Is there anything out there (besides the companion book) to help with reading Lingua Latina Roma Aeterna? The grammar is of no concern to me, just the vocabulary, but google translate seems drunk when I try to put in Latin and it would take me forever to look up every new word in a dictionary. Honestly the best thing would be a translation that I could use with it as a bilingual text. I was only able to get through Familia Romana because of Mr.K’s audio translations. Is there anything similar or useful out there?
Not that I am aware of? I think some of the issues with Orberg are people are expecting to read it as if it were a novel. That’s because many of us came to the books after having had some Latin. If you’re not struggling with the grammar; well that’s something given that’s what most people have trouble with.
Here are your options:
- Get the companion dictionaries. I recall these existing. Or make your own via a good Latin dictionary.
- Consider going back to the last 10-15 chapters of LL:FR and re-reading slowly and see if you’ve missed words there. From what I recall, all new words are gradually introduced and so if you’re having a lot of issues you’ve probably forgotten something you learned earlier rather than later.
There’s also:
- Take a break and work through a Latin reader (Cambridge, Oxford, Wheelock’s, whatever) for a while and come back to it.
If you are looking for translations to the lessons, you could check, say, perseus translations, or any other for that matter.
The reason being this: that the texts in Roma Aeterna are for the most part selections taken from the classics, v.g., livy, cicero, ovid, sallust.
The selections begin at the chapter XLI onwards. The first few chapters are prose renderings of the Aeneis.
Have you tried using an online dictionary, such as this one?
Perhaps start using a system (e.g. flashcards) to commit vocabulary to memory, then you’ll only need to look up new words.
You’ve gotten several good suggestions. What you really need to do is build up your vocabulary. Using a translation will only slow up your internalization of the language while you are in the acquisition process. Better to slow up and do the hard work necessary.