The Latin Language
Have any of you guys ever learned Latin? If so, how many years did you take it and did you think it was worth it over a modern language?
My High School's Latin curriculum is extremely rigorous and, well, for me, very challenging. Especially my teacher, who expects us to memorize what we went over in class in a night and to never forget it.
November 25, 2014
5 Comments • Newest first
I took a quarter of it, it was okay. My prof wasn't that great, I would've liked to have continued.
@ThotsRUs:
Caesar is just normal spoken Latin. It's alright. I've got cases and verbs down pretty well too. Thanks for the heads up. c:
@ThotsRUs:
Haha. Bad news is that he IS the only teacher. Welp Oh well, I just have to make due with what I have.
Ah. Vergil is next year as a Junior. Sophomore right now is Caesar and his conquests. First year for us was rushing all of the 5 Declensions with all of the 6 tenses with passives. This year it's reading Caesar and learning different uses of declensions like Ablative of Separation or Comparison.
I mean, it's not impossible, because last year I got an A- first semester and B+ second and I had to work my butt off for Finals.
@Torque
I would definitely study Latin independently. It requires tons of memorization though, and it's not as easy as learning a foreign language like French or Spanish. It calls upon your ability to distinguish which branch a word derives from and to be able to accurately place/read it in a sentence.
@ThotsRUs
The thing is, I have the type of teacher who only wants to "teach"(reluctant to say that) in class and expects us to know things he went over in 5 minutes. I'm currently in Latin 2 and I remember last year he scolded us and preached for 40 minutes on how we all did not meet his expectations on a short quiz on irregular verbs that he went over in the last 10 minutes of class. I'm not sure. I think it's just my teacher. I had full four Honors courses last year as a freshman and this class was by far the most challenging. You stated that your 4th year of Latin is AP? We start Honors in Latin 3.
I grew up speaking Spanish, because it's my native language, but I'm much more proficient in English by now and Latin is still difficult. It sort of helps to have an upper hand in vocabulary and tenses but that's pretty much it. I've heard teachers state that Chinese is easier to learn than Latin. Haha
Well, I guess watching YouTube videos is my only chance. My teacher's teaching method is: 40 minutes of messing around - 10 minutes of Latin.
Sorry if I rambled on for too long.
Damn, sounds like a long road haha. I've just finished my high school exams (and high school forever) and one of the things I was planning to start studying independently in the holidays is Latin (just because it's an area of interest). My school did offer Latin though and I think some (or many?) did it find it quite challenging. Latin itself from what I've heard involves a lot of memory work and is quite demanding, but I have a friend who really enjoys it and it seems to be quite rewarding. I personally love wordy things, if you will, so I don't think I'll mind it too much at all.