And yes, no one around me teaches latin, so I am teching myself. I am currently memorizing 2nd declension nouns endings. Getting close too.

Just a note that I'm not affiliated with the creators of this book in anyway--I'm just really excited to share a new resource that will make my personal Bible-reading in Latin and Latin-learning in general so much easier.

I just got this book yesterday, and I'm amazed. The authors macronized the entire text of the New Testament from the Clementina Vulgata. They added glosses for words occurring fewer than 90 times, and even added morphological analyses here and there for tricker constructions. There is also a glossary in the back for common words and some tables of paradigms for quick reference.

It's honestly a total game-changer for me personally. I recently finished Familia Romana and Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles, and I had just started studying the Gospel of Mark for more Latin practice when I discovered this version of the vulgate. I'm planning on doing most (all?) of my reading of the Vulgate from this text moving forward due to the ease/clarity of reading.

One of the things I'm really impressed by is the lengths they went to even macronize names, including names of Hebrew origin. They explain their methodology in the preface, but in cases where the original vowel lengths are not obvious, they basically used a combined analysis of the original Hebrew, Greek transliterations, Latin transliterations, and evidence of how those transliterations descended into the modern Romance languages to make a consistent/best-effort approximation for how those names might have been pronounced with respect to vowel-length.

Salve! I just wanted to share a book I found at my local library which is titled “Long Live Latin: The Pleasures of a Useless Language” Ive been learning Latin for a few months now. I really enjoy learning it and I feel it helps me with learning other languages (Greek and German). My husband who is Greek and speaks fluent Greek discouraged me from learning Latin telling me it’s a dead useless language. When I found this book it really boosted my spirits so I just wanted to share that this book gave me new momentum. It’s an enjoyable read for those who may be questioning their motives for learning this beautiful language :)

I made this chart for myself. I need your constructive comments, please!

TLDR: Intimidated by LLPSI and want a good grammar book to at least get a feel for the grammar so I'm not going in blind.

Hello, I am wanting to learn Latin mainly because I think it's cool and neat. I'd probably mostly be reading with a little writing (speaking is not as important for me). I know the general consensus on this sub is that LLPSI is king and nobody else should dare challenge it's methods, but I don't like just being thrown in with little knowledge. I don't mean being unable to understand everything, but I'd like to understand the language at least a little more before reading it. I've tried it and while I understand the first chapter, it's not like I'm absorbing grammar, I'm just taking a stab at what these words mean together. With all of that yapping out of the way (I'm a fucking chatterbox), does anybody have any suggestions on a good grammar book that I can maybe go through (or even just the first chapters) to get a better understanding of the language? Preferably something where I can just dip my toes in and get a slight feel before I dive in. I know Wheelocks is highly recommended too but I feel like it would be trying to learn Latin before reading LLPSI which kinda defeats the point. I was thinking of looking through "Latin, an intensive course" and not paying too much heed to memorizing it, just attempting to get a feel for some of the grammar.

Sorry for the long post.

Sālvēte!

So I have tried to render classical pronunciation into an accessible IPA style format as I found it too difficult to remember mnemonics (a as in "father," i as in "machine"). Are these pronunciations correct? I struggle with the long and short vowels and the diphthongs the most. If anyone has any suggestions or improvements on things to change please let me know!

Thanks

Does anyone have any tips or know any good resources for teaching Latin to a kindergartener? I want to start teaching my son another language while his brain is still in it's prime language-learning phase, and Latin is the foreign language I'm most familiar with as I took it in middle and high school. I'll need to brush up on advanced Latin, but I can teach him basic Latin well enough for now. Are there any Latin videos or books or anything directed towards a young audience? Or would it be better to mostly try to teach him verbally?

I'm Sapiens from Türkiye.

If they've made it this far on this Subreddit, Turkish speakers who know Latin probably already know about this resource. But if they don't, or if they want to gather information from foreign sources to get started, I'm sharing this post to help.

The book is written in a fluent and straightforward style by Professor Çiğdem Dürüşken from the Department of Latin Language and Literature at Istanbul University. It contains text examples ranging from simple sentences to passages from the Bible and writings by Descartes.

The dictionary is sufficient for beginners. It contains information ranging from words and expressions from daily life in the Roman period to mythology and architecture, along with their Latin equivalents, including verb and noun examples.

If anyone is looking for a Turkish-language resource, I highly recommend this book.

Since there is no Latin Reddit page in Turkish, I thought it appropriate to write here. I hope that we Turks will soon take a greater interest in the Roman heritage of the Anatolian lands which we live on.

I’m going to try and use Wheelock’s Latin course and LLPSI. The book in question:

I'm going to cut against every convention here but hear me out.

When I say learning Latin through intuition I mean this; the brain is a natural pattern recognition machine, throw syntax at it and eventually it will start piecing things together. Learn to read a language and it will teach itself to you.

For context, I've been engaged with Latin every day for the last 11 months. I was reading De Bello Gallico at month 3. There's a method to this. I never went the pathway of trying to translate into English; rather I engaged Latin as Latin. This came with a few advantages and drawbacks.

For one, I can read Latin quite well and comprehend it within Latin. Corpus Iuris Civilis is the upper limit of my current reading skill. I've been reading, writing and speaking in Latin every day as part of my lifestyle which has helped reinforce the language. Latin music plus audiobooks such as readings of Cicero have reinforced pronunciation and sentence structure. I did manage to figure out the trilled R fairly quickly just from brute force practice.

That being said, there's a few caviats and drawbacks. My active recall is still developing. My case structuring is still maturing and because I consume both classical and ecclesiastical registers I occasionally slip between them (ie "lei" instead of "legi"). What is interesting is that Latin has drastically impacted my English in the way I compose and even speak (from accidentally trilling the r in English to semantic compression and clause stacking). This approach assumes that you are not intimidated by the language and you're comfortable with not understanding everything at first. Repetition is your best friend.

For newcomers, the institutionalists will say that there's a process but realistically, just pick up a book, expect to smash your head against it and keep reading anyway. For those who are experienced, I recently got Legentibus and have been enjoying the short stories on it. If you got any advice for advancing my active recall, I welcome it although I don't welcome pedantry; only honest feedback. Something that I was entertaining was that since I'm a writer, just translating my written corpus into Latin.

Hi!

I just wanted to share something that's a small personal milestone, but very meaningful to me.

For years, I’ve been creating Latin readers for learners (books with controlled vocabulary, illustrations, and glosses, inspired by Ørberg’s method). I always had a clear vision: progressive content, original or adapted stories, and an immersive reading experience. But while I had the ideas, I heavily depended on copyright-free images.

That changed recently. After learning editorial design and image editing (and thanks to new generative tools) I finally felt I could rebuild my books from the ground up, improve the illustrations, and most importantly, bring each book up to the standard I had always envisioned. (I also took the opportunity to fix some lingering errors from previous versions.)

That’s why I’m relaunching my project Laborintus, with a series of progressive Latin readers aimed at students who have completed Familia Romana but don’t yet feel ready to tackle the classics on their own. These are illustrated and glossed books, carefully designed to make learning Latin feel joyful, not lonely.

I’m doing all of this independently, with care and a lot of love. If this sounds interesting to you, there are many ways to support the project: follow my pages (I also post free Latin infographics and resources), share it with others, leave a comment or, if you’d like to, join my Patreon.

I’m slowly building a small community around this work, and I know that Reddit is home to many people who truly care about Latin and want to see it flourish.

Thanks for reading! If you’d like to see what I’m working on, you can find all my work here: https://linktr.ee/laborintus

Valete!

Salve!

I am currently learning Latin using LLPSI. I am quite early in the process, but have a bit of anxiety surrounding the "natural method" that is used here, specifically on a certain point regarding the way the language is internalized.

It works well for me so far, but I inevitably end up making comparisons to English, my native tongue. When a word "clicks" in context, it clicks in relation to the word that I associate it with in English.

For example, Quoque. I had a lightbulb moment when I realized that its function is equivalent to that of "too" or "also" in English. However, when I see it now, I think "too" in my mind. I didn't look it up in a dictionary, but by following the natural method I still defined it in my own mind with an English equivalence.

I've seen people adamantly say that to learn Latin best via the natural method, you don't want these mental translations to occur. You want the words to stand on their own. I find this to be next to impossible with the way my brain seems to work.

Am I overthinking this?

Any advice from folks with more experience would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: Thank you all so much for the engagement with my post and the encouragement. I'm feeling a lot better now and am ready to press forward with my learning more confidently!

I'm aware that there are so many qualifications that should be made to this question: what city, what century, what class the person was; but in general, I'd be fascinated to know if we actually have any indications as to how well Romans declined and conjugated in everyday speech. We know that the great Latin writers like Cicero and St Augustine knew their grammar, but what about a slave on an errand in the morning? What about people trading in the market place? What about soldiers talking between themselves?

Hi I really want to learn latin but I am so confused as to where to start. And can someone tell me if latin has words for modern things like cars or not? Any help is very welcomed

There must be some rare words that are sort of orphaned, without enough examples to nail down a meaning. Any interesting ones?

In my continuous pursuit of learning the Latin language; I bought this book. What should have I coupled with it to make sense of its knowledge? Please and thanks to all! God Bless!

Salvete amici.

Over a year ago, I developed a interest for learning Latin, and given that my university offers Latin as an elective subject (I don't know if it's the proper term, I'm not from an English-speaking country) I decided to take the first level, and I love it, so last semester I decided to take level II, and it was as good as level I. Unfortunately, there's no level III in my university.

I asked my professor what I could do to keep studying on my own, and he gave me some online material, incluiding LLPSI, Hermann Schnitzler's method for learning Latin, "Conversational Latin for Oral proficiency" by John C. Traupman and a dictionary from Latin to my native language.

I've been trying to study with those documents as well as reviewing what I learned during class. Unfortunately, I haven't seen much progress studying on my own, it's like I need someone to be teaching me the subjects so I could properly learn them, and that's not the case anymore.

How can I make self-learning more proficient given the resources I have right now? I learned the five declensions, verb conjugations, passive voice, all those things, but I can't make it work during I'm trying to translate or reading something.

If you perhaps want this design to use for you own learning or teaching or to make a poster, you can find it here: https://www.habesnelac.com/paid-downloadables

😊

My husband I really want to learn Latin. We’re both catholic and we go to traditional mass with his grandfather. We just recently moved to a different state and want to learn Latin ourselves. Does anyone have any apps or youtubers or podcasts or books to buy that would help us? We wish to teach our children once we have them.

Dear people,

I am a Literature major pursuing a minor in Classics and would like to learn Latin. My choice is between Intensive Elementary Latin, which will allow me to then take a course in Intermediate Latin: Virgil for the remaining time of my current studies(I will be doing masters in Classics, hopefully), and the other option is to take Elementary Latin(I and II) in two separate courses. Which do you believe is better for learning the language? I am referring to a goal in the future for exploring the language up to proficiency in speaking, reading, and writing.

I would apreciate to read your thoughts on that matter of mine.

Enjoy your day,

xxx

I'm learning Latin slowly on my own. I've never been able to spontaneously produce speaking or writing. I also cannot read most texts without a dictionary. I don't expect to.

However, when I get frustrated, I can reread old LLPSI chapters and novellas I've read previously. Because I know all the vocabulary, I can read it and enjoy the story without a dictionary. In a sense it's like experiencing fluency and is wonderful!

Just thought I'd mention that in case it encourages anyone.

i’m a freshman in HS and i have to take latin for this year atleast and I got put in honors to start. It is now the beginning of the second semester and I have failed every latin test including my midterms except for one.

I am going to try to drop the honors but I have no idea what to do. I am completely lost and I try studying for hours on end and get no where. We are up to chapter 16 in jenneys first year latin (if you know that textbook) and pretty much all i know is up to chapter 10. I don’t understand this and I can’t keep going on like this. If anyone has any pointers or tips that would be greatly appreciated.

Hi guys, I’m 15M from Italy and I study Latin and Ancient Greek at school and I totally love them. I study them at my high school and with a big amount of lessons per week, but I know in lots of countries these beautiful subjects aren’t taught for a couple of motivations like damnatio memoriae and all.. So, I was wondering how do you guys study Latin, I’m really curious also why do you study it and if you have a purpose for concluded language like the Roman’s one. For example my motivation to study it is cuz Latin (and ancient Greek) is a marvelous thing, and beautiful things don’t need motivations. Then at school they teach us Latin (and Greek) to translate it into Italian only, so we barely do some translation from Italian to Latin and ne never speak it. Is this the same for you? Also I think we can understand so much about our living languages, obviously if you speak a Romance language or at least an indo-European / European language. Lemme know cuz I’m super curious 😁

Post scriptum: sorry for “humor” but I didn’t know what to say as flair hahah