Hello. I’ve been learning Latin for quite a few years. I am at the point where I find a fair amount of Latin quite comfortable, but higher register and more complicated texts are a serious challenge and they, quite frankly, scare me a bit.
I can read most of the Vulgate quite comfortably, I don’t find St Thomas Aquinas very challenging and I have little issue with works from St Augustine included in the Latin version of the Roman Catholic Office of Readings. I also have little issue with a lot of the Latin podcasts out there, although Latina animi causa is sometimes a bit difficult.
However, I have attempted harder works and I find these nigh impossible. For instance, I tried St John Climacus’ Collationes and it was almost like another language. Likewise, I’ve spent some time in the Vulgate book of 2 Maccabees, which is a translation of a Hellenistic Greek text, which was likewise very difficult. Something like Caesar is much easier but still I get the wrong sense of words fairly often.
The things that seem to be the biggest issues are lack of vocabulary, the word order, omissions of lots of words that are made explicit in the English Translation, and use of lots of otherwise common words with implied meanings that add far more than I am able to detect (For instance, I recall at one point reading 2 Maccabees the word “vestrum” summing up about 3 words, and the central meaning of this not being very obvious from the verse).
Besides these core issues, I’m also not very strong on less common tenses in the works I’ve been reading like Subjunctive Perfect/Pluperfect and Future participles. .
Does anybody know any good transitional texts that I could use to get from where I am towards being able to deal with the difficulties I’ve described in a much more timely way? The tenses aren’t too big of an issue because I’ve been using anki to drill the conjugations and this seems to be really helping so this isn’t so much of a concern, but any texts which use a lot of these would be much appreciated too.
I’m not so concerned so much with particular verses as I am finding works to transition to reading it smoothly.
I was able to read it, but with great difficulty.
However, if you want an example, take 2 Maccabees 9:25
Ad haec autem considerans de proximo potentes et vicinos regno temporibus insidiantes et eventum exspectantes, designavi filium Antiochum regem, quem saepe recurrens in superiora regna plurimis vestrum committebam et commendabam; et scripsi ad eum, quae subiecta sunt.
This particular bit was quite difficult, especially when I compared it to the Douay translation of it (I know the Latin is Nova Vulgata and the Douay is from a different vulgate)
plurimis vestrum “to most of you” What’s the problem? Latin texts are often quite difficult (you should try Tacitus!) but given a basic command of grammar you’re not likely to find texts much easier than the vulgate.
Yes, I’ve read most of the vulgate and most of it is quite easy. It is easier than reading the sermons of St Augustine, although I would dispute the Summa not being directly comparable. However, 2 Maccabees is significantly harder than pretty much the rest of the corpus aside from Wisdom and 2 Corinthians (at least in my experience). If you want a direct comparison, read through 2 Maccabees and then compare it to 1 Kings.
This text may well be easy for you, but you’ve also been a member of this forum for apparently 13 years. I hadn’t even thought of studying Latin until about 5 years after that point, and as you can evidently surmise I am not at such a point as to find texts such as that especially easy (perhaps this is because I’ve spent too much time with content that is not helping me, or because of my endeavours into other studies letting Latin take a back seat). I would like to be at such a point myself.
The issue isn’t so much any particular grammatical difficulty in any particular verse so much as where can I encounter constructions like this so that I can habituate myself to be able to grasp these and simultaneously not be overwhelmed by too many things going on at one.
Given that, what do you think I ought to read so that I can find such texts less difficult?
I’m a fellow learner, stuck at an embarrasingly intermediate level (but I just do a bit of weekend Latin and I’m okay with advancing slowly). I recognize this kind of difficulty. This sentence (2 Macc 9:25) is syntactically simple and the words are all common, still piecing the meaning together isn’t trivial. I think it’s a matter of getting used to all the nuances of frequent words like considero, proximus, recurro, superior, committo etc. Proximus can mean ‘near’ or ‘last’ or ‘next’, recurro ‘rush back’, ‘return to’, ‘escape’, literally or figuratively, committo alone fills half a page of my dictionary. Figuring out which meaning makes most sense in context depends on understanding the context, and even reading a translation of this passage I can’t say I “understand” it in any deep sense – it’s just too dry and boring.
This too, of course, will become easy over time, as you absorb more text and develop an intuition for which meaning or which construction is most likely in a certain context, or conversely totally implausible. Or so I tell myself! But I think it’s crucial to read texts where you don’t have to struggle with understanding (or caring about!) the argument as well as the grammar. I just dropped Lysias for my Greek reading for that reason; easy grammar but a challenge to grasp even in translation, with all the legal terms and arguments.