I’m planning on learning both Latin and Attic Greek. Should I learn one of them first, or learn them both in conjunction? How long does it take, in general, to learn Latin (or Ancient Greek)?
Thanks in advance.
It all depends on what you want to do. I took Latin first, and I recommend doing so, but there are upsides to learning Greek first. If you have the necessary time, do both simultaneously. I wish I had.~
If I had done Greek first I’m certain I would’ve have quit classical languages. Look, Attic Greek is a lovely, lovely language. Really, I often find it more elaborate, more living, and more elegant than Latin. See (this is my view), Greek is an artist’s tongue. Its irregular because it strives to be pretty, it’s flexible and very subtle, it’s more sung than spoken, and again it’s so irregular (AHHH). There are just so many tiny rules, like how in the second-person singular aorist imperative middle the accent is on the ultimate UNLESS it’s compounded, or how vowels contract in a certain way but sometimes they either contract in a different way or not at all, or how after memorizing all the verb forms you have to deal with -mi verbs, and…
Well, as you can see, I sort of hate Greek right now, but Latin is such an engineer’s language. It’s SO regular and so nice and perfect. Greek appears as a much more living language, but learning Latin is so much easier it’s absurd, or at least it was for me. That’s why I say learn Latin first, because it’s easier to get your mind around reading a classical language when you don’t have to worry about why the goddamn accent on the omega in ωστε isn’t a circumflex despite the fact the rule says it’s supposed to be.
That’s why I say learn Latin first, because it’s easier to get your mind around reading a classical language when you don’t have to worry about why the goddamn accent on the omega in ωστε isn’t a circumflex despite the fact the rule says it’s supposed to be.
I’ve been looking through the D’ooge’s (sp?) Latin For Beginners, and it makes the pronunciation look somewhat complicated. There are little accent marks all over the place. When I browse 'round this forum and look at what people write in Latin, though, I don’t see all those weird marks. I find this difference somewhat confusing; it may be that I haven’t even started learning, though.
@Chris Weimer
Unfortunately, I probably don’t have the time to do both simultaneously. I don’t know how long it will take to learn Latin, though (estimates, anyone?).
You say that there are upsides to learning Greek first. What are these upsides?
I have never read D’ooge’s (I’ve got only love for Wheelock’s), but I wouldn’t worry about it. They’re probably for vowel length, and the only time I bother with that is when I’m reading poetry, and then it comes naturally. The best part of Greek is that they always mark their vowel length (thank you omega and eta!)
Also the pronounciation of Greek is much more complicated; it has a pitch accent and I’ve got two books with conflicting pronounciations of the zeta.
The upside of learning Greek is that so much of Latin is built ontop of that. Indeed, even Marcus Aurelius was still writing in Greek for his theological works (Meditations). It’s not absolutely mandatory, but certainly helpful to be familiar with Greek literature before embarking on Latin literature.
I did Latin first, then Greek, but at the university I am now attending they do both languages together for the first semester. This way you get a good grounding in the concepts behind both languages.
In hindsight I think it would have been better to do both at once, or Greek first. Greek is only harder for the first week or two while you learn to read and write in a different alphabet (not as hard as it looks!), after that it seems to flow along quite well. The verbs are a pain but all languages have their hurdle (like non-phonetic spelling in English!). The prose is certainly much more exciting and varied, although that may be partly due to the accident of history and what endured over time.
If you really want to learn the languages, you can. Don’t let the difficulty let you down!
And pick the language with the literature that is more appealing to you … if you don’t know much about the literature of either language, read some stuff in translation … but you need only glance at my username to know which language I’m biased towards 
Thanks for all your responses. It seems like most of you started with Latin first, and then went Greek. I think I’ll start with both, allotting more of my time to Greek because I think it looks pretty.
You may be interested in some recent discussion on this topic.
It may seem strange but I recommend you go with Latin first if you find trying both too dificult. I am of course heavily biased toward Greek for any number of reasons (not the least being that I learnt Ancient Greek before Latin -what a surprise eh?). However I still remember how shocked I was with the regularity of Latin. My mom sweared she would record the “no there’s NO exeption to the rule” reply of hers as well as the “yes, that’s it” one and I also remember, being an absolutely weird person, delving into the Latin language certain that I would at some point find something so complicated as some of the rules of the Greek but alas! nothing came close.
In other words, Greek is absolutely wonderful if you take my word for it (which you shouldn’t since, when talking about languages my objectivity goes out the window) but rather more difficult than Latin, especially if you decide to find out how you should pronounce it so that your pronunciation will be as acurate as possible 
I should have done a search before posting this thread, eh?
It may seem strange but I recommend you go with Latin first if you find trying both too dificult.
I’m too easily swayed. Pienso que empezaré con LatÃn porqué ya conozco un poco español. Does that look like a good enough reason to start with Latin and then learn Greek afterwards?
To me? Absolutely! You’ll go “hey that’s just like in Spanish” quite often. The trick is of course not to confuse the two but then that’s less of a problem with Sp-Lt than Spanish-Italian for example
She’s right, you know. I know Spanish, and the similarities are striking. Of course, Spanish’s grandaddy is Latin, so…it has “inherited” certain traits. I’m thinking of the imperfect and preterit verb tenses especially. Nearly identical!
You know what’s surprising? German has a very similar pronunciation to Latin. Consider the name Michael. In Latin you’d say Mee-Kai-Ul. In German you’d say Mee-Chai(ch as in loch)-Ul. However, pronunciation is where the similarities seem to stop.
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Illegal? What is this?!
To me? Absolutely! You’ll go “hey that’s just like in Spanish” quite often. The trick is of course not to confuse the two but then that’s less of a problem with Sp-Lt than Spanish-Italian for example
There’s always the possibility that I could confuse the two; that might be somewhat of a problem.
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Yes. Please don’t quote the spam-weasels. I’ll obliterate these posts when I notice them.
Where do you get that Ul? I’ve never heard that.
I’m a novice to Latin, so ul might not be the right one, but that’s how I thought it was pronounced.