Learning Latin

Sometime each year I make the decision that this is it, this is finally the year that I sit down, plan a schedule, grind for a few hours a day and then, after months of work, I’ll have learned Latin. This is that time of year.

I think the first time that I got this idea was when I was going through a linguistic phase back in the summer of 2021. After all, learning Latin couldn’t hurt my chances of getting into a good university, right? Well, regardless of anyone’s opinions on dead languages, it turns out that dropping out is a bad idea and my time was probably spent better elsewhere. I think I got through the first few declensions and a couple of chapters of Familia Romana (more on that later) and not much else. Since then I’ve had a crack at it a few times but after you copy out the same declension a hundred times in a spiral ring notebook you start to see the value in other things, like sunlight. Taking all this into account, what’s different now?

The Current Plan

I mentioned Familia Romana before, so before I detail anything else I should give some background on the fantastic Lingua Latina series. Originally written by Dutch linguist Hans Ørberg these books look to teach using the natural method of language acquisition. What this means is that the entirety of these books are written in Latin, including marginal notes, and are structured like a graded reader. It assumes familiarity with a Romance/Romance-adjacent language (like Spanish or English) and starts with easy to understand sentences filled with cognates, gradually introducing new words and grammar rules in context so that the reader can understand them. This is one of the nerdiest book recommendations that I can possibly make, but it’s one of the best for anyone seriously looking to not just understand Latin but be able to read and write it fully. Just learning the paradigms and grammar is good enough to slog your way through Caesar’s commentaries on the Gaelic wars but true, natural understanding of the language is what’s going to get you reading Latin without the barrier of thinking like a translator - you can always learn the didactic rules later.

With all that it’s no surprise why I’m ditching Wheelock’s and purely studying from Lingua Latina. Every day I set aside an hour or two to go back over the previous chapter’s practice questions, reread the previous chapter if necessary, and then complete the next chapter including its own questions. Don’t get me wrong though, this isn’t an easy process. Each sentence is like a puzzle that you have to force yourself not to solve but intuit, feeling the meaning of the sentence before looking around it for context and case clues. If I’m being honest, I’ve already dropped the ball on this after not studying for a few days straight. This blog post was actually designed as a call to arms for myself to get me back in the groove. I promise I’ll get back to studying - right after I upload this blogpost.