Benissimus suggested a Poll quite some time ago in the “Advisory Board” forum to determine whether there would be enough interest in creating a new forum for Latina Lingua.
But I’m guessing the casual vistors to this Website probably don’t bother reading the Advisory Board forum regularly, if at all. So I’m taking the initiative in creating a Poll here, in the Learning Latin Forum to “see” if there is sufficient interest or not.
As one might guess, I’m personally in favor of this… now let’s see if we can justify one…
I’ve voted no. In case that seems churlish, I think I should explain my vote. It’s absolutely not intended as an attack on Latina Lingua, which I know next-to-nothing about, except its general method, which like every other method has its good and not so good points.
There’s really not that much traffic in this forum: a few messages a day. Anyone can post a question on Latina Lingua or any other book for that matter here, and get an answer. It can sometimes be a positive advantage to get answers from people who have not learned from that particular text, or are not enthusiasts for it. You get a broader view. And there is cross-fertilization: people coming to the board, perhaps for the first time, see discussion and think “What is this Latina Lingua?”
Multiple forums tend to splinter any sense of community. (Of course there are other things that splinter any sense of community as well. Some of them, sadly, are sometimes in evidence here. But that’s inevitable, I think.)
I would encourage a half-way house maybe, as an experiment. Post to the main forum, but with a prefix (something like LL: question) so that people can see its a Latina Lingua question, but the risk of splintering is minimized.
I agree with Ulpianus on this one, nothing against Hans Orberg at all. No but seriously I agree with him on this one. Good to see you’re posting again, by the way.
Even though I have previously started a topic on doing just what is proposed here, I am actually rather neutral on the subject of whether we should have a board for Lingua Latina. I think most of the regular visitors to this site probably do what I do, which is click on the link for new posts since last visit. So the odds of my seeing a question about LL are exactly equal whether it would be posted in a dedicated board or the Learning Latin board.
Now, here’s what I think would be a very good and useful thing for people studying any particular book that is discussed here frequently. A motivated person could go through previous posts and link to useful posts, sorted by chapter in a particular book. The archives of this forum are filled with wonderful and useful information, but they have grown so large that it is difficult to find what you need in them.
Anyone could do this, and it would take some time and searching, but it wouldn’t be onerous. It could look something like this (using Wheelock’s as an example):
Well, you get the idea. Think about how incredibly useful a list like this would be to someone working their way through a book. It could be kept as a “sticky” at the top of the list of topics so newcomers could find it easily.
Just a thought (I know, we don’t need any more ideas…),
Ed
I have been studying LL, when I have free time that doesn’t happen much lately, and I love the book. Of course I’m not using like the way it was meant to be use as I already have study almost all “Latin for Beginners? by D’Ooge. But altought I love the book I voted “No? for the exact reasons given by Ulpianus.
I will refrain from voting in this post despite the fact that I use Lingua Latina. I think the ‘no’ voters above bring up a valid point. Perhaps we should have a poll on whether there should be any forums that are ‘text specific’ or not. If I have a question regarding a particular Latin passage or grammar point should it matter what book it comes from? If the textbook is relevant, it could simply be stated in the subject line of a topic.
It looks like a concession is in order… No LL forum… Not as many die-hard LLer’s as I had anticipated - I thought that there might be more “closet” self-learners out there who would chime in…
I don’t think it’s as bad as all that. I brought this topic up once before, and the best argument that was given to me for why there shouldn’t be one is still true: People aren’t discussing it all that much. It’s being discussed in the sense of “Is it a good method/series/etc or not,” but not in the specific sense of “what does it mean on pg. 45 where it says…”
It doesn’t mean people aren’t reading it, enjoying it and learning from it; it just doesn’t prompt a lot of questions on the board.
The truth of the matter is that a lot of the “book-specific” discussions have decreased while (at least it seems to me) other latin questions, not necessarily tied to a particular text, have increased.
Anyway, I guess my point is, I don’t think any of this discussion reflects poorly on the Lingua Latina series. And all of those “closet learners” will go on reading it (and probably wouldn’t have posted in a LL forum anyway).
On the contrary, it gives testimony to the fact that LL is very easy to follow and, hence, very few people have questions. At least that’s what I think.
I’m becoming a devotee to LL. I’ve had a semester of Latin and due to economics I’m continuing Latin autodidactically after a short respite. When I started I said to myself, “I’ll read LL and when I need clarification of a particular grammar point, I’ll go to Wheelock’s.” Well, granted I have not come very far yet, but Wheelock’s is gathering dust while LL is becoming dogeared and beat-up around the edges. When the going gets tougher I may want to come here for help but so far I find it works quite well.
