My name is Toby and I’m an American living and teaching English in Germany. For the last several weeks (New Year’s Resolution) I’ve been trying to teach myself Latin using the “Lingue Latina per se illustrata” book, as well as the Cabridge Latin books and the Rosetta Stone website.
My interest in Latin is twofold: Ancient Rome has long been a source of fascination for me, and I think it would be cool to read Marcus Aurelius in the original, or Caesar. Even more though, I wanted to learn ANY language so that I would better be able to tell the people I’m teaching English to what works for me, and how I manage to fit it into my own schedule.
Until now, I’ve been blown away at how much I understand just reading ahead in Lingua Latina. The structure and progression of the book amazes me.
Mostly, I’m worried about composition and pronunciation. I don’t know who I’ll wind up speaking Latin to, but I want to think I’m doing it right, or as best I can.
Salve, Jedsath. I did hear that a CD existed for Lingua Latina: Familia Romana, but I’ve only been able to find used and very expensive (€200+) copies of it. However, YouTube has been great. I don’t know if everyone who records themselves is speaking perfectly, but there are several people and I try to hear different versions of each chapter I work through.
Salve, Bedwere! Curses! Perhaps I should have done some more research before picking a language, but for now I’ll have to be content to read Marcus Aurelius in translation and Caesar in the original. I rationalize learning Latin (to others) by saying learning a romance language afterwards should be easier. We’ll see.
I saw that you are translating Ben Hur. Is this something that will be available for purchase? I went ahead and bought myself the first of the Asterix and Obelix comics in Latin. With a dictionary and patience, it’s a nice change of pace!
Non tam praeclarum est scire Latine quam turpe nescire.
The Ben-Hur translation is being released with a Creative Commons license. Which basically means that anyone can download it and print it for free (but the images are not updated with the latest corrections). I might try to create a printed version on Lulu. Stay tuned!
