able to take the final exams of the Latin course I begun at University two years ago. I need to be able to read a speech of Cicero, parts of de Bello Gallico by Cæcar, various poems by Catullus (including n:o 16, hehe!), parts of Metamorphoses and Ars Amatoria by Ovid and I don’t recall if we had to read some verses by Vergil or not… Sitting in front of the latin text with annotations frenzily flipping trough the dictionary for every other word, searching for the subject and the predicate made me want to vomit, so I hope, that LL will somehow give me _some_ literal fluency. I want to be able to read a sentence or two without having to resort to a dictionary. Anything that will ease up the process of digging through the hard parts is good, I guess.
Uhm.. I have no idea whether there is any red thread here, but I’m tired. I’m also curious if the exercise book, and that other book with dialogues are of any use? Have anyone looked through them?
So far I’ve been reading LL, without doing any pensa or grammar practise and so far I’ve understood almost everything – I am now at VII. I’m not sure whether I should use my to do the easier pensa or if I should wait until I find the texts harder to read? To just read is a very nice experience, because I have not read a latin sentence without having to resort to some kind of aid before. It’s an amazing confidence boost! The passages can be a bit dull sometimes, but that’s, I guess, something you cannot get around when making a book which teaches with gradual texts…
Bonam noctem, nunc est dormandum, num hora V est…