Enough already.
Indeed. Strangely enough, though, Tolkien was not keen on French.
You get an awful lot of latitude here, Episcopus. It doesn’t extend to insulting people new to Textkit or discouraging beginners.
I heard a story about Tolkein: apparently when at school he and his fellow students used to hold debates in Latin (can you imagine any schoolkids doing that now?). He apparently amazed everyone by delivering his entire debate in Classical Greek.
Don’t know if it is true or not - but it sounds impressive!
I was just joking about that. I agree that he shouldn’t be discouraged because of his age. You can never start soon enough to learn something.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
PeterD and Carola - I heard that story, too, and wouldn’t be surprised at the verity of it’s contents! 
But were they improvised debates or well-prepared ones? What I wouldn’t give for his knowledge… 
Episcope - se asinum interdum praestas.
..4 pages, can we get 5?.. 
-Jon
I think we should try and get 100 real replies (i.e., not through just posting whatever) 
There’s really nothing special about Tolkien’s latin conversations. In Austria-Hungary, Latin was the language no.1 until 1848 and eight years of study, which was common in Czecho-Slovakia till 1948 gave everyone a solid base for such “cool ability”. I believe it was similar in the other civilized European states.
There’s really nothing special about Tolkien’s latin conversations. In Austria-Hungary, Latin was the language no.1 until 1848 and eight years of study, which was common in Czecho-Slovakia till 1948 gave everyone a solid base for such “cool ability”. I believe it was similar in the other civilized European states.
I am pretty sure that, till the middle of the 19th Century, at University of Padua, Italy, Latin was the official language of most faculties (especially in the medical school).
And when, in 1804, Napoleon extended the French Civil Code to Northern Italy and the Illiricum (territories which are today in Slovenia and Croatia), he issued three official translations: Italian, French AND Latin. It seems that this official Latin translation of Civil Code was only one issued. In other parts of Europe, the French Civil Code wasn’t officialy translated into Latin.
Misopogon
There’s really nothing special about Tolkien’s latin conversations
maybe there wasn’t anything special about them then, but there is now. 1848 was a long time ago and, sad to say, 8 years of study isn’t the standard anymore. well, at least in the States… hmm.. come to think of it, I don’t know if it ever was. 
But nevertheless, Tolkien rocks everyone’s socks off!
-Jon
true!!!
Okay, school got out of hand so I couldn’t start and baseball’s been busy lately, but now im back.
E your mean.
Hi pjj1020…
I started to learn very basic Latin in Catholic school when I was seven. I believe wholeheartedly that beginning to learn Latin then is why I love the study of it now. Not knowing all that much of Greek, I can’t honestly say which is easier…though I believe I can say with some amount of certainty that Latin verb forms are a little bit easier (at least there are less of them). St. Augustine stated that he never learned Greek because he found it difficult and hated it…though I suppose a native speaker of Latin would be a touch biased.
As to those who think that age makes a difference in learning a language, they may be correct…however, the difference would be in favor of someone younger as opposed to someone older. My own kids are fluent in a second language (something I have yet to be) and both are younger than twelve. It was a breeze for them whereas the languages I have studied were difficult for me to learn. Being younger gives you many advantages and, as far as I know, zero disadvantages.
All in all, study whichever language has the types of literature you would enjoy reading. Though Latin may be somewhat easier, the journey towards fluency won’t be much shorter. Greek has a very large corpus of Christian, philosophical, and dramatical texts. Latin was used a little more practically, though it also has a large Christian corpus (though almost entirely Catholic). Each has a wealth of histories, orations, and fictions.
I study Latin now, but when I believe I have a good enough grasp of it, I plan to take on Greek. If I’m still alive after that, I plan on trying to learn Hebrew and even own a copy of Gardiner’s Egyptian Grammar to keep me busy after that.
Absolute best of luck to you!
Chris
There are some disadvantages of learning a classical language young. Namely, Greek and Latin are typically taught to prepare one to read literature, history, and Scripture in the original. These documents, however, are often extremely complex stylistically and rhetorically, even if we do not take into account the difficulties of mastering the other language. In other words, if you can’t read Tacitus or Apuleius in English (say), how are you supposed to read them in Latin? Children demand an entirely different classical pedagogy.
My point is just that the difference between teaching Latin and Greek to children and to adults is much greater than, for instance, the same difference in French or any other modern language, where conversational proficiency is typically the goal.
That said, I wish I’d started learning Latin when I was a kid.
-David
I don’t think the disadvantages of starting at a young age are big. There are Latin textbooks written for 12 and 13 year olds. When I was starting to learn Latin at school we didn’t read Tacitus or Apuleius, but stories about Marcus, Lucius and their cat. Such stories would be very boring for older people.
As always, an insightful contribution David. I say this because you are precisely correct: I like most of the males around me refused to read any english books imposed on us. I had not infrequent disputes with my english teacher at the time who maintained that english literature was not a dog subject. But more on that another time. In any case one thing leads to another and I stand here today unable to read Cicero/Apuleius in english. If I have trouble with a piece of latin I often can’t understand the english translation either. The few pieces of Latin I have read, some of Seneca’s letters for example, constitute the most sophisticated literature I have ever come across, partly because I haven’t read any in english. My brother picked up a famous celebrated book, Great Expectations, wondering what all the fuss were about, read one page, threw it on the floor because it was just poor and I agree with him. I also think that Shakespeare wrote like a dog and I don’t see why every one loves him so much. The foreign language fearings should silence themselves learn latin without crying and read a proper language. Though I may not agree with his opinions, Ovid’s verse is of some form.
~E
There is some truth in this but certainly not enough to withhold languages such as Greek and Latin from people of any age. Rhetorical and stylistic complexity do not prevent anyone from reading and learning something, no matter how small, from scripture or any other book. Sure, not every nuance will be thoroughly understood, but not every nuance has to be. An eleven-year-old can have a fun time reading a good translation of Dante’s Inferno without needing to know the story behind every dropped name. I’m not suggesting that kids should have a graduate student’s understanding of Latin or Greek literature or that all of the literature is “Rated G for General Audiences,” only to have fun with the language and the ability to use it or not at their discretion.
Oh I think Homer’s Iliad i.e. has some pretty gory stuff, guaranteed to make a pleasurable reading for anyone enjoying the Slayer comics i.e. 
I did not mean to imply that children should not be taught the classical languages, as I had hoped to make clear. Rather, they should be taught them differently. As a twelve year old, I probably would not have been able to fully understand the prose style of Thomas Carlysle, to take one example. Trying to read the equivalent in a foreign language (Rabelais, say) while also trying to learn that foreign language would be absurd.
This just means that one should teach Latin or Greek in the same way one teaches children French, Italian, or any other language: with conversational precision, since children converse on the level of adults, but at roughly the level of reading and writing that they can hope to have reached in their own language.
-David