Hi Everyone,
my name is Christian and I thought I’d introduce myself.
I’m from Germany but my Mom’s American, so I always had an upper hand in French class back in the day. My parents had suggested I take a living language but, honestly, I wish I had taken Latin. I had one year of Latin as a second elective before I switched to a school that only had Spanish (besides French). German isn’t a Romance language, but Roman culture still has had a strong cultural effect here. I grew up with Asterix and Obelix and visits to the Saalburg, and my father had learned it, too, not to mention the influences on politics, law, and literature.
Still, I ended up getting carried away by a fascination for the exotic (and minimally inflectional) and have spent a good 15 years learning and consuming Japanese, some Chinese, and some Korean. Still I maintined a fascination for things ancient, so I also dabbled in Classical Japanese and Chinese. Now I’ve reached a phase of my life, where I still enjoy Japanese, but feel nostalgia for the part of my own culture that I’ve neglected sofar.
So here I am, looking to apply all the available modern techniques, tools, and approaches (Anki sentence decks, sentence-mining, comprehensive input, youtube videos, immersion, etc.) that weren’t available 15 years ago to study this language till I reach at least a comfortable proficiency. I want to try to learn Latin as I would any other language, and to not treat it merely as a tool for translating.
I look forward to a stimulating exchange here on this forum, to learning from those who know more than I do while sharing what I know.