A language learners’ forum

Someone in a chat somewhere:

there's no way to learn to [ancient] greek that is free and easy and fast. it's not even choose two, it's more like choose one.

einzelne wrote:

RyanSmallwood wrote:I guess what I still don't understand about your perspective.

So, this is my problem with Greek. I know that I won’t have 2-3 hours a day for it in the forceable future. And lower-intermediate level is completely useless (no news to listen to, no podcasts, no easy non-fiction and secondary literature, no undemanding Krimis). So why bother? In case of Ancient Greek, there’s no 5k, 10k runs, only a marathon. In case of Latin (not to mention modern languages), you can still reap a lot of benefits. I still cannot read Faust in the original but I can skim through a literary study of it relatively easy. And I can always listen to podcasts (I mean real, not educational ones) on the variety of topics while walking my dog.

I do agree in general; getting into Greek is really hard. And as I work on Latin now it's laughable how much easier it is initially.

But do remember the New Testament - it might be slightly different, but much of it is more in the 5-10k range than marathon. Even if you aren't interested in it directly, it's a great first text. Then there's the obvious extra reading in the Italian Athenaze (with recordings from Ranieri), Reading Greek, and Lingua Graeca per se Illustrata. Then add the easier texts - Xenophon with a recording from Bedwere, Plato with (admittedly less good) recording from Toimin, and it's nothing like a plunge into Melville or any other high-register English author.

Beli Tsar wrote: But do remember the New Testament - it might be slightly different, but much of it is more in the 5-10k range than marathon. Even if you aren't interested in it directly, it's a great first text. Then there's the obvious extra reading in the Italian Athenaze (with recordings from Ranieri), Reading Greek, and Lingua Graeca per se Illustrata. Then add the easier texts - Xenophon with a recording from Bedwere, Plato with (admittedly less good) recording from Toimin, and it's nothing like a plunge into Melville or any other high-register English author.

I do remember about the New Testament - it's in my music library:)
For self-learners the situation is definitely better in comparison to 10 years ago, not to mention 50.

We have more sources now, yet they are still quite limited. The fact that you enumerated all the sources and there's nothing new for me here, perfectly illustrates the current state of affairs.

I have my own idiosyncratic interests in Latin and Greek and, sadly, textbooks and all other learning materials don't address them directly. I definitely see a positive trend, so I hope that by the time I retire I will have an impressive collection of learning materials and plenty of time for Classical languages

I discovered this channel several years ago and I'm really surprised that the number of views is so low (may be it's because the reader is German, idk). It's a real shame so I decided to promote it here — lost of classical Latin poetry.

A couple of other useful links:

Excellent French juxtalinéaire editions of Latin and Greek Classics (many thank to guyome !) https://www.arretetonchar.fr/juxtalineaires/
http://gerardgreco.free.fr/ — (some of them rendered in LaTeX and macronized)

Plato's dialogue vocabulary coverage after the New Testament — useful statistics: https://jktauber.com/2020/09/02/plato-v ... testament/

einzelne wrote:Excellent French juxtalinéaire editions of Latin and Greek Classics (many thank to guyome !) https://www.arretetonchar.fr/juxtalineaires/

Note that not all volumes are listed there. You can find a complete list at https://juxtas.pagesperso-orange.fr/catalogue.html. This is where I first came into contact with juxtalinéaires, somewhere around 2005 I guess. At that time, Google Books and Archive.org weren't that useful (did GB even exist then?) and this guy had taken upon himself to scan all the juxtas he could get his hands on. Truly one of the unsung heroes of the early internet era. It never ceases to amaze me how far we've come in roughly 15 years as far as access to knowledge goes.

Some of the volumes not listed at https://www.arretetonchar.fr/juxtalineaires/ can be found at Google Books (De Bello Civile I, vol. 4 of Heuzet's collection of sslightly simplified extracts pertaining to morals) or Gallica (vol. 1 of Heuzet).

guyome wrote:Note that not all volumes are listed there.

Thank you, but I think it will be more than enough for the next 10 or 20 years:) My interest in Roman literature is tangental. I would love to read Duns Scotus, Descartes, Leibniz and the like in the original. Btw any chance to find some Neo Latin (Bacon, More, or Hobbes, for instance) adapted for learners of Latin in French? I cannot believe that French didn't have some Latin textbook which is based on Descartes writings:) It seems to be such an obvious choice...

einzelne wrote:

guyome wrote:Btw any chance to find some Neo Latin (Bacon, More, or Hobbes, for instance) adapted for learners of Latin in French?

Sounds like you're looking for a unicorn but I'll see if I can find anything of the kind.

In the meanwhile, you may be interested in Scanlon's Second Latin. The first half of it uses philosophical texts and vocab as its basis. Admittedly it is Catholic philosophy but I would be surprised if Neo-Latin philosophy didn't draw heavily on scholastic vocab and concepts (if only to oppose them).

Also, I've always been willing to read More's Utopia in its entirety so if you want we could start some reading group thread for something of the kind (Descartes too sounds interesting even if I'm not very well equipped to deal with this type of texts). You may also be interested in this 1908 (shortened, with notes and vocab list) edition of Hall's early 17th c. Mundus alter et idem, a "satirical dystopian novel".

guyome wrote:In the meanwhile, you may be interested in Scanlon's Second Latin. The first half of it uses philosophical texts and vocab as its basis. Admittedly it is Catholic philosophy but I would be surprised if Neo-Latin philosophy didn't draw heavily on scholastic vocab and concepts (if only to oppose them).

Also, I've always been willing to read More's Utopia in its entirety so if you want we could start some reading group thread for something of the kind (Descartes too sounds interesting even if I'm not very well equipped to deal with this type of texts). You may also be interested in this 1908 (shortened, with notes and vocab list) edition of Hall's early 17th c. Mundus alter et idem, a "satirical dystopian novel".

Thank you for your suggestions! I added them into my to-read list, together with the recent anthology The Latin in Science edited by Marcelo Epstein and Ruth Spivak I discovered accidentally yesterday.

As for More, I doubt I will be able to handle such a text in the foreseeable future (although the bilingual edition sits on my bookshelf and lures me time and then). I'm only in the middle of LLPS at the moment and basically would describe my current activity as dabbling. I don't have time for a deep engagement with Latin at the moment (usually, when I start a language, I prefer to spend 2-3 hours a day) and, not to feel discouraged, I told myself right from the start that I should consider Latinas a decade long project — I decided to let it simmer at the back of my mind, so that if one day I win a lottery, I would be better prepared to plunge in it for real:)

Question: has anyone come across some meaningful Latin drills? By meaningful I mean not the usual cramming like (puella, puellae, pulllam, puellae, puellā) but a series super short sentences which run through the whole of declension table. For instance:

N. Puella amica est.
Acc. Puellam video.
G. Labra puellae pulchra sunt.
D. Puellae osculum dō.
Abl. Cum puellā rīdeō.

The same thing can be done with

Apologies for this silly example but you get the idea. I personally find that running through such short mini-stories is quite effective in internalizing case endings. You can add new grammar structures by using this one as a base (introducing, for instance adjectives, adjectives haec or ille, or run it with pronouns: Ea amica est. Eam video. etc.)

Running through such sample sentences by using a limited amount of words is way more effective when you just repeat out loud or write down declension and conjugation tables (I'm looking at you, Prof. Dowling!). Comprehensive input in this case is tricky, since, to make a story at least somewhat interesting, you need to combine lots of grammatical structures even in adapted texts. The strength of the drills showed above is that they target one specific grammar point by adding at the same time some minimal context.

I'm sure that I'm not the first one who had this idea. So, can anyone suggest a textbook with such drills?