I respect your ‘calling them as I see them’ with ancient literature. In time I suspect I will do the same. For now I can’t understand them without English translation, and so I refrain from judgement.
Great Expectations is not in my opinion all the trash you claim, but reading one page won’t show you that: it comes when Dickens writes from Wemmick’s own perspective, far different from the reputation he has allotted himself at work. This I think is highly underestimated. That Dickens can do this well saves him from his purposely drawn out language. Of course at school the times determine whether or not you officially like him, but that has little to do with the real thing.
With Shakespeare it takes a while to divorce the hype of the man from the quality of his literature, but since reading Antony and Cleopatra I’ve grown to respect his remarkable ability, albeit high-flown and often flowery language.
What you need is an ideal of what you would like to be studying 5 or 10 years from now. You may even need a role model, like Tolkien; study his life (I know I will) and his methods for absorbing new material. Above all, you need PERSISTANCE and STRUCTURE, especially at this early age, when you can easily be lead into trying everything but end up doing nothing. Best of luck in your efforts.
Great that you’ve decided to give Latin a try! Don’t be put off by the only doubter on this site. Blake said “He who shall teach the Child to Doubt / The rotting Grave shall ne’er get out?. Or, to quote the Bard:
… thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
We all have our own hidden reasons for learning a language and our motivation tends to wax and wane painfully. But checking out Latin won’t harm you. Enjoy your enterprise while it lasts!
I was supposedly ‘taught’ Latin at school at 11 but I certainly didn’t learn much then. At the same time, I found I could read Paradise Lost by Milton without assistance. For most of my life my motto has been ‘school sucks’ but I confess I am deeply grateful to the folks who put Richard II and King Lear on my 6th-form reading list. In or out of school, there are weird and wonderful worlds out there just waiting to reveal their riches to you. Put another way, there’s so much to miss out on.
I taught my own own 8-year-old son some Latin using a book called ‘Latin with Laughter’. Nowadays he quotes Horace at me (in Latin) without ever having studied a word of Latin at school. To take a seasonally appropriate example:
Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis
arboribusque comae
Cheers,
Int
P.S. Dickens and Shakespeare certainly do not suck. Also, the Bhagavad Gita lives! For Epi’s brother, I recommend ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. After page one he won’t be able to put it down. (For Epi himself, there’s always a Latin version).
