Advice for Learning Latin?

[alcuin18]

Just out of curiosity, did Romance languages largely switch from inflectional endings to word order for ease? To me it seems much simpler than the Latin endings system.

 

[floresco]

Just out of curiosity, did Romance languages largely switch from inflectional endings to word order for ease? To me it seems much simpler than the Latin endings system.

The Romance languages did not descend directly from Classical Latin, spoken by the educated, but from Vulgar Latin, the language of the common people which coexisted with it. Vulgar Latin was already somewhat simplified and regularized in comparison to Classical. And yes, the shift to word order, was largely for ease.

Most Indo-European languages went through this process at some point. Proto-Indo-European was inflected. English is part of this language family and we can see the vestiges of inflection in our pronoun system. For example, “I” “me” and “my” are different forms of the same word that vary according to their function in the sentence.

There are exceptions. Lithuanian, for example, is an Indo-European language that retains an inflection system.

 

[floresco]

People studying Latin on their own may find it helpful to join the Latin Study List. It provides some accountability and assistance:quasillum.com/study/latinstudy.php

LatinStudy is an open mailing list dedicated to the study of Latin, including Classical, Medieval, and Neo-Latin authors. Both beginners and experienced Latinists will find something of interest here.

Basic Information

The LatinStudy list is shared by multiple study groups. There are typically several levels of beginners’ groups as well as advanced groups translating passages from, say, Caesar or Vergil, and some composition groups reviewing grammar. A coordinator sets the group’s agenda, then collects and collates assignments. These collations, or side-by-side listings of each group member’s answers or translations, are posted directly to the list for discussion.

Most questions are answered by the other list members, not necessarily those in your study group. This mix of experience levels, where people switch between the roles of student and instructor, makes the list a particularly effective learning environment and contributes to a sense of community.

 

[ProVobis]

They also run a yearly Latin immersion week with rotating locations. This year it is in San Francisco at the end of July and early August.

I don’t know if Luke Henderson still runs his Latin immersion classes.

youtube.com/watch?v=kPE4EqMm2cg

mentioned at around 9:20 or so.

 

[floresco]

There is a North American organization that does spoken Latin immersion programs, but they tend to use restored classical pronunciation: Septentrionale Americanum Latinitatis Vivae Institutum - North American Institute for Living Latin Studies.

latin.org/