Hello all who read this – I’m coming back to Latin from a lengthy absence. I’ve studied several modern languages and enjoy them primarily for reading. Latin has always had a particular fascination for me, and even after several decades, while the precise forms have become fuzzy in my aging memory, the inner logic of the language seems to still be there. As I am conditioned to learning modern languages, my first goal upon reacquiring the grammatical forms will be reading neo-latin books to gain some fluency with the forms and vocabulary. This approach will be frowned upon by some, but I’ve likened going from elementary grammar to reading classical authors to learning English by beginning to read, say John Milton. That is not to say I don’t care for Roman authors – far from it. I have a dual language copy of the Georgics (ah, beekeeping!) that I keep handy as well as older textbook-style editions of Cicero’s works. I love the older textbook editions written for high school and college students – so lovingly annotated. Anyway, greetings all – I really am enjoying working on the grammar again.
Salve Ed!
I absolutely concur with you. The concentration on the “Old ones” is absurd. And I know that Arcadius Avellanus, a fierce proponent of Latin as a living language, was of the same opinion. In his magazine Praeco Latinus he writes in a sort of manifest:
Abolish “reading the classics,” i.e. the vicious fallacy of trying to learn a language, the most artistic of languages, by spelling and analyzing a few lines or chapters of the most sublime master-pieces.
He certainly would not have been a friend of “Wheelock’s Latin.” A few easy Latin pieces (mostly for young persons though) can be found on this page from my website. And there is a lot more floating around on the Internet.
Vale,
Carolus Raeticus
Hello there!
You will find many of us agree with you regarding the level of difficulty that we should aim at in the first stages of learning. Make yourself at home!
Thanks. Good to know I’m not alone in this. Yes, I’m not sure what this fixation on Wheelock is – a serviceable approach if you like that sort of thing, but I once worked through it and found upon finishing I could not come up with the most ordinary conversational sentences. There’s nothing wrong with it as a textbook, but kind of dry … Not sure why people find all the ancillary materials necessary. And thanks for the link. Meanwhile I’ve downloaded Mysterium Arcae Boule and it looks quite readable at a relatively early stage.