I'm entering university next year and hoping to study Classics. If I have a bit of Latin experience (Finished Cambridge Latin book 3), how hard will it be if I take Intro Latin and Intro Ancient Greek in first year? Will I be able to maintain a life or will I have to become a neet in order to do well?
>>7874494
Should be easy. Most classics departments assume no prior knowledge and often have programs that necessitate taking both. You may take fewer classes overall for the same number of course hours since some language courses require 5 hours/week in the introductory stages.
Good on you, anon! I wish I'd stuck with the classics major instead of switching to STEM. I wish you well!
I finished Cambridge 3, too. I found the Greek classes to be pretty easy. If you enjoy the act of learning grammar you'll be fine.
better start learning german now, faggo
>>7874554
This, German's way more important than Latin/Greek in Classics. The Latin and Greek is all translated, the German isn't. I've known professors who were totally mediocre in the "learned tongues" but could read German like nobody's business.
>>7875788
No, there are English translations of the Latin/Greek. You learn German because a lot of the best research is in German.
I wish so bad I had been able to take German in undergrad rather than the required science and math credits, which were completely useless to me.
Don't get me wrong I love Latin and Greek and read both pretty well, but you can get through Classics without being very good at those languages, while you can't get anywhere without German.
>>7876005
What type of stuff are you talking about Jesus? Like German philosophers?
>>7876013
German philologists and classicists obviously.
>no prior knowledge expected
>professors are mediocre in the taught area
>you can go through the curriculum without reading perfectly
Either they lie or you should never, ever go to their college. Anyway, you should slowly be fluent in French and German, and at least be required to master one according to your program.
>"how do I become a poet?"
>"First you must learn Greek, Latin, Italian, German, and French"
welp
>>7876283
Don't fall for the uneducated poet bait. Even the most transgressive poets like Rimbaud and Baudelaire had a solid education in classics and wrote fluently in Latin. Anyway, I doubt the dream of most classicists is to be a poet. As much as I see, they just like this era and want to know more about it, and don't care about any new, creative literary production.
>Falling for the classics meme
>>7876739
Should I get a BA in classics because I enjoy it or should I just leave it to personal study.
I got a bachelor of computer science, a bachelor of theology and a masters in information technology.
lol, university Latin 101 is the easiest fucking shit in the universe. I bet you anything they'll probably use Cambridge at your uni, and in the entire year they only go up to book 2 or 3.
If I could go back in time and be in your situation now, I'd finish Cambridge - book 4 is annoying but easy - then start doing as much real translation as I can with a decent graded reader of Caesar, and some "advanced" (just 201) grammar, for another three months. Maybe an hour or two a day. Make sure you have your full paradigms down pat, all conjugations burned into memory, all the basic rules for subjunctive/clause use etc., drill them all once a day. This is easy as fuck by the way. You can do it on the shitter every morning.
Then once I got really confident in Latin, up to the level that I could shittily translate some De Bello Gallico, I'd download Hansen & Quinn's Greek from Libgen, and start smashing through that, an hour or two a day on top of the Latin. It's 90% memorisation for the first several hundred pages, but you'll be so expert at this shit from the Latin that 90% of it will make sense intuitively and only require minor adjustments.
Then enrol in 201 Latin courses in your first year, asking special permission from the professors via email once the course registration period opens, telling them you've already self-taught 101 Latin. And enrol in 101 Greek right off the bat.
You'll hit 201 Latin looking great to the professor, and with a huge boost over many of the other students (many of whom probably got 70s~ in Lat101 and are at a lower level than you), and it'll make your transcript look baller for grad school - self-taught, right into Lat201 with good marks. You'll hit the ground running in Grk101, which is a MASSIVE BOOST. The lion's share of difficulty in a Greek course is making sense of a bundle of minor intuitive grammatical issues, and with the breakneck pace of memorisation, while trying to keep up with weekly content. You'll be acclimated, so you can actually start learning right away.
If you are going into Classics and you have your Grk101 and Lat201 done in your first year, you are basically hypercharging your later grad school application, if you do one. Languages are insanely fucking important. SO many people leave them to the last minute, even in Classics. If you start them NOW, really soak your mind in them, you will be in the top 5-10% skim of applications even to incredibly, top-tier competitive Classics PhD programs come grad school.
I fucking wish I could go back to where you are now and do this shit, holy hell.
>>7878299
http://en.musicplayon.com/play?v=458888
>>7878352
thanks for this, gonna be useful. not op btw
Learn Spanish, Latin, Ancient Greek, and Japanese. Why?
>>7878352
Not OP, but went through 4 years of Latin in HS with LvO, think I could do lat201 first year?
