By reading fluency,I mean, the ability to sight read 95 percent of the pages you encounter of authentic Latin texts from the Classical period, say from 75 BC to 120 AD, roughly most of Cicero all the way to Pliny, Suetonius and Tacitus. If you did so, did you start learning the language before 10 years of age and go on through a whole course of classical education on steroids or did you start later?
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I don’t know if this would be of interest to you, or whether you’re already familiar with it. It’s the account of how one person came to be pretty much fluent in Latin.
https://indwellinglanguage.com/reading-latin-extensively/
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Thanks. It did interest me quite a lot. It is quite a feat when someone succeeds learning the language to a high level. It makes us learners-well me at least- think more highly of our potential and apply more.
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Yes, reading this article two years ago motivated me to try to do the same.
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or even more, I’d ask: seeing the symbol, hearing the sound, and comprehending the text (w/o skipping about looking for the verb or whatever) what we do when reading a modern language (Italian, French, Spanish)?
It’s good to remember that fluency is not an on/off switch: it’s a spectrum, on which a person makes gradual progress with constant work. A person can maybe leap ahead on the spectrum with certain experiences (immersion, or putting yourself through some kind of linguistic “boot camp”), but otherwise it’s just the slow work of a lifetime. I don’t think you’ll find anyone, even among the best these days, who will say that they have “achieved fluency” in reading Latin. They just get better at it the more they do it.
It’s also very different to sight read a piece of work with which you are already very familiar, and to sight read an author or piece that is totally unfamiliar to you. In my experience, it’s the spoken-Latin conferences that help the most in developing the ability to sight read unfamiliar texts.
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I agree with you categorically. Maybe I should chosen other metrics, such as passive lemma recognition to identify fluency. To me fluency or proficiency mostly boils down to basic grammar knowledge and knowledge of say 20,000 unique lemmas. I find that to be reasonable goal, attainable just by sticking to the most canonical texts. And yes, I agree it is a slow process, but I think the closest experience would be the experience of the children came in at the Prussian’s Altegymnasium and exited a Classics university 15 years later. I find that measure to be the most quantifiable out of all the dreams of fluency. I mean after you have dedicated 20,000 hours of your life the study of Latin, there is no disputing you are not fluent, even if you incapable of say recognising syllable length or reading an ancient roman inscription