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The Vatican's Latinist

newcriterion.com

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Re: The Vatican's Latinist

#11

Post by scop »

_spoonman wrote: post #4
scop wrote: post #2

I have read many articles across different blogs all highlighting Foster's amazing career. I studied Latin in high school and regret that I was not more engaged at the time. I am thrilled to learn of the publishing of 'Ossa Latinitatis Sola' and will take it as an opportunity to give Latin another, more purposeful, go in the near future.

Any advice for someone like me who has never taken Latin but would like to learn?

Go for it! Here is a good quote from the article from Fr. Foster:

"Latin is the best thing that ever happened to humanity. It leaves you zero room for nonsense. You don’t have to be a genius. But it requires laser-sharp concentration and total maturity. If you don’t know what time of day it is, or what your name is, or where you are, don’t try Latin because it will smear you on the wall like an oil spot."

Re: The Vatican's Latinist

#12

Post by kawera »

_spoonman wrote: post #4
scop wrote: post #2

I have read many articles across different blogs all highlighting Foster's amazing career. I studied Latin in high school and regret that I was not more engaged at the time. I am thrilled to learn of the publishing of 'Ossa Latinitatis Sola' and will take it as an opportunity to give Latin another, more purposeful, go in the near future.

Any advice for someone like me who has never taken Latin but would like to learn?

My suggestion would be Hans Ørberg's Lingua Latina per se Illustrata series, it's brilliant and you can start from zero.

https://www.hackettpublishing.com/lingua-latina-per-se-illus...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_%C3%98rberg

Re: The Vatican's Latinist

#13

Post by bshimmin »

_spoonman wrote: post #4
scop wrote: post #2

I have read many articles across different blogs all highlighting Foster's amazing career. I studied Latin in high school and regret that I was not more engaged at the time. I am thrilled to learn of the publishing of 'Ossa Latinitatis Sola' and will take it as an opportunity to give Latin another, more purposeful, go in the near future.

Any advice for someone like me who has never taken Latin but would like to learn?

My advice would be to have reasonable expectations. Latin isn't easy to learn - you can't practise talking to real people, it has plentiful grammar, there isn't so much vocabulary (relatively) but many words have a vast variety of meanings depending on context, and sentence structure is entirely alien to English speakers. It is, essentially, quite hard (though easier than Classical Greek).

I studied Latin to degree level a decade-and-mumble years ago, and to my great shame have not kept it up at all. On the rare occasions that I am required to translate some Latin - an inscription in a church, for instance - I try my best, but I am usually a far cry from Indiana Jones. (I do have a moderately extensive selection of pretentious phrases in Latin that I can deploy when necessary.)

We used Kennedy's Revised Latin Primer and The Cambridge Latin Course at school; I think the latter starts pretty much from the basics, and the former covers probably all of the grammar you'd ever need to know. I think you can get some of the Harry Potter books in Latin, if that sort of thing takes your fancy. Once you've acquired a moderate mastery, you will find something like Caesar's Gallic Wars to be quite an easy read (though stylistically he ain't much cop).

Re: The Vatican's Latinist

#14

Post by GnarfGnarf »

I wish I had had a teacher like that when Latin was being shoved down my throat. I so rebelled, I knew less Latin in my sixth year than I did in my fourth. The wasted hours of rosa, rosam, rosae, rosa.

However, it did enable me to become fluent in Spanish in two months. Fluent enough to teach high school physics, in Spanish, at the Instituto Americano of La Paz.

Re: The Vatican's Latinist

#16

Post by InitialLastName »

bshimmin wrote: post #13
_spoonman wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any advice for someone like me who has never taken Latin but would like to learn?

My advice would be to have reasonable expectations. Latin isn't easy to learn - you can't practise talking to real people, it has plentiful grammar, there isn't so much vocabulary (relatively) but many words have a vast variety of meanings depending on context, and sentence structure is entirely alien to English speakers. It is, essentially, quite hard (though easier than Classical Greek). I studied Latin to degree l…

To add to that, the grammar (and thus the meaning) is sometimes driven by the meter, which is a concept pretty much entirely foreign to many familiar with English prose.

Re: The Vatican's Latinist

#17

Post by jkingsbery »

_spoonman wrote: post #4
scop wrote: post #2

I have read many articles across different blogs all highlighting Foster's amazing career. I studied Latin in high school and regret that I was not more engaged at the time. I am thrilled to learn of the publishing of 'Ossa Latinitatis Sola' and will take it as an opportunity to give Latin another, more purposeful, go in the near future.

Any advice for someone like me who has never taken Latin but would like to learn?

I took Latin in college (having not taken it in high school), and found the Wheelock text book pretty helpful (https://www.amazon.com/Wheelocks-Latin-7th/dp/0061997226 ). If you're looking for Latin texts, check out the Perseus Project (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/) and the Latin Library (http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/).

If you get stuck on something, swing by the Latin StackExchange (https://latin.stackexchange.com/).

Re: The Vatican's Latinist

#18

Post by bshimmin »

InitialLastName wrote: post #16
bshimmin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My advice would be to have reasonable expectations. Latin isn't easy to learn - you can't practise talking to real people, it has plentiful grammar, there isn't so much vocabulary (relatively) but many words have a vast variety of meanings depending on context, and sentence structure is entirely alien to English speakers. It is, essentially, quite hard (though easier than Classical Greek). I studied Latin to degree l…

To add to that, the grammar (and thus the meaning) is sometimes driven by the meter, which is a concept pretty much entirely foreign to many familiar with English prose.

Quite. Though, if by any chance you have reached a sufficient mastery of English prosody to understand the iambic pentameter, the dactylic hexameter really isn't such a stretch, notwithstanding one being based on stress and the other weight.

Re: The Vatican's Latinist

#19

Post by jamesash »

_spoonman wrote: post #4
scop wrote: post #2

I have read many articles across different blogs all highlighting Foster's amazing career. I studied Latin in high school and regret that I was not more engaged at the time. I am thrilled to learn of the publishing of 'Ossa Latinitatis Sola' and will take it as an opportunity to give Latin another, more purposeful, go in the near future.

Any advice for someone like me who has never taken Latin but would like to learn?

Current Latin learner here. I found the Great Courses Introduction to Latin by Hans-Friedrich Mueller to be helpful. 35 audio lectures, plus 35 chapters of exercises. It's a good introduction that covers all the basics, and has set me up quite well for working through selections from The Gallic Wars.

Re: The Vatican's Latinist

#20

Post by thaumasiotes »

InitialLastName wrote: post #16
bshimmin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My advice would be to have reasonable expectations. Latin isn't easy to learn - you can't practise talking to real people, it has plentiful grammar, there isn't so much vocabulary (relatively) but many words have a vast variety of meanings depending on context, and sentence structure is entirely alien to English speakers. It is, essentially, quite hard (though easier than Classical Greek). I studied Latin to degree l…

To add to that, the grammar (and thus the meaning) is sometimes driven by the meter, which is a concept pretty much entirely foreign to many familiar with English prose.

> the grammar (and thus the meaning) is sometimes driven by the meter

What do you mean by this? The closest I can come to making sense of it is that some Latin words obligatorily appear as the second word in the sentence, but it seems like you must mean something different?

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