New Members Introduction Thread (New Users Post Here!)

Textkit Community Open Board
21

Carolus Raeticus omnibus lectoribus paginae Texktit salutem dicit.

I hope this posting does not appear twice. The system asked something about a draft, and I hastily typed yes and then was unsure what happened to what I had written.

I am new to Textkit and therefore would like to introduce myself. My nom de plume is Carolus Raeticus, and I try (again) to learn Latin.
Now, what do I mean when I say “learn”? Well, I do not want to be able to translate Latin. My long term goal is to be able to read Caesar-style Latin without any major problem, and above all without mentally translating (cf. the interesting article by William Harris about the Sin of Transverbalizing).
I do not know whether I will ever achieve this goal, but at least I can strive (I like that quote from one of the works of Albert Camus: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy”).

Anyway, my activities so far:

  • Learning Latin a long time ago at school (or rather “not learning” because there was far too little time alotted to Latin at that time, and I was probably too young as well to properly appreciate Latin).
  • A few years ago I gave it another try using Wheelock’s Latin (6th ed.) working through the entire book. Unfortunately I did not immediately follow up because a) I was sidetracked by my competing interest in astronomy, and b) I did not feel yet up to Caesar etc. but was not aware of any texts bridging the gap. In my opinion “Wheelock’s” contains far too little text to enable the learner to properly master basic reading skills.
  • Finally I got aware of the tons of Latin text books and reading material by now available on the Internet, either via Google-books but above all on Archive.org. So I am now giving it another try.

[Oops, I mentioned other sites. I hope this is not interpreted as being spam-inciting ;-]

Currently I am browsing through various text books (e.g. Wheelock’s Latin, Latin for Beginners by D’Ooge, the New Latin Grammar by Allen and Greenough) to reaquaint myself with the more obscure grammatical stuff. Otherwise I above all do some reading. Right now I am reading the Narrationes Faciles de Historia Romanorum, a compilation of easy Latin texts about Roman history (and myth). These are almost too easy, but I want to create a secure foundation for my later “exploits”. And for that I need sufficient “comprehensible input”.

At the same time I am trying to improve my vocabulary. To do so I am occupying myself with creating topical vocabulary lists.
As I believe that macrons are helpful I want to use these in my future vocabulary lists (I am almost finished with one about the human body and intend to create one about topography/geography next). As a preliminary exercise I created a new (but still non-topical) version of the vocabulary list Collar and Daniell’s Beginner’s Latin Vocabulary hosted by Textkit. My version is more or less the same but includes macrons, has a somewhat different formatting (for easier reading) and comes in two versions. Version 1 is for learning from scratch (two columns, one for the Latin, the second one in English), Version 2 is for reviewing and has the same layout as the original version.

I would like to show you my version, but unfortunately that is not possible as the forum rules seem to “veto” posting a link to the respective PDFs. Any way around that?

Grammar is one aspect of learning a language, vocabulary building another, and an important one at that. I believe that topical vocabulary lists could be of great assistance to the budding “Latinists” (and respective lists would be a definite plus for this site as well).

I also would like to thank everyone in advance for any help provided in the future. And thanks to everyone making Textkit possible!
Hm, this posting is rather long compared with the others postings. I hope that that is not considered as too overbearing (or that I am even breaking any rules by doing so :wink:

Valete,

Carolus Raeticus

22

Hi! I’m a homeschooling mom from Eastern Canada. I’m here because my 11 yo daughters wants to learn to read Latin and Ancient Greek. We’ve read Ovid and Homer and she’s got the grand idea that it would be fantastic to read those authors in the original language. I’m sort of lost. I don’t know either language (yet anyway) and have experience whatsoever with either so I’m here for guidance. Hope to learn lots!

23

Hello everyone,

I live in Holland and I’m in highschool. Next schoolyear I’ll be a senior, if all goes ok..I am one of the few students at my school who chose latin and greek^^
Reason why I became a member of textkit is because I chose to do my big report on latin and greek for my senior year. Hopefully all of you will be able to help me me out =)

xx

24

I’m a youth who loves language, especially Latin. I joined so that I could ask questions when I need to. Grammatica multa sed non verborum copia multa scio. Auxilium quod interrogatione accipiam cupio. I’m having fun already. :smiley:

25

Hello. I am Daniel. I’m almost ending my second year of Latin now. Struggling a bit, so I thought joining here might help.

26

Hi there!

I’m a junior in college, and I’ve just started learning Latin for my major of Medieval Studies :slight_smile:

27

Hi everyone,

I’m just trying to pick up enough Latin to read basic texts such as Virgil. Really just a personal pursuit or hobby more than anything else. I’m currently in the middle of Moreland and Fleischer, but with no answer key, I’m struggling and seriously considering switching to Wheelock. I’m hoping that more knowledgeable posters here might be able to assist me.

Best,
John

28

Hello, I’m looking for some advice about studying both Latin and Greek concurrently. I came here because my registration date is coming up and I would like some thoughts.

29

hello,im a newer learner from china and have a try to learn the ancient greek.im hopefully long for deeper ackowlege of this website

30

Hello! Found this site from a link at Early Indo-European Online. I’m interested in taking up Greek again, 38 years after my Greek 1 class in college. I’ve always wanted to continue with it and hope to do just a tiny bit each day. I’m hopelessly busy (inner city high school Spanish teacher) but summer is coming and maybe I can get a good start. I speak Portuguese due to a stint in the Peace Corps years ago, but am of course relegated to Spanish in the American high school. I was fortunate also to have studied a year of Sanskrit (in India) and a year of German in high school. Recently I took a community ed class related to the IPA (“Accents for Actors”) so am also interested in that method of describing pronunciation. I’ve also dabbled in using a couple of interactive fiction programming languages, so I guess when added up I could be described as a dilettante language geek. Maybe a closet Greek geek! Anyway, looks like a great site, and I’m looking forward to working with some of the materials here. Thanks for the resources!

[BTW, there is a funny typo on the intro page: “vibrate” should be “vibrant”. :laughing: ]

31

Hi everyone,
I’m interested in learning greek and latin, but have no background experience with either. I was really excited to see this site and hope it can help me out!
Michael

32

Greetings. I’m an ex-Indo-Europeanist and Unicode specialist.

33

Hi, my name is steven. A couple of years ago I worked through Mounce’s textbook, but I stopped practicing greek afterwards. I wanted to start again, but this time I have decided to start with Attic Greek instead of Koine. I have recently ordered ancient greek alive and teach yourself ancient greek, and I plan on using both of them with their audio files along with Sidwick’s first greek writer. I then plan to follow up with white’s first Greek book as well as some of the other fine titles that I have found through your website.

Thanks for making and maintaining this site.

34

How might this phrase be translated:

Pursuit of the knowledge of God.

I came up with Studia scientiam Dei, but am not sure as I am only a beginner.

Thanks

35

Close. I would say: “Studium scientiae dei” – “of the knowledge”, so the word for “knowledge” must be in the genitive. “Studia” instead of “studium” might be fine (since it’s the plural of “studium”).

36

Salvete, I hope that is a proper greeting. I am 52 years old and did not have Latin or Greek in school and now I have an interest to further my own education through self study, therefore if any of you have a suggestion on how to get started I would appreciate it.
Thank you
Kellyo

37

I am just starting to learn Greek. i look forward to the forums for help. I Thank you for this website. I am retired an Have wanted to learn Greek for a very long time. Thank you

38

Hey everbody. I’m a junior in college self-teaching myself Homeric Greek and hoping to one day be a classicist.

I really like the atmosphere around here. Requiring a new member introduction is a great idea, and just gotta say, the “I am a human spammer and I will re-think my life” cracked me up.

Not sure it’s a huge deal to you guys, but there were two typos on the sign-up page. One was “your” when it should have been “you” and the other was “formum” which I presumed was “forum.” Just thought I’d mention it since typos seem to go unnoticed so easily. I know I’d appreciate if someone pointed out mistakes like that to me, so ya know, just trying to be friendly. =)

Anyway, I’ve already found this site incredibly useful and even just scouring the forums has been a huge help. Now to start posting my own questions! =D

39

Hi everybody,

I’m moderately proficient at translating Koine (had 5 semesters of it in grad school) and want to expand my Greek to include Ancient. I’m also interested in reading Latin.

cheers,
Stephen

40

Hi. I am studying to be a Lutheran pastor, so I worked my way through Mounce in a class a few years ago. Sadly, my Greek has slipped quite a bit since then (Ancient Hebrew took over my life and ate my brain for awhile there) but I look forward to getting back to it. I’m also trying to pick up Latin at the moment by working my way through Lingua Latina- I also have Wheelock on my shelf, and I plan to work through that after I finish LL. I like LL so far- I’m just starting Cap V now- puzzling things out seems to help me learn better than usual. I don’t have any particular gift for languages- actually I’m pretty legendarily bad at learning any language that isn’t English- but I do enjoy them.