I’ve started playing with Italian lately, after playing with Latin for 10 years (language is my toy). The question I have for someone who has done this kind of thing: How best to hold on to Latin while learning Italian. I don’t want to lose 10 years of hard play–as the poet Wallace Stevens once wrote in a letter “I like the sound of Latin”. Is it best to go over a Latin grammar book, or perhaps read some prose? I realize this is a question which has no definite answer. I guess I’d like to hear how it was done by someone who succeeded. Thanks
I would simply try to read some Latin every day, and I think going with a prose author would be best. Use the grammar for reference though some people like reading grammars, looking up all the examples in context, and so forth.
I had a professor who was a Latinist, but didn’t want to lose his Greek, so he read an OCT page of Greek or the equivalent every day. It worked nicely for him, and when he was asked to teach a Greek class, he was ready for it… 
You could also make Latin an active part of your Italian studies.
If you are doing translation exercises, you could do Italian to Latin instead of Italian to English.
Or pick a book that has both Latin and Italian editions and read it in both languages at the same time. The Little Prince and other children’s books that have Latin editions must surely have Italian ones as well.
Thanks for your advice. One of the pleasures of learning Latin is that people are motivated to teach it for the sake of teaching it. With “modern languages” such as Italian everything seems to be a money-making scheme. I played with Duolingo (free)
for a while in learning Italian and discovered that they offer Latin. But I find the Latin is a beginner’s Latin, even if you don’t start as a beginner. I wonder if anyone out there has successfully used Duolingo for Latin.They’re famous for their slow pace.
I’m using Duolingo for Spanish right now so that I can communicate with my new daughter-in-law and absolutely love it! The lessons are small enough that it’s very easy to spend some productive time with the language every day. I’ve tried Duolingo’s Latin course and was disappointed as was Sean Jones who first mentioned it here on Textkit. There’s just not enough content. There are but two “trees” in the Latin course (compared with 10 in Spanish) and for verbs all you see are present tense forms, although they cover the regular conjugations as well as number of deponents and irregular verbs. To be fair, I’m in the 2nd tree in Spanish and have yet to see any other tense than the present. Perhaps it’s just down to how they organise the lessons. In any case, the course is incomplete and appears not to have been updated in the two years since I first looked at it.
Thanks Aetos. Yes, I would agree Duolingo is deficient as a tool for learning Latin. I guess my question is can it even be used to maintain the present level in Latin. Probably not. It’s so limited. Which is a pity because it’s fun and easy; play in every sense of the word–you feel good and get nowhere.
Yes, it is a pity. One of the features I most like about Duolingo is that you can tailor your goals and then the reminder system helps you achieve them. As to maintaining your Latin, I agree with Barry. Just read! Perhaps some Caesar, or you could try Nutting’s book, Ad Alpes., I think we’ve talked about this before and I know you suspected some of the suggested materials might be a little too advanced. I believe you’ve finished the LLPSI course and read some of the ancillary texts. You should be ready for some Vergil or Ovid, if you’d like to try some poetry. Perhaps a comedy-Plautus’ Latin is not very difficult, once you get past the early forms of some words, e.g., advorsus=adversus, suos=suus, quoius=cuius. The metre is complicated, but not impossible. I’d suggest the Menaechmi or Amphitryon. Apuleius may be a bit advanced from a vocabulary standpoint, but the syntax isn’t too difficult, and the stories are loads of fun! I read a chapter a night (they’re small) before going to bed (like Barry’s professor).
I’ve tried Ovid this past year and found it difficult. Catullus I found somewhat easier maybe because the poems are often short. But beyond the famous Lesbia poems (some of them have great power) the writing is often so mean and obscene one can hardly believe he wrote it. Add to this sexual perversion (“puer mihi”). I wonder which edition you use in reading
Apuleius. I had trouble finding his writing in Latin. Is there an edition with grammar and vocabulary notes you would recommend?
I’ve never been able to find much (reasonably priced) secondary material for Apuleius, either. I’ve been using the Loeb editions by J. Arthur Hansen, #44 (Books 1-VI) and #453(Books VII-XI). There are the Groningen commentaries by Hijman and others that are available for most of the books, but they’re quite beyond my price range. As I am just reading Apuleius for fun and not as a scholarly endeavour, the Loeb edition is adequate. I just content myself with not looking at Hanson’s translation until I’ve understood the Latin. I just hold the book open enough to make a 90 degree angle, so that the English page is perpendicular to the Latin page. That keeps the English page out of sight.
As for Catullus, don’t be too hard on him-It was a different time and culture. As for “puer mihi”, he may have been referring to a slave, or more likely using the word as a pet name, as he does in Carmen 12, which happens sit next to my favourite, Carmen 13!
There is a free Loeb #44 revised by Gaselee from a very old Adlington translation. Do you think the newer Hansen translation is worth buying? Of the various authors you suggested which, on the whole, is the easiest? Have you read Ad Alpes? Is it actually easier than Caesar though, I believe, it’s meant to be read after Caesar? I’ve found Nutting’s Latin Reader at my level but it is quite boring.
But beyond the famous Lesbia poems (some of them have great power) the writing is often so mean and obscene one can hardly believe he wrote it. Add to this sexual perversion (“puer mihi”).
I get the impression that you haven’t quite understood Catullus.
( and indeed who in this day and age talks about sexual perversion?)
ps do you mean puerum mihi in XV?
Pin130, I think you would like the Hansen edition much more as you might find the English translation a bit archaic in the Adlington version. If you would like to “try before you buy”, you can borrow the Hansen version from the Internet Archive for an hour and renew it as often as you like (pending availability). That should give you enough time with the book to decide if it’s worth buying. Here’s the link:
https://archive.org/details/goldenassbeingme0000apul_m1d0/page/n9/mode/2up
As to Ad Alpes, I’ve read roughly half of it. I did not find it particularly difficult, but I was reading it at a much later stage in my Latin career. The chief aim of the book is in fact to “smooth” the transition from Caesar to Cicero by vocabulary building and familiarisation with the Roman history, mythology and culture. The stories are interesting, but given your prior experience of Nutting, perhaps not interesting enough. You can always download a copy from the Internet Archive and try a chapter or two:
https://archive.org/details/nuttingadalpes/page/n1/mode/2up
Thanks Aetos for your helpful advice. Thanks Seneca2008 for taking the time to read my two cents. Perhaps a language forum is not a good place for the old argument whether literature should be judged for its moral content or only its artistic strength. I know today the later opinion is in the ascendancy, which doesn’t mean that it is right. I remember long ago writing a little poem–its basic thought was that one could live a better life than the world around us simply by doing and thinking the opposite of what the world does and thinks.
I am presently trying to resurrect my Latin and learn Italian. I have a fair amount of experience learning a number of languages at the same time.
I have ideas. Would like to share them and yours.
Cornelius
Interesting to read everyone’s replies on this! In university, I once took German, French, and Spanish at the same time. I’m less familiar with Italian, though I was watching a subtitled documentary with interviews with Italian speakers the other day and could pick out words because of Latin.
I just set aside time for each, and especially tried to find things to enjoy culturally in each, like watching foreign language films or listening to music. I once lived near an amazing bookstore where I could find foreign language novels for $1 or $2 and would pick up any random thing.
As middle schoolers, we used to go to the public library and check out the book of Catullus poems for this very reason! Anything that gets people interested in reading is good, I guess, haha. But there were some eyebrow-raising lines.
But I’m just working on refreshing my knowledge right now before moving onto anything difficult. I’ve been working as a German>English translator for years and then decided I needed to get back into Latin. As an American, seeing Roman ruins in Europe was mind-blowing and that could be part of it, looking back through my photos.
Thanks AmyOfRome for your post. I didn’t see it till now. I guess I’m something of a dilettante. I studied Italian for a few months but found it sort of cute (if you can say such a thing about a language) and light–far from Latin’s heavy drama
which I enjoy. Also, my Latin was being ignored. So, in short, I gave up on reading Dante and Leopardi in the original and am back to Latin with what little time I have for it. As I tell my children I have a degree in Latin from BU (Bathroom University).
I’m going through the Cambridge Latin Course which I’ve always disliked because they seem positively opposed to offering good grammatical information. But it does provide lots of reading practice.
Haha, yes; but as Barry said, I think just taking a bit of time to have some exposure to Latin every day, when possible, is the way to go. People learn in different ways sometimes, though.
Since I signed up here, and at which time I hadn’t bothered with Latin in years, I already feel a decent amount of my vocabulary coming back from doing this. I bought some textbooks, I’ve looked up some Latin prose online, and I just read some paragraphs every day. I look things up, but eventually things stick and I can read more without a dictionary. And then I try to listen to a little bit on YouTube or via podcasts, audiobooks, etc. if I can, even if I’m not paying attention 100% it’s good to hear it.
I’m thinking of printing out some of the grammar charts from the books I have and sticking them to my corkboard here so I don’t have to keep referring to them. I also use books and online sources with Latin text to help me write my own sentences.
Additionally, and no one has to know about this, but you can also practice composition in your head here and there during the day by describing what’s going on around you. “Canis in horto ambulat, canis latrat,” etc. 
For pronunciation, I recorded myself reciting some chapters from a textbook and then listened to them again to see how bad my pronunciation was and what to work on.
I’ve just started watching the news in German but that’s more for language retention than learning two at once, I at least use German every day already. So my focus is pretty much completely on Latin right now.
I have a friend who constantly posts his DuoLingo Italian progress, and I’m not knocking that, or my friend, but I’ve heard mixed things and wanted to see what anyone was saying about that app.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXHtwQP9DnQ
LanguageJones has a video on “how to make DuoLingo actually work for you” and I agree with his major points of "dont expect to learn a language quickly with one app (I made a video saying similar things on using multiple sources here), but he also says that DL uses AI to come up with sentences and to do the audio.
I’m not an expert on pronunciation here, but some of the audio sounded weird to me. LanguageJones gives a good example with French here, that the AI audio totally ignores elision and liason, which are mandatory for correct French pronunciation, and make the whole thing seem iffy to me, but again, multiple sources. Learning from incorrect source audio is a red flag for me, though. Of course many languages are said like they’re written and this would be less of an issue for those.
I took their Latin “test” and it let me skip ahead 6 lessons, but another issue I had was (1)sometimes there is a listening excerise with two words, “type what you hear” and you click on the two words, which is zero challenge. (2) other times due to Latin being highly inflected, the word order doesnt really matter that much, and again if it’s a two word sentence, there is no challenge and you don’t seem to be learning to figure out grammar yourself when the words are already written for you.
but again, my solution would be supplement with a grammar and other sources, i suppose.