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- Why are you learning Latin?
Why are you learning Latin?
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Salvete! (Yes, that's the only greeting I know and it was stolen from the Basics 1 tips page.)
And Latin is finally here! After months of anticipation and waiting, Duolingo users have been invited into the beta-stage course of its first dead language. Naturally, it has been met from everything between genuine praise, constructive criticism and disappointing feedback. While I have only just reached Level 1 of Basics 1, I am eager to venture further through my Latin journey and hope it will be rewarding and enjoyable.
As the Latin community grows, I think it will be a good idea to share with each other why we have decided to learn Latin. Personally, it is out of pure interest for Latin, especially since I am also learning French and Italian, the latter being especially close to Latin. However, I have already found that discovering the root of Romance languages may indeed be useful for learning them. I have had no prior study of Latin and have found it easy to recognise certain words because of their French or Italian derivations. This has helped me to develop a greater awareness of the relationship between languages and really makes me appreciate not only Romance languages, but language as a whole. So, I ask to you, as part of our newly-founded community, why are you learning Latin?
Adam
13 Comments
"why are you learning Latin?" So I can have children some day and only teach them Latin since their toddlers' time, so we can be able to restore the glory of our people and keep the Hellenic-Roman culture productive. hahaha
I studied 4 years latin in different schools and I nearly never achieved ending the courses positive although i love latin. I always knew that i will come back to latin so i also kept my latin books with me. Now that there is Duolingo i feel ready to begin another time and to achieve talking latin fluent. I can remember a few words from latin but now its MY TIME to do it perfect. With Duolingo i see a possibility to learn how i like it. Its always better when it makes fun to learn. Duolingo also made me learn spanish on my own, i won't miss any day to learn spanish, its a part of my life now and i hope with latin it will be the same.
I must be a masochist ? Or maybe if i become proficient i can become a Catholic nun. Seriously i love languages and am interested in the mother tongue of the 3 romance languages that i study. But i don't know how much further i will go being as i find the female voice difficult to understand; like she is talking through a huge wad of bubble gum.
The male voice is crystal clear and makes the lessons easy, but that's only about half of the vocals. Personally, because of that, i find Latin here more difficult than Chinese, Greek, and Hebrew all together. Oh well, i guess i have my plate full without Latin. :(
I'm a great fan of Seneca and Cicero, and I hope that one day I might be able to read their works in the original language.
I've already learned some Latin (autodidactic) from time to time. Duolingo is always a good resource for staying on track. :-)
There is a little song moving around in my head right now:
"Latin is a language, as dead as it can be.
It killed the ancient Romans, and now it's killing me." :D
Indeed -- there might be a little tongue-in-cheekiness involved. ;-)
I'm not so much learning it as refreshing what I learned. I took Latin for three years in high school, where - thanks to an amazing teacher and a truly magnificent game - I came to love the language. Now I'm here to get back in touch with the language and help improve the course for future learners, doing what I can to keep it alive so that Latin may never truly die.
SENATVS POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS!
Volgav vitsenanieff nivya kevach varatsach.
Obviously for knowledge :)
Today while making this post, I found that the grammar and sentence-structure of Latin language is very easy to grasp which is why I decided to learn it.
It was the only language that was offered as a third language at my school and since I was into languages, I took it.
I forgot a lot and I figured that reviving my knowledge wouldn't hurt. I also like looking at the similarities and differences between languages, and now that I'm learning Spanish, I'm interested in seeing how Spanish, French and Latin compare.
Salvete :)
As a biology student, I find myself looking up a lot of Latin words (mostly nouns), and even though our professors don't expect us to know all the Latin terms, I often go out of my way to learn them. It's really cool when you encounter a new species name and you immediately grasp the logic behind it (learning Greek also helps!). Besides, I have a penchant for Romance languages - all the more reason to learn Latin.
Btw shameless self-promo, my most popular deck on Tinycards is my histology deck (text is Latin only, images are in labelled in English).
When I was 13 years old I changed schools, and though both institutions taught Latin, the curriculum was not standardised, as it would become later in a pupil's career in preparation for standardised testing. So although I had taken Latin for two years and scored 96% (unless my memory is playing tricks) in my last test at the old school, I was judged to be unsuitable for the Latin stream in the new school. This has always been a matter for regret, indeed, resentment perhaps.
So when, almost 60 years later, I discovered that Duolingo offered a Latin course, I thought is worth a try, and am now hooked.
Furthermore, it turns out that I remembered the declensions of Mensa, Dominus and Bellum, the conjugation of the present tense of Amare, and the terms "Nominative, Vocative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Ablative" and what these terms mean!
