Do You Wish You Knew Latin?

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I know Latin. I’ve had 9 years of study, starting from Wheelock’s grammar in middle school and continuing until upper level courses in college. I’m not a Latin expert, and all that went down years ago, but here’s my two cents:

If you want to learn Latin, get this book, read it, and continue on through the rest of the books in this series. This book will surprise and amaze you. This is “total immersion” Latin. I sorely, sorely wish this series of books was available eons ago when I trod down this path: Brittania est insula. non est parva. est magna. incolae Brittaniae agricolae sunt. …

Get this book! Read it! Live it! Lingua Latina
Reminds me of Petrus Cuniculus…
 
Yes, I would love to know Latin. I know some words here and there:)
I do have a Christian Latin study book and very interesting.
I think it is important for all Roman Catholics to know Latin.

God bless 🙂 :signofcross:
 
I studied six languages during my school and university years. More was demanded of students back then, especially in schools of the Long Beach Unified School District, at my junior college in Long Beach, and at the University of Massachusetts at Boston (in its early days), and in graduate school at Kent State University. All of these educational facilities stressed languages very strongly and had high proficiency requirements to attaibn. Sometimes the requirement was for a particular language, Latin included, other times for various modern languages (of which German was the most essential). I knew early on that I wanted to be a librarian, so I took even more languages than were required of me (which was a lot, compared to nowadays).

I only had two semesters, rigourous ones under Jesuit professors (the pre-Vat kind!), of Latin. I wish that I had taken more and that the senesters of it had been more leisurely, to aid in retention.

As a music librarian I did make use of Latin. Music theory’s very basic historical documents are Latin, the repertory of music in Latin is vast and of extraordinary calibre, and so forth. Thus, although German and Italian (both of which were among the languages that I had studied) were more essential to daily work as a music librarian (and I used them*** constantly*** in my work), Latin had its place, too. I had to be able to read and to translate Latin (using it, thus, passively), but even to translate into Latin or to edit in Latin, so I was very glad that I had studied Latin.

How I wish that I had kept up the level of Latin, modest as it was, when I had finished studying it. If one has studied Latin and then lost mastery of it bit by bit as it slipped away, the result is regret.

The Latin liturgy is glorious and I would make haste to attend Latin Mass, Vespers, and all the rest of the Holy Liturgy in Latin if it were available. I just am glad that I am old enough (at 66) to remember the Latin liturgy when it was in full and normative use, which was longer in Los Angeles than elsewhere, thanks to the wisdom and Latin promotion of Cardinal McIntyre, of blessed memory.

Pax, Jerry Parker
 
Here’s something to have fun with.

If you have Internet Eplorer 8 with the Google Bar, right click on Translate, select options, and Edit Translate. You can translate English into Latin (or any language, for that matter) by Hovering Over Them. Save and enjoy moving your cursor over words on your screen.
 
Pro Vobis,

You wrote: *Here’s something to have fun with. If you have Internet Eplorer 8 with the Google Bar, right click on Translate, select options, and Edit Translate. You can translate English into Latin (or any language, for that matter) by Hovering Over Them. Save and enjoy moving your cursor over words on your screen. *​

That would have been a nice thing to have had for use when I still was working (before retirement) as a music librarian who occasionally had to deal with Latin. At least I could have compared the cyber-results with my own halting attempts to compose or edit texts in Latin! That’s the best way to use computer translation devices, which can be notoriously unreliable, due to excessive, context-oblivious literalism.

Pax, Jerry
 
Pro Vobis,

You wrote: *Here’s something to have fun with. If you have Internet Eplorer 8 with the Google Bar, right click on Translate, select options, and Edit Translate. You can translate English into Latin (or any language, for that matter) by Hovering Over Them. Save and enjoy moving your cursor over words on your screen. *​

That would have been a nice thing to have had for use when I still was working (before retirement) as a music librarian who occasionally had to deal with Latin. At least I could have compared the cyber-results with my own halting attempts to compose or edit texts in Latin! That’s the best way to use computer translation devices, which can be notoriously unreliable, due to excessive, context-oblivious literalism.

Pax, Jerry
You’ve made a very good point. Computers can’t deal with fuzzy logic, which translation software is. Is 72 degrees warm or cold, for example. People are depending perhaps too much on them for abstract information. But isn’t that exactly what we’re doing if we listen to someone else’s translations of Latin to English, or Greek to Polish, for that matter? I think we owe it to ourselves to do through the drill of analyzing texts. Sometimes the stair climb is better and more scenic than taking the elevator.
 
Pro Vobis,

You wrote: *You’ve made a very good point. Computers can’t deal with fuzzy logic, which translation software is. Is 72 degrees warm or cold, for example. People are depending perhaps too much on them for abstract information. But isn’t that exactly what we’re doing if we listen to someone else’s translations of Latin to English, or Greek to Polish, for that matter? I think we owe it to ourselves to do through the drill of analyzing texts. Sometimes the stair climb is better and more scenic than taking the elevator. *​

Nicely expressed! I like that deft touch that you have in saying, “Sometimes the stair climb is better and more scenic than taking the elevator.” Yes, and even in reading another’s translation, as I have to do now to read Vergil or Horace with any real enjoyment, having come to grips with the Language somewhere down the line makes one more sensitive to the general process, flow, and approach to the language which a translator renders as one reads the translation.

All of that is just another good argument for studying Latin (or other foreign languages with a great literary tradition). It is hard to say exactly how having studied six languages has enriched me, but I know that having done so really has augmented my pleasure in reading any of them, including English and German themselves, both of which show so many traces of Latin (as several other European languages do, too). Someone who is a slave to the hidebound, ignorant rigidity of a purely utilitarian approach to education (and suchlike frequently have little or no grip, especialy nowadays, on other languages) cannot appreciate these matters, but they do count if one wants is an educated mind, not just indoctrinated practicality.

Pax, Jerry
 
Each of the following is quite useful:
  1. Scanlon and Scanlon, Latin Grammar. Presents what is needed (grammar and vocabulary with a complete glossary) to learn to read the pre-Vatican missal and breviary. Composed for those who would be praying these texts. More compressed than Collins, Ecclesiastical Latin; but I found Scanlon more useful, especially the glossary. Wheelock is a standared text, but its orientation is not to ecclesiastical Latin which is why Scanlon was of interest to me.
  2. Scanlon and Scanlon, Second Latin. Intended for those who want to be able to read canon law and philosophy in Latin.
  3. Wonderfully useful online edition of Lewis and Short’s Latin English dictionary: perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/resolveform?redirect=true&lang=la
  4. Psalms of the Vulgate in Latin with parallel text of the Douay-Rheims translation in English: medievalist.net/psalmstxt/home.htm
  5. Italian site with pre-and post Vatican II missals (in Latin) with concordances, ancient sacramentaries, post-Apostolic writings, the Vulgate, the omnia opera of Augustine and Aquinas and much else: liturgia.it/
  6. Vulgate with a great search engine. Latin words can be searched by stem with .. Other translations of the bible are available at the same site (Crosswalk). The search engine for the Vulgate at the Italian site may be as good or better, but this was up first and, having gotten used to it, I’ve never investigated the other: biblestudytools.com/apocrypha/vula/
  7. Roman Breviary, Martyrology, Little Office of the BVM, etc, all arranged so that a person can access the office hours (except Matins) of any day plus or minus (I think) one. The rubrics for praying the office are there as well as tabs for the Office of the Dead and the penitential psalms. officiumdivinum.org/
 
Mr. or Ms. Reamer,

**You wrote, in part: ** ) [For an] Italian site with pre-and post Vatican II missals (in Latin) with concordances, ancient sacramentaries, post-Apostolic writings, the Vulgate, the omnia opera of Augustine and Aquinas and much else, [see] liturgia.it/

Thanks so much for your helpful list of Latin resources, including the one that I quoted as you cite it above.

I have come across, sometime in the 1990s I think that it was, a single volume and handy Latin-English Missal that Opus Dei (that much maligned apostolate) published (or sponsored for publication by a commercial firm). This was, as I recall with fair certainty, a Missal of the *Novus Ordo *(N.O., 1970 Mass), not of the 1962 Missale Romanum (a far superior but less often celebrated Latin liturgy), as some have claimed (unless, perhaps, Opus Dei has issued diglot Missals of both rites). The Opus Dei Missal that I saw is beautifully and tastefully printed and looked quite durable; I do not know if it has been revised, or is slated to be updated, to incorporate in the diglot’s English text the papally promulgated (and very welcome) changes to the the wording of the vernacular Mass. It is difficult to track down this diglot N.O. Missal, so I cannot provide a bibliographically exact citation of it. Can anyone give that information and indicate how it is available, apart from at bookshops at Opus Dei houses (of which there is, or used to be, one in Montréal.

It has become easier, thanks be to God, to find diglot Missals of the 1962 liturgy, but printed diglots of the N.O. aside from the mess that one finds in “missalettes”, still are hard to find. The N.O. is a lackluster rite compared to the old liturgy (in its 1962 or earlier, only very slightly different texts), but it is easier to endure the N.O. in Latin than it has been to put up with the N.O. in the vernacular.

Again, thanks much, Reamer!

Pax, Jerry Parker
 
from jim74.
yes i do wish i knew latin.
for a better knowledge of the latin mass.:thumbsup
 
Hi, For what its worth I took a year of latin in college and found it extremely difficult to master. Unlike spanish or french in latin everthing inflects not just verbs and all must agree in tense. If you are determined to study latin I would suggest also getting a book on english grammar such as english grammar for latin students. Most of the problems people seem to have when studying latin comes down to a strong knowledge of english grammar. Having said that I really enjoyed studying the langauge and agree wheelocks book is a good choice.
 
Hi, For what its worth I took a year of latin in college and found it extremely difficult to master. Unlike spanish or french in latin everthing inflects not just verbs and all must agree in tense. If you are determined to study latin I would suggest also getting a book on english grammar such as english grammar for latin students. Most of the problems people seem to have when studying latin comes down to a strong knowledge of english grammar. Having said that I really enjoyed studying the langauge and agree wheelocks book is a good choice.
This is a great suggestion. I will order one for my son today. 👍
 
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