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My partner and I are from two different European countries that speak different languages. When we wanted to marry in the country of my partner, both our (catholic) churches needed to sync. They did so in their common language: Latin. That was a fun surprise.
If anyone is interested in learning it, there's nothing better than Ørberg's Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. It's entirely in Latin, including grammar explanations, but it starts out incredibly simple and ramps up gradually with lots of repetition. And that's fun AND effective, since you're immersed rather than grinding tables.
Most other grammatical structures are also directly comparable.
So you can make your life easier by studying a Slavic (or a Baltic) language first.
(mwahaha!)
If anyone is interested in learning it, there's nothing better than Ørberg's Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. It's entirely in Latin, including grammar explanations, but it starts out incredibly simple and ramps up gradually with lots of repetition. And that's fun AND effective, since you're immersed rather than grinding tables.
Thanks for sharing this! My wife and I have been interested in refreshing our Latin from high school, and we've been looking for good resources. We've also toyed with the idea of learning it as a living language, which seems to be an increasingly-popular method among autodidacts these days.
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1. Disci latíne quando cathólica eram quia melius Missam ac Offícium légere volébam. Nunc non christiána, neque Missa assísto nec Breviárium canto, sed multas antiphónas pulchras (et verba pauca!) iam mémini.
If anyone is interested in learning it, there's nothing better than Ørberg's Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. It's entirely in Latin, including grammar explanations, but it starts out incredibly simple and ramps up gradually with lots of repetition. And that's fun AND effective, since you're immersed rather than grinding tables.
It's very popular online, but it's methodologically bunk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for sharing this! My wife and I have been interested in refreshing our Latin from high school, and we've been looking for good resources. We've also toyed with the idea of learning it as a living language, which seems to be an increasingly-popular method among autodidacts these days.
Duolingo has a Latin course.
My partner and I are from two different European countries that speak different languages. When we wanted to marry in the country of my partner, both our (catholic) churches needed to sync. They did so in their common language: Latin. That was a fun surprise.
That’s pretty cool. What kind of things were your respective churches communicating about?
If anyone is interested in learning it, there's nothing better than Ørberg's Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. It's entirely in Latin, including grammar explanations, but it starts out incredibly simple and ramps up gradually with lots of repetition. And that's fun AND effective, since you're immersed rather than grinding tables.
Lifehack: Latin is much easier if you already know a Slavic or a Baltic language (except Bulgarian). While declension patterns are different, the case structures are very similar. Not identical, but close enough that you actually just need to learn the differences. Most other grammatical structures are also directly comparable. So you can make your life easier by studying a Slavic (or a Baltic) language first. (mwaha…
Slovene is a bit simpler in its grammar and lacks some of the tongue-twisting phonemes of Czech (albeit with lj being a challenge for learners).
I don’t really know much of any other Slavic languages beyond the ability to occasionally decipher Polish or Ukrainian billboards via cognates. Bulgarian apparently has abandoned nearly all inflections in its nouns other than the genitive which perhaps makes it one of the easier languages to learn.
For those who want to learn Ancient Greek, in my limited experience, I’ve found Biblical Greek instructional texts easier to work with than Attic Greek (the grammatical differences are not that great with the biggest differences being more in vocabulary than grammar—it seems a smaller shift than between, say Elizabethan English and contemporary English).
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1. I grew up in an essentially vanished American subculture where ethnic diversity meant that there were a handful of Italians amongst the Czechs and Poles. The Czech population of Chicago, which once was the majority population of the West side of Chicago has since dispersed and assimilated to the point where there are only a couple Czech restaurants left in the whole Chicago area where even twenty years ago they were fairly common. The Poles, having a still-active immigration pipeline and larger population to begin with² have not suffered the same fate.
2. While there were a large number of Poles on the West side of Chicago, the larger center of the Polish population was, and still is more Northwest side.
3. Technically, Latin has six, but the vocative case only differs from the nominative in the second declension singular and so is generally omitted from declension tables.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s pretty cool. What kind of things were your respective churches communicating about?
Assuming they're Roman Catholic, to get married in the Church at least one of the couple needs to be Catholic and records of their baptism, confirmation, etc. would be shared between the individual's church and wherever they're getting married. You also run into this if you move around a lot, not just for marriage. If you want to be confirmed, you need to be baptised. Your baptismal records may be in another state or…
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1. This is one of two significant cases that impact some of the two-church parishes that are part of the last decade of reorganization in the Archdiocese of Chicago. Sacramental records will be kept at only one of the churches. The other situation reflects Holy Thursday and Easter Vigil Masses. A parish is only allowed to have one Mass on Holy Thursday and on Easter Vigil, so the two-church parishes will only celebrate at one of the churches even if they had sufficient clergy to have those Masses at both locations.
If anyone is interested in learning it, there's nothing better than Ørberg's Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. It's entirely in Latin, including grammar explanations, but it starts out incredibly simple and ramps up gradually with lots of repetition. And that's fun AND effective, since you're immersed rather than grinding tables.
As a former Latin instructor with literally decades of experience, I strongly recommend not relying solely on Ørberg. The outcomes of those who refused to supplement it with a proper grammar and dictionary were far, far behind those who used Wheelock alone. It's very popular online, but it's methodologically bunk.
If they're measured by traditional academic metrics (parsing, recalling declension tables, translating into English), then Wheelock's grammar-first approach really does optimize for that. On the other hand Ørberg optimizes more for reading fluency and intuitive comprehension, which is harder to measure on a standard Latin exam.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Catholic Social Teaching: 19th C origins. An alternate base to Marxism for social justice.
> Catholic Social Teaching: 19th C origins. An alternate base to Marxism for social justice. See specifically perhaps the encyclical Rerum novarum ( Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor ) from 1891: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rerum_novarum * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_social_teaching Various others over the decades.