mark_e_rhodes said:
I’m a seminarian who took a year off. I’ll serve in a parish this summer and return to seminary this fall. Meanwhile, I’m boning up on Latin for my Research Master’s. (Something on the breviary…) Anyone else learning Latin now? (Or, any Latin Masters care to take on a novice?) I’d appreciate the company.
Also interested in philosophy, poetry, fiction, and music…
Mark
First advice to “serious students of Latin who (I am guessing) are younger than I”: From my rubbing elbows of Latin teachers (mostly high school level) over the years, I am told that the greatest obstacle their students face is: They don’t know *English. *That is: Latin is generally taught through rigid grammar lessons, et cetera, and high school students today are ill-prepared wrt English grammar, as compared with students of years gone by. (If you don’t know what a participle is in English, how can you expect to understand its use in Latin?) So: If you (any of you) feel similarly ill-prepared in this respect, find some way to bone up on English grammar (a book, a tutor, continuing education at community college, et cetera).
(Aside: And perhaps this is an older problem than I am letting on, when I speak of students “my age”. In restrospect, I recognize that at my (minor seminary) high school, the freshman English curriculum did precisely this, and perhaps was designed to do so in part to mesh with the Latin curriculum?)
What text will you be using in seminary? I would guess either Collins’s *Ecclesiastical Latin *or *Wheelock’s Latin. *There is a mailing list called
LatinStudy that periodically runs a course through both of these works (as well as others). Wheelock courses start perhaps 3 or 4 times per year and last about 2 years. Collins starts once per year and lasts 16 months or so. It is about to start a new Collins course, 17-March-2006, details here:
Collins2006 Ecclesisastical Latin Study Group. This is a cooperative study model, where many people and groups share the one list, and translation assigments are collated and shared. It helps to subscribe ahead of time to get used to the volume/size of messages, and perhaps tune your mail filters to narrow it down to the traffic you are interested in. There are rarely absolute right or wrong answers, but there are also many helpful people of whom you can ask questions.
tee
