Sahmilat's Languages Log

[guyome]

Latin: I'm finally about halfway through Beeson, reading some interesting stuff. (...)

Beeson is a neat book. I used to carry it everywhere and must have read it cover to cover three of four times. I fully credit him for getting me in the habit of reading Latin extensively.

In more classical news I decided I should finally get around to reading Cicero. I started with Pro P. Quintio because it's the first oration in the collection I'm using (Bibliotheca Classica Latina). I'm a little over halfway through it and it's surprisingly readable.

Yes, I find Cicero is not that hard to read, language-wise that is (like you, it's the political/judicial context that I find to be the hardest part). A lot is made of the length of his sentences but they are so well built that once you start reading, you just have to let you be carried gently to the end. Sentence length only really becomes a problem when Latin is seen as a puzzle to be tackled with word-by-word analysis, hunting for the verb first, etc. Then, of course, having the main verb five lines below makes it hard.

What worked for me (insofar as I can consider myself a competent Latin user) is just writing about what I'm thinking and talking to people on the discord (discord.gg/latin).

I saw the discord being mentioned quite often at reddit but I found some of the people behind it rather...unpleasant ("OMG! You're not using LLPSI, macrons, and Ranieri's latest pronunciation scheme?! There's just no way you're able to learn/appreciate/know Latin, lol!"), so I've never used it.

I even joined a Greek chat last week or so and was able to communicate at a basic level. It was really hard and I left after like 15 minutes, but I could speak! in ancient Greek! wow!

Nice!

[Sahmilat]

Deciding to try and commit to the Super Challenge. I hope I'm able to keep up my study for the whole period, but we live in uncertain times.

Language: German
Challenge: Full
Current level: B2?
Comments, links: Hoping to break the intermediate plateau. I think that the listening especially will be key for me, and there's a ton of significant German cinema too. I want to read "canonical" German literature, but I think I might be overstretching by trying to do that at this point. I'll do some of it early and reevaluate my needs as I go.

Language: Latin
Challenge: Full
Current level: Relatively advanced
Comments, links: Reading only for obvious reasons. I can read most stuff I've tried to alright, I just need volume and variety. I expect there to be a lot of medieval/renaissance Latin and also Cicero.

Language: Ancient Greek
Challenge: Half
Current level: Low intermediate
Comments, links: Reading only for obvious reasons. This is the one I think I'm the least likely to succeed in, but I would like to get better at Greek, so I'll go ahead and "commit" to this symbolically. My reading will start with the texts I have and then probably move into Loebs if libraries ever reopen.

I'm doing French for the 6WC and my Sanskrit isn't good enough for me to really read anything, so I decided on these three. I just want to break into advanced German, get comfortable enough with extensive reading in Latin that I can read whatever I want (especially Erasmus), and actually learn to read Greek.

[Sahmilat]

Maybe I'll update this Sunday evenings and reflect on the last week. We'll see. For now these numbers are all starting Friday, May 1 and so only reflect three days.

German: I read 54 pages. I'm reading Kafka's Der Proceß and it's going alright. It's a very interesting book, so even though my comprehension isn't perfect I'm still enjoying it. I haven't watched any films yet.

French: I studied French for 1h44m. This consisted of reading multiple Assimil lessons in one sitting and listening to InnerFrench. I think I'm going to try to get through Assimil just treating it as a parallel reader with some grammar notes, then do Using French the same way (I don't have the audio in any case) and then I guess start on the parallel readers I have (including one I just bought today). Listening will probably still be InnerFrench for the foreseeable future.

Latin: I read 27 pages. I've been continuing to read Beeson. Some harder passages I had to reread more than once, so I'm kind of doubting myself. I'm trying to keep in mind, however, that a lot of this Latin is not "standard" classical Latin and that some of these narratives are.. less than refined. I don't need to understand everything on the first pass yet, that's a metric I will judge myself on later.

Greek: I read 19 pages. I'm reading the in-progress LGPSI. There are only 19 shortish chapters so far, so after I finish it I think I will reread the JACT Reading Greek book and see how I feel after that.

[Sahmilat]

First full week was a bust. First half of the week didn't really feel up to much studying and the second half I spent like three straight days writing and rewriting xml files. Learning some skills for a hopeful future in digital humanities. So it wasn't a total loss.

German: I read 7 pages. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. I really do like Der Proceß but I just never could motivate myself to read. I might take a break from it and read some parallel texts so I have a bit of an easier time? I have one coming in the mail and two prose and two poetry ones already.

French: I studied for 37 minutes. This was over two days. I think that time was all reading a bunch of Assimil. I also have some dual-language books that should be arriving today, so after finishing Assimil I think I'm going to dive into short stories. It definitely won't be 98% comprehension or whatever but if I read and reread and look at the English a lot I'll surely learn something.

Latin: I read 4 pages. Geez. The xml file I was working on was Cicero's Epistulae ad Atticum which I turned into a pretty PDF with Latex, so I guess that counts for something.

Greek: Nothing to see here.

Just wasn't a language-learning sort of week for me I guess.