EPTLatin? So what? Language of Rome: Caesar, Brutus, Cicero, Romulus and Remus, Aeneas. Dead language, right? Well, if you already want to learn Latin you probably know that's not really accurate. But if you're just curious, here are some reasons Latin's important and interesting:
- Latin forms a basis for many modern European languages. If you already speak and read a language like French, Spanish, or Romanian, chances are you can already get the main ideas of most Latin texts with little to no study.
- The Romans were the closest the Ancient world got to a modern engineering society. Greece was all, "Dude, let's build a temple, Zeus is sweet." Rome was like, "Weak. I've got to get from Rome to Naples. Lets build a road that will last for thousands of years."
- Latin was the "common language" for a couple thousand years. The first really famous Roman authors are from the 1st century BC. Latin finally fell out of use as the international standard somewhere between the 17th and 19th centuries AD, depending on your area of expertise. Diplomatically, it fell to French by the early 18th century. For scholars, it continued to be used up through the 19th century, was derailed by German briefly, and then English took over. So if you can read Latin, you can know
- Latin is cool. It's a "smart person" language, so you can feel superior. It's also a very interesting language, and its relatively few irregularities mean it's a great starting point for other linguistic studies.
Part One: Reading Latin
The easiest thing about learning to read Latin is that, unlike Greek or Russian or Korean, it uses the very common Latin alphabet, minus a few letters. Originally Latin had no Y, or Z, and K was rarely used. All were introduced to deal with Greek words. Latin doesn't have a W. Originally U and V were the same letter, or at least used interchangeably; the same for I and J.
How do you pronounce it? Answer: since Latin today mainly exists as a written language, it doesn't matter. Traditionally it's been taught that Latin used "pure" vowels, but the basic sounds of the letters are the same we all use today. It's believed that the Romans pronounced V as "w", and had no "soft" values for C, G, and S. (There is one place it matters: if you sing or chant Latin. In this case, the vowels are the typical sung vowels. The consonants C and G become soft ("ch" and "j") before i and e. V is pronounced "v". This pronunciation is also known as Church Latin.)
Finally, Latin differentiated between long and short syllables. This was usually determined by the length of the vowel, which often depended in turn on the place in the word. In a regular Latin course, you would first learn all the vocabulary with the long syllables marked with macrons, and late in the course learn the rules for reading without them. Since I'm focusing on reading, and when reading pronunciation doesn't really matter, I'm skipping that bit. (Also it's a pain to reproduce on an English keyboard, even with a Mac. Hopefully later I can do a bit on poetry and how to work all of that out.)
Part Two: Understanding Latin
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.
Great. You now know that you can look at that sentence and read it. But what does it mean? In most Latin classes, you'll learn two things: grammar and vocabulary. In fact, Latin grammar is so neat and tidy (compared to most languages) that for hundreds of years in Europe Latin was used to teach all grammatical principles. But since I'm assuming you know English, I'm assuming you know enough grammar that going over it all explicitly would be a waste of time. And vocabulary you just have to learn the hard way - practice.
+ Show Spoiler [Quick Grammar Review] +
Almost all languages have the following, called "parts of speech":
Nouns - words which stand for things: people, places, abstract ideas (tree)
Pronouns - words which can stand in for another thing (it)
Adjectives - words which describe ("modify") nouns (green)
Verbs - words which signify actions, connections, or being (hit)
Adverbs - words which describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs (quickly)
Conjunctions - words which connect thoughts or phrases together (and)
Prepositions - words which describe a relationship between things, usually two nouns, or a verb and a noun (for)
In addition, some (but not all) languages have:
Interjections - words used to express sudden or violent emotion (damn!)
Articles - Sometimes considered a type of adjective; used to limit or specify a noun (the)
And finally, some languages consider the
Participle - an adjective formed from the base of a verb (standing)
to be a separate part of speech. Ancient Greek, for example, uses the participle this way (even though most modern grammars, following the Latin model, consider it without the separation).
Languages express thoughts through:
Phrases - a group of words which denotes something, but does not provide "completion" ("for hire" or "the red dog")
Clauses - a group of words which can be considered complete (The red dog sits on the mat.)
Depending on the language, what it take to be "complete" varies slightly, but the general rule of thumb is that a clause needs a subject (an actor) and verb (action).
A clause can either stand on its own as a sentence, or be combined with other clauses in a longer sentence. A phrase, in most languages, cannot be a "sentence", but this rule is often violated even in writing and if you're talking you do it all the time.
Nouns - words which stand for things: people, places, abstract ideas (tree)
Pronouns - words which can stand in for another thing (it)
Adjectives - words which describe ("modify") nouns (green)
Verbs - words which signify actions, connections, or being (hit)
Adverbs - words which describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs (quickly)
Conjunctions - words which connect thoughts or phrases together (and)
Prepositions - words which describe a relationship between things, usually two nouns, or a verb and a noun (for)
In addition, some (but not all) languages have:
Interjections - words used to express sudden or violent emotion (damn!)
Articles - Sometimes considered a type of adjective; used to limit or specify a noun (the)
And finally, some languages consider the
Participle - an adjective formed from the base of a verb (standing)
to be a separate part of speech. Ancient Greek, for example, uses the participle this way (even though most modern grammars, following the Latin model, consider it without the separation).
Languages express thoughts through:
Phrases - a group of words which denotes something, but does not provide "completion" ("for hire" or "the red dog")
Clauses - a group of words which can be considered complete (The red dog sits on the mat.)
Depending on the language, what it take to be "complete" varies slightly, but the general rule of thumb is that a clause needs a subject (an actor) and verb (action).
A clause can either stand on its own as a sentence, or be combined with other clauses in a longer sentence. A phrase, in most languages, cannot be a "sentence", but this rule is often violated even in writing and if you're talking you do it all the time.
Then what I'm going to do is encourage you to make Latin part of your language. We learn our native language by imitation and having to use it. "Wha dis?" "That's a block." "Black." "No, block." Similarly with reading: "C-a-t caaaa?" "Cat". But you can already read, write, and speak your language (and maybe another one: we're going to work on adding Latin into the total sum of the language you know.
Let's go back to the sentence above.
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.
To understand this as a sentence you need to be able to understand the basic thought being expressed. This means you need to automatically be able to find the subject and verb. So this is your first assignment. Take this, and the other sentences I'll assign below, and find the subject and verb - the main thing being talked about, and the main idea of what it's doing.
1. Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.
2. Urbs antiqua fuit Karthago.
3. In principio erat Verbum.
4. Res est praeterea et immensi operis.
5. Inde in consilia publica adhiberi.
6. Atque hoc poetae faciunt in comoediis.
7. Hi omnis lingua inter se differunt.
8. Legiones deinde ductae ad diruendam urbem.
9. Pheonissa Dido errabat silva in magna.
10. Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae.
Once you're fairly confident that you have the right subject and verb, go ahead and try to work out a) how the rest of it relates to the main thought and b) what it means.
Also, a brief preview of the next lesson, which will be "minimalist grammar" - or just enough grammar to get you comfortable with the ways Latin works.
Latin is an inflected language, meaning words change their form based on relationship to other words. In Latin, the end of a word changes: if you can figure out what part of a word is its ending, you can figure out its "stem", or base, and then how its been modified to express its relationship to the other words. See: Latin conjugations (verb forms) and declensions (forms for nouns, adjectives, etc.). You will eventually have to memorize or internalize these, either by lots of practice, or just... memorizing them.
i know spanish okay so it helps 
.
. Plus, the most logical grammar and so many awesome words that immediately you go 'hey that's in my language :D'
