Learning Latin seems easy enough. Why arent you doing it?
>>7659761
in retrospect daria is not that good as I first thought
Id rather play with me cock
>>7659761
>implying I'm not forced to do so for my major's program
>>7659761
I'm learning the first declensions now. It's not too bad.
>>7659761
Nigger the Romans found it so hard to speak Latin correctly they made it an art.
>>7659823
until you discover that there's at least one-hundred and fifty verb endings
>>7659761
My ex's name is Daria. There goes my night. Thanks OP and fuck you
>>7659761
How does a uni latin class compare with self teaching? Is there any hope for success with the latter?
>>7659761
>dead language
it's still being taught
they're still creating new words for it every year
>>7659761
>implying spanish, french, portuguese, italian and romanian are dead
>>7661299
Should've read the trigger warning.
>>7661518
if neckbeards on /jp/ can learn Japanese, you can learn Latin anon.
But I am, OP. We've got an exam tomorrow; wish me luck.
Just learned the passive voice and I'm fucked there are so many verb endings
>>7659845
I doubt the average Roman was of above now-average intelligence.
>>7661551
Japanese is easier to learn because there's actual material you can constantly study and talk to natives
The best you can do with Latin is talk to a small amount college professors that probably forgot half of it and aren't fluent
Senpai
Senpai
>>7659761
>easy enough
>died because it was so complex
Lol
cause I already did
>>7661369
You are much, much more likely to succeed with self teaching. Latin classes are awful, it's usually the professor using some shitty text he wrote himself that is less about teaching you and more about showing off that he can write like the classical authors, which he can't.
Download Anki, make sentence cards out of REAL LATIN FROM CLASSICAL AUTHORS, and you're golden. If you don't know what Anki is, congratulations, I just introduced you to the tool that will change your academic life.
I took four years of it in high school, trying to pick it back up by reading/translating some ovid. It's coming back to me but I should have paid more attention in my classes.
>>7661518
It is tough but once you get it down it becomes considerably easier to read. Wheelock and the other entry books are essential to learning the language. The actual texts from roman authors is a whirlwind of accent and style which strays far away from beginner's latin.
Tldr: learn it. Latin is a beautiful and helpful language. But dont sweat the big stuff.
http://alexsheremet.com/greek-and-latin-in-an-age-of-better-things/
"Of course, that’s not what I told myself. At least, not exactly. I told myself that I ‘NEEDED’ Greek and Latin to really understand poetry (my true aim), and therefore write it better than anyone before me, for I’d know the true origin of language, in the metaphysical sense, by being able to strip it down to its more primitive manifestations in a way that academics could not. So, I’d spend much time practicing conversation every day, dipping every once in a while into Virgil and Catullus, just to see where I was at, technically speaking, but not realizing that, as a budding poet, I was in fact wasting time – and that everything I needed, everything that’s worthy of the term ‘art’, had already been provided by modernity, if only I’d learn to look a little more wisely.
...
It was under this spell that I’d written my review, and, despite a number of comments disagreeing with my assessment, it is still a correct assessment, and will continue to be correct for as long as we’re recognizably human. This is because claims that one can truly ‘read’ Latin through a text like Wheelock’s, followed by more supplemental reading, then ever more advanced vocabulary, are ridiculous, since NO language is ever acquired in this way. Sure, you can learn words, understand passages in a mechanical sense, but when one hears phrases such as ‘communication’, one thinks of nuance, too – and poetry IS nuance, at least on a word-by-word basis. So, for those still interested in Latin, my recommendation is the same: get yer ass speaking and writing, first, before you delude yourself into thinking that a mere 4 years in college, followed by a Master’s, then by a Ph.D., will get you fluent. Do, then, what I ultimately could NOT do for lack of interest, drive, and talent for the field: get conversational, and leave the academy in mumbles. As for writing well, in English? Forget it. Latin is for Latin, and art lives (and basks) in separation. You either have talent or you don’t. This applies to Latin. Yet it applies even more so to art, as it’s the lone human endeavor that people can literally waste entire lives on, to no personal benefit whatsoever, and much harm to the general good.
But wait. What of Virgil? Propertius? Those great passages in Homer? Greek and Latin at their apex? Isn’t that the crowning achievement of our good earth? Well, if you think that an over-reliance on cliches, stock myths, and clunky, simple-minded beliefs from 2,000+ years ago is the apex of human achievement, then perhaps it is. Those attuned to the real world, however, will see how Wallace Stevens has outdone even Shakespeare, or the ancient Chinese poets outpaced anything the Greeks and Romans could ever throw at ’em"
>>7661416
The language is extinct. There are no primary speakers, only secondary.
>>7659761
>Why arent you doing it?
I took 2 years of Latin. I found it extremely difficult.
My dad (who also took it) just said, "Roman children could learn this, what's your excuse?"
If you really want to learn a dead language, Welsh has just been put up on Duolingo.
>>7661799
You don't understand how language works, do you?
>>7662076
>or the ancient Chinese poets outpaced anything the Greeks and Romans could ever throw at ’em"
>>7662376
"The modern world, as I see it, came in waves. The first, of course, was in China, wherein poets like Tu Fu and Li Po anticipated the West by about 1000 years (or more), and books like the Tao Te Ching are still so mired in our future, now, that people have not been able to fully grasp its import. For when information, or hard data, is finally mastered, and the more immediate concerns resolved (poverty, violence, etc.), there will be no more place to go but inward – truly, the ‘final frontier’, for while outer space is uniform, predictable, and rote, art isn’t, for it’s deeper, and far more nuanced communication is now at a geometric ascent because of such.
As for Latin, and its effect on the above theory? Well, there is one thing, thrown out as a kind of monkey-wrench, by Catullus. And it captivates the reader PRECISELY because it shows a man on the cusp of ‘something’ – a flash or realization, a thread that, sadly, he could not follow, a sense of parallax that was simply far beyond him, and the West, as a whole, for another 1500 years. It is this, and it is something no other Western poet would do until they had time to grow up:
#51
He seems to me to be equal to a god,
he, if I dare it, seems to surpass the gods,
who now, face to face, uninterrupted,
watches and hears you
sweetly laughing, which sunders me
from my senses: for when I look at you,
Lesbia, no voice is in my mouth,
my tongue is rigid, and through my body
a thin flame pours down, my ears ringing
with their own sound, my gaze curtained by a double night.
Leisure, Catullus, is dangerous; leisure
urges you to extravagant behavior;
leisure in time gone by has ruined kings
and prosperous cities.
A few predictable things, naturally: Catullus’s sillier infatuations, as per the thrust of his earlier and later poems, a few near-cliches that appear even in the original Latin, and the like. And then – wait, just WHERE did that final stanza come from? From Sappho, whose fragment was rehabilitated into a good poem, here, or from Catullus, himself?
Neither, I’d argue; for it came of Catullus, yes, but only by way of accident. Something ‘clicked’ in him, something that Catullus couldn’t understand, and made its way out, but only in THIS poem. It was a fluke, but what was ‘it’, exactly? Look at the poem again. Then, re-read that last stanza. It is quite Rilkean, a la Archaic Torso Of Apollo, wherein a final line literally comes out of nowhere, but utterly forges the poem into a whole, provides its import, and clarifies everything that came before. Here is, then, something that starts out a little predictable, only to turn to a sweeping philosophical posit that can ring true forever, and granted Rome (or its idea) an eternity that not even its more celebrated poems could not. It is this style of connecting wildly disparate, almost paradoxical ideas that no ancient writer, to my knowledge, ever employed, in any other poem, big or small, to such effect
>Take first year Latin in the summer
>My school has a fantastic classics department that they don't advertise for some dumb reason
>Love Latin even though it's hard
>Best fucking professor yet, super enthusiastic, super energetic
>bust my ass hard
>Get 90
>We did it reddit
>Take second year Latin
>Turns out we didn't finish all of first year Latin because it was a summer course and we were a little behind as a class
>Forget a lot of what I learned because I learned it so quickly
>Can't do basic second year Latin shit without devoting all my time to it
>I got other classes I gotta focus on
>Reluctantly drop the course because what the fuck are all these tenses, son?
>tfw all my friends are in that course
>tfw want to be a classics major now because I realize English at my school is terrible
>tfw I fucking love my archaeology course
>tfw have forgotten almost everything I learned in Latin
Shit sucks bruh.
>>7662398
honestly can't tell if this is satire. either way, it goes straight into my b8 archives
>>7662076
>Wallace Stevens has outdone even Shakespeare, or the ancient Chinese poets outpaced anything the Greeks and Romans could ever throw at ’em"
>>7662410
If you are a lover of poetry these days you know that it’s not a good time for your love. The greatest flowering of poetry in world history- in terms of diversity, depth, & breadth- occurred in the United States roughly between the years 1910 & 1970. During that 60 year period there were more great poems being published & more great poets writing than anywhere or anywhen else.
Elizabethan England? Please- I’ll grant you Shakespeare, Milton, & above both- John Donne. Who comes next? No 1 that can reasonably be granted greatness. The assorted Dynastic periods of China? Tu Fu & Li Po I’ll grant, & perhaps Po-Chu-I, but you’re stretching the definition of an age when it spans centuries, & after those 3 you are left with ‘poets’ who wore that appellation about as neatly as a Joyce Carol Oates- most were routine scribes who wrote routine verse. Haiku? Bashō, Buson, Issa- then who? Not to mention that 3 line haikus- even at their best- simply cannot match the depth, complexity, nor music of even a sonnet. Latin American poets in the early-mid 20th Century? There are a few greats- Paz, Neruda, Huidobro come to mind- but most were just political hacks- bumper sticker writers. The French Symbolists? Mallarme & who else? The Romantics? Hmm….England- Shelley, Keats, perhaps Coleridge & Wordsworth. Forget Byron or Clare- the rest fall off a cliff. Perhaps the German Romantics? Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Holderlin, Heine? Puh-leeze! Perhaps the Soviet Era poets of Russia? Pasternak, Mandelstam, & Tsvetaeva are greats, while Akhmadulina, & Akhmatova were pretty good. Don’t even try to make a claim for the propagandist Mayakovsky.
Now, here’s a pretty good list of the major American poets who were writing & came to fame during the 1910-1970 period: Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Robinson Jeffers, Archibald MacLeish, Marianne Moore, Hart Crane, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, H.D., Elizabeth Bishop, William Carlos Williams, Edna St. Vincent Millay, e.e. cummings, Kenneth Rexroth, Kenneth Patchen, Edwin Rolfe, Charles Olson, Robert Hayden, John Berryman, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Lowell, James Emanuel, W.D Snodgrass, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, Anne Sexton, Weldon Kees, & Sylvia Plath come to mind without much effort. & some could argue this list is only ½ or ⅓ its proper length.
>>7662418
Let me posit 2 other divisions. The 1st is somewhat nebulous & entails some generalizations. I state that Shakespeare- despite claims for his universality- was a very limited thinker- at least thematically; although similar themes would often be twisted anew with metaphor & image. But compared to the aforementioned other sonneteers Shakespeare demonstrates a near tunnel vision in range of themes (let’s put aside the question of his own Shakespearean sonnet form). Even worse, he seemed to be obsessed with running said themes into the ground. In the sonnets there are only a handful of broad themes- with only occasional overlap. They are: beauty, sleep/dreams, love/friendship, despair/ parting, art/the Muse, &, of course, death. The riposte: But isn’t all Art about these things? Well, yes & no. Yes, in a broad sense, but no in the sense that Modern Poetry’s superiority to Classical or non-Modern [a term I prefer to pre-Modern because any number of poets today still write this type of poetry & it seems silly to label these contemporaries pre-anything!] poetry is its very multi-layered approach to these themes & relegating them to sub-themes at service to portraits of people, events, & moments. This is all dramatic technique centuries ahead of Shakespeare & while his best sonnets survive this his worst are telltale in their failure’s being tied to their time.
/jp/ doesn't have a guide on learning Japanese in a sticky. What the fuck is that board even for.
>>7662421
>I’ll grant you Shakespeare, Milton, & above both- John Donne
> & above both- John Donne.
>>7662041
Thanks for the advice! I've never heard of Anki so I'll check it out and preemptively thank you for telling me about it.
I already have a few texts in Latin from Loeb (Caesar, Pliny, soon to include Suetonius and some minor epic poets) so hopefully that'll be enough to get a foothold.
Mostly I was just worried that I would HAVE to take a class, because the only nearby ones available to me as a college grad would cost thousands of dollars.
Thanks again!
>>7662481
1 of the main aspects of Shakespeare’s limited poetic domain is that it is due to the very nature of being a non-Modern poet. Yet he strained against those strictures as well- & in fact better- than any poet up to his time [his eclipse in a few decades by the Metaphysicals- especially Donne- is not the point since we are concerned only with what came up to Willy’s time]. And this very fact is the probable reason for Shakespeare’s reputation being so inflated. It is owed to what 1 might term the Babe Ruth Syndrome- a sort of corollary to the Founder Syndrome. That is, he fattened up his reputation by being very good at a time when there was little else to compete against. You see, in baseball, if the vast majority of pitchers & hitters are still only a step above semi-pro, & you are a phenomenal talent, it’s alot easier to hit more home runs than anyone else; & in fact be so good that you will hit more home runs in a season than most of the other teams in the league as well, burdened as they were with other mortal semi-pro level players. & compared to those poets before him- Chaucer, Spenser, Wyatt, Marlowe, & a few dozen other lesser lights- yes, 1 can see the deification having some justification. But put a Babe Ruth in uniform today & while he would still be good to very good he would not be that Colossus bestriding the sport. Let a Shakespeare try to modernize his thought & verse for the last 100 years of the art & he would still probably be a very good poet but his reputation would probably never reach the heights it has. Instead of being a veritable Everest in Kansas he might only be a Pike’s Peak in the Rockies. He would be 1 of many competing with Pound, Hart Crane, Stevens, Auden, Bishop, Moore, Whitman, etc. here’s why: the fact is that any human endeavor that starts out exhibits wildly disparate traits- great swings of ‘excellence’ & ‘terribility’. This is due to the very newness of the endeavor. Great swings are an inherent part of a new field where there are few well-versed (no pun, please!) professionals. But with time’s wend the field acquires better & better participants whose presence requires an ever greater skill level or accomplishment for an individual to stand out. Therefore greater competition, while leveling off the ability of any person or artwork from soaring too far above the rest, allows for an overall greater level of skill & output- even factoring in periodic downturns in quality & production such as the last 3 decades or so in American Poetry.
...
The poem is both abstract & right there. Before Donne that usage was nonexistent.
>>7662481
the most political and radical poet in England during the whole 17th Century, and his name was not Shakespeare nor Milton, but Donne, John Donne. Donne was literally centuries ahead of both Milton and Shakespeare in regards to his political and sexual views, which he subversively couched under the guise of moral lessons (for he was a man of the cloth). But nothing in Shakespeare nor Milton comes close to the radicalism of content that Donne displayed (as English language poetry lovers would have to wait centuries for Blake, then Whitman, to surpass Donne’s radicalism), yet, most importantly, Donne was a superior poet, technically, to Shakespeare (the former’s Holy Sonnets blow Shakespeare’s vaunted 154 out of the water in terms of musicality, sexual daring, technical beauty, and consistency) and Milton (if you even argue the reverse it’s no use even claiming to be a lover of poetry for poetry’s sake).
>>7662084
What is the vatican
>>7662509
Sure thing. Also check out Familia Romana, I think it's hands down the best introductory Latin text, it beats the pants of Wheelock. Have fun!
>>7662606
Will do; thanks again!
>>7662554
Nobody in the Vatican are primary speakers of Latin either. I don't think you know what primary means.
>>7661518
No. It's a highly regular language that doesn't have many exceptions to grammatical rules. English also has a lot of Latin roots, so vocab isn't that difficult. Although it's a dead language, it's an excellent jumping off point for the other Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian). If you can learn those, you can definitely learn Latin
>>7659761
>sensus cum nemo linguam mortuam discere cupat
>>7662076
>cliches, stock myths, and clunky, simple-minded beliefs from 2,000+ years ago
Picked latin and ancient greek in high school, went through with a little latin in university.
But my personal favorite isPhoenician
Probably because the classes are real good, and the professor was a sweetheart.
Shame I picked 19th century history in grad school.
>>7662433
go to /a/ nigger
>capcha: anatole de la forge
>>7662909
>tfw you do but then forget a shitload of it
Worst feel.
>>7662409
>we did it reddit
leave
Because I'm busy learning ancient greek
