Whilst I do indeed love Latin...

Latin Learning Latin
1

There are times when the frustration takes over, crushes, and replaces that love.

It’s not necessarily that Latin is difficult, just that at times it’s SLOW. Essentially I’ve got three declensions and two conjugations down, I can mechanically give the forms and the like, however reading Latin can be painfully slow at times. I’m using Wheelock’s mainly, my plan of study is this:

Read chapter
Comprehend chapter
Practice using the vocabulary
Do the tests
move onto next chapter

However, as I said, the reading itself is slow (is this natural at first?) and vocab retention is precarious at best.

Yet there are times when I absolutely love Latin, when something finally clicks, when I can point to objects and name them, or make questions out of them.

I use my cats to demonstrate! although Feles magnam mensam portat, is hard to act out…but still :stuck_out_tongue: you know, and I delight in being able to use the language, however miserly my ability is, for exactly a black cat (nigra feles) can be turned into a question:

Q: Nigrane Feles est?
A: Etiam domine, feles nigra est.

or

Q: Albusne Feles est?
A: Mineme, domina, feles nigra est.

etc, right? (I’ve spent some times with Adler’s :stuck_out_tongue:)

Also that’s another thing, Latin sentence structure. I understand the basics (SOV) but composing some of the sentences Wheelock asks for can be such a task.

Right I think that’s about it, it nowhere matches the passioned invective I had in mind, but still I can update later I guess.

:S

2

Salve Scribo,
As Lawrence of Arabia says in Lean’s film: “Certainly it hurts…The trick, William Potter, is not minding it hurts.”
Ut ait Laurentius Arabiae in pelliculâ Davidis Lean: “Certè dolet…Ars, Guillielme Figule, est quod dolet negligendi.”

3

Salve Adrianus, quid agis hodie?

Certainly things like that help, reading a sentence in English and then in Latin, thanks.

Vale.

4

Good, and you? Thanks, Scribo. Keep going.
Benè et tu? Gratias tibi, Scribo. Pertende.

5

Bene! gratias Adrianus, ero.

You know, this is the first time I’ve actually enjoyed a language enough to force on with it, I mean I love French films etc but the way we learnt French at school is why I dropped it last year. I actually, most of the time, enjoy opening the text book.

6

You will. To learn French, best to go to France. For Latin, I love the strategy involving your cats.
Pertendes. Meliùs est ut ad linguam discendum in Franciam is. Ad Latinum discendum, consilium quod feles tuas implicat admiror.

7

I’d say your problem lies in that your curriculum revolves around Wheelock. You should change that at once.

8

I’m experiencing that myself with Greek. Sometimes I come to the point where I hate the language. :cry: But I’m motivated by the illusion of one day understanding it all like the back of my hand. :slight_smile:

I’m using Wheelock’s mainly, my plan of study is this: Read chapter

I’ve never used Wheelock’s, but if it’s anything like my Collar and Daniell’s, I would suggest you make it a light read. Don’t obsess too much with the theory.

Comprehend chapter

Again, if the chapter deals more with theory, a light comprehension would suffice for now. On the other hand, if the chapter is heavy on the reading of actual Latin (like Lingua Latina or any other “Reader”) you would do the opposite: read, read, and read until you can make sense of it. Yes, it is SLOW at first (like going back to elementary school), but be assured that your speed will increase if you put the effort into it. I know I can read some Latin at almost the same speed as Spanish, my native tongue.

Practice using the vocabulary

Try pronouncing new words aloud. Give to each new word a distinct emphasis (a sound or a movement) and imagine as vividly as possible its signification.

Do the tests

If you have a “Reader”, instead of translating (which for me is such a bore, even though that is what I do for a living :laughing: ), try rearranging the sentences in an attempt to simplify or complicate its meaning. You could also summarize whole paragraphs into a few sentences.

One last piece of advice: get a small blackboard (or whiteboard) and use it to make the paradigms. It works for me: the hand moves more freely than on paper, and I save trees! :stuck_out_tongue:

Anywho, that’s all that comes to mind. Hope any of this is useful to you in speeding up your Latin studies.

Cura valetudinem tuam diligenter!

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That is how learning Latin goes. Just follow through with it and it will follow through for you too.

10

From my own experience, I have found dooge’s latin for beginners rather good. If you want to be able to compose or translate latin, studying a grammar is compulsory. I considered studying lingua latina when I first began, but while that approach would allow for a rudimentary sense of the meaning of simple sentences, complex ideas would be hard to analyze in any great detail without a grounding in the fundamentals of the grammar.

For me, I don’t find the reading of latin particularly difficult; rather, I find composition and translation from english to latin infinitely more difficult, and again requires a detailed understanding of its grammar.

11

… have you ever even looked at Lingua Latina?

And I’d say your trouble with Latin composition is because you learned (or are learning) with a traditional-style course. Lingua Latina feeds you accidence in a systematic way but also teaches you what is more important — syntax — by its extensive readings in which correct and idiomatic constructions are used again and again. You can’t learn a language by studying a grammar alone, any more than you can learn to play cricket by looking at diagrams of the pitch.

Of course, any learner’s course will only take you so far: the best (only?) way to master Latin is through reading the unaltered original authors and through using the language actively (e.g., in a journal, or speaking it with friends).

12

With all due respect, Lucus, I’m getting a bit tired of this. Wheelock may have its faults, but it would not have stayed around as long as has if instructors hadn’t found it effective for teaching Latin. We all know your opinions, but there is no single “right” way to learn a language. Half the process is figuring out a system that works for you.

Learning a language is hard no matter what method you use. There are no shortcuts. Even with the best instruction in the world, occasional frustration is inevitable. The important part is to not give up and to find ways to overcome the obstacles which are frustrating you.

13

I’m going to back up Lucus here. He’s addressing a problem that the original poster said he/she was having, id est:

Wheelock’s throws a mess of vocabularly at you and encourages reinforcement via exersizes and readings. He did not say that Wheelock was ineffective, only implied that it was more than likely the source of the problem.

Instructors use Wheelock’s because the grammatical explanations are simple and comprehensive. The organization of the exercizes makes it great for homework/exam use. However, for vocabularly reinforcement, grammatical usage reinforcement, and word order understanding, it seriously lacks. It’s also why Lucus, as well as myself and others here, are big fans of readers such as Lingua Latina. Readers solve the above problems and, if you use something like LL, keep you entertained. The grammatical explanations are never complete, however, so keeping a copy of Wheelock’s around for such explanations is a good idea.

If you want to read something where someone talks about the color of their cat or a dog, you’ll be hard pressed to find something entertaining in Wheelock’s. In LL, dogs are often the prominent, if not pivitol, characters in chapters.

To be quite honest, Scribo, many people find translating sentences such as “Cicero was writing about the glory of the other man and his wife,” tiresome when starting out in Latin. These sentences, though important, have little to do with our lives in the 21st century and are consequently quite boring to students. Many instructors may use Wheelock’s, true, but many students don’t take Latin voluntarily. You could say it has something to do with Latin’s emphasis in curriculae, but I’d imagine it has more to do with people having little interest in studying it. Supply and demand, you know.

You may be getting tired of Lucus’ argument, but I’m tired of seeing Latin textbooks trying to force boring words like “agricola” and “gladium” down students’ throats when much more fun could be have with more meaningful vocabularly. Perhaps if more teachers used LL and spent their lecture periods doing the grammatical explanations themselves and crafting their own exercizes, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

Chris

14

Ah thanks for all the replies guys. I’ll take your suggestions, especially the one about the whiteboard, to heart. Worry not, I never had any intention of giving up, it’s so enjoyable and I really want to be a Classicist.

E Donnely’s list has been a help actually, I managed to get hold of a book listed on there, “The Latin Speaker” and have been reciting some of that, about 2/3rds of it are boring prayers, I skipped over those and found some dialogues. I think they’re called the “Dialogues of Corderios” or some such, apparently a favourite of the old English system. Reading them is good fun I might say, words I don’t know I can pick up from the given translation (certain words are matched in italics for e.g) and I am starting to get a feel for the conversations.

It’s not classical Latin, true, but still it’s a nice break. Some things are confusing though, like putting the gen before the thing it posesses, it’s valuable for giving me synonyms though, translating Latin words into English I would not originally have thought of. I especially enjoy recognising what type of word (in terms of case or tense) even if I don’t know it, through studying declension and conjugation tables.

I considered Lingua Latina but got confused as to which one to buy, Amazon lists so many, in the end I just picked up Wheelocks. It’s okay I guess, I don’t have much to compare it to. The “Latina est gaudia…” parts are so cheesey I can’t help but smile.

Quick query whilst I have you, I noticed words are given in the following form:

Amo, amavivi amare amatum.

Well not that order, what do they all mean?

Amo = present indicative active.
Amare = Imperative.

The others ellude me, I noticed Vinci, 3rd conj has “vici” as one of it’s forms and immediately thought of Caesar’s famous saying.

15

Salve, Scribo:

The order of those verbs is the following: present tense (1st person), perfect tense (1st person), infinitive and participle.

Good luck! :slight_smile:

P.S.: By the way, are you sure it’s “amavivi” and not “amavi”?

16

Since the 1900’s Latin has not been taught, for the most part, as a LANGUAGE. Rather, the ‘grammar-translation’ method has held sway. Latin is treated as a chess puzzle. The goal is not to create students who can THINK in Latin. That is the big difference between a text like Wheelock, which is a grammarian’s text. You cannot learn a language this way…oh, yes, you will pick some of it up, as you go along, but not as a result of the method, rather, in spite of it.

Compare the fluency level of a fifth year Russian language student, with a Latin language student, and you will see what I mean. The two languages are about equally difficult. No-one in their right mind would go about teaching themselves Russian using the equivalent of a text like Wheelock.

Here is an excellent summary (with quotations) of Stephen Krashen’s
theories on language acquisition. It can be read in 20 minutes or less
and is an excellent reference to bookmark on your computer. Despite
what he says in this work, Krashen is still often accused of pitting
language acquisition against grammar study when, in fact, they are two
different and important aspects of language work. If this is of
interest to you, be sure to read the fourth section of Part II in this
article on the role of grammar.

Krashen addresses the very rational thought that many have that studying
grammar in a systematic way leads to language acquisition. Theories
(made up of studies and data) and observations of second language simply
don’t support the popular belief that grammar study produces
acquisition. Grammar study is useful, but for different aspects of
language learning. Krashen certainly does not suggest doing away with
grammar study.

http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/rw/krashenbk.htm

17

Either one of the two above-mentioned resources, Wheelock’s Latin and Ørberg’s Lingua Latina, can prepare one for mastery of the basics of the Latin language, but as the saying goes, Horses for Courses.

If your intention in the study of Latin is to think in, compose, and possibly converse in Latin as a pre-modern scholar might, Lingua Latina is a superior resource.

If your desire is to develop a close reading ability with an emphasis on textual and/or linguistic analysis, Wheelock’s Latin and similar approaches are recommended.


To any student preparing to take a study of the Classics past the undergraduate level, I would recommend to employ both approaches. That is, to start with a grammar survey like Wheelock and beging a reading system like Ørberg’s Lingua Latina after completion of Wheelock or perhaps concurrent with the latter chapters. With this combination, most students would make short work of Wheelock’s Loci Immutati or Ørberg’s Sermones Romani.

I would not be so arrogant as to hold either Wheelock or Ørberg as universally superior to the other.

daro

18

Thanks. Ah yes, amavivi, I should have paid more attention. I did find that article interesting Metrodorus, thanks.

I will give Lingua Latina a try, eventually, but I think I’ll finish Wheelocks first, since being able to think and compose in Latin are major goals for me.

19

Greetings to all on this forum!

This is my first post (hopefully not the last). I’m early in my latin studies. I own both Wheelock and LL but plan to use LL mainly. I strongly second the suggestion by Metrodorus to read up on Krashen. No one should study a FL without an understanding of his Monitor/acquisition theory. You can quibble about the details and many people have but I’m convinced from my own experience gaining fluency in written and spoken Spanish and also as a teacher of EFL that he is right on the main points.

It is most important to understand 2 things; the learning/acquisition distinction on the one hand and the notion that true acquisition of a language (including reading skill) requires massive amounts of comprehensible input (CI) on the other. Language textbooks generally provide very little actual CI, Wheelock included (count the number of latin sentences you will actually read in a typical chapter in Wheelock multiplied by the number of chapters to see what I mean). Even the Wheelock short story companion is pitifully short. LL is a big step in the right direction when it comes to CI but in an ideal world (from a language acquisition point of view) LL would spread the same amount of vocab and grammar over 3 or 4 times as much text as it actually does. Still, it’s much better in that regard than anything else out there.

There have been more than a few brilliant latin scholars who learned the language inside out but never really acquired it. That is, they never learned to read it fluently from left to right without mental translation - the way we all read English. It forever remained a puzzle to be decoded and translated sentence by sentence- a puzzle they could decode quickly perhaps - but that is not what language acquisition is. I love the fact that I can read Spanish the way I read English where the meaning simply pops off the page with no translating or mental rearrangement of the words needed and I hope to be able to read latin that way as well some day.

But I should also add that I am also a fan of having more than one book to work out of when studying a language on my own. So I’ll probably work out of Wheelock too from time to time just for variety.

20

I think eventually I’ll pick up LL, as I said, it sounds interesting, is it like Adler at all? (which do I buy? there are sooo many. Do I complete WL or grab LL ASAP?)

Alright guys, I’ve got 6 weeks or such until school resumes, is it possible to get some sort of a grasp on this language by then?

I want to try writing something in Latin, nothing…creative, you know, basic dialogues etc and post it on the agora, but I’d be alittle embarassed, is it worth having ago even if I have to constantly refer to a dictionary?

Does any body have a basic theme?

Do I charge on with Wheelocks or grab LL ASAP