[HN Gopher] Speaking Latin
___________________________________________________________________
Speaking Latin
Author : neonate
Score : 107 points
Date : 2021-09-13 11:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (psyche.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (psyche.co)
| dghf wrote:
| I only watched the first couple of minutes of the video, but it
| seems they pronounce Latin "v" more or less the same as English
| "v".
|
| I was taught to pronounce it like English "w".
|
| Am I wrong, are they wrong, are there different competing
| approaches to "correct" Latin pronunciation, or are the two
| sounds in free variation?
| pfortuny wrote:
| It evolved, so no need to worry.
|
| Americans pronounce 'r' where British do not. Not a problem.
| There is no "correct" in a language which lived for centuries
| and does no more.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Latin "v" pronounced like English "w" is the old, original
| pronunciation.
|
| During the evolution of the language, the pronunciation of
| Latin "v" has changed to that of English "v", so this is how
| all Romance languages pronounce it.
|
| Actually the sound "v" did not exist in the ancient Indo-
| European languages, but only the English "w".
|
| The change in pronunciation from "w" to "v" has affected most
| European languages, not only those descended from Latin, unless
| they have lost completely the original "w", like Greek.
|
| English is an exception where the ancient pronunciation of "w"
| has been conserved, even if other sounds have changed more than
| in most languages.
| armchair_ wrote:
| IIRC spoken Latin is taught differently in continental Europe,
| so that it sounds much closer to modern Italian. The
| pronouncing "v" like "w" rule is mostly an American (or at
| least Anglophone) thing.
| dhosek wrote:
| There's the old saw about how you pronounce Latin will depend
| on whether you were taught by Father Brown or Father Leary.
|
| In areas where Catholicism has predominated, it's more likely
| that the ecclesiastical pronunciation will dominate. As I
| recall, the German exchange students I had in some of my
| classics courses used the classical pronounciation (their big
| weirdness was pronouncing th as an aspirated t (like in
| Goethe) rather than a th sound.
| gpvos wrote:
| As far as I have experienced, the "classical" (i.e. not the
| Italian-like ecclesiastical) pronunciation differs a lot by
| native language of the speaker. It was long ago, but I
| remember having had only very basic pronunciation guidance at
| my secondary school; we certainly used Dutch vowels (apart
| from the "u" of course) and the Dutch "v" which is very
| similar to the English "v". In a context like that academy I
| would have been understood, but with a very typical Dutch
| accent.
| ink_13 wrote:
| The article touches on this point briefly:
|
| > How should one pronounce the cae- in caelum (sky): kai, as it
| was in Rome of the 1st century BCE, or che, as used in
| Christian liturgy and modern Italian?
|
| but then later concludes when discussing a meeting of students
| held in Latin:
|
| > The meeting removed, however, any concerns I had about sound
| and style in speaking Latin actively. Differences of
| pronunciation and expression mattered as little as if I were
| conversing in English with students from Scotland, Germany or
| Japan. What mattered was that the language was intelligible,
| meaningful, accurate and alive.
|
| So in short, if people understand you, that's what matters, and
| the differences can be thought of as differing accents.
| j-james wrote:
| There are different competing approaches to "correct" Latin
| pronunciation. Pronouncing the "v" as "w" comes from the
| Restored pronunciation - I think Ecclesiastical Latin
| pronounces it as an English "v".
| gootler wrote:
| Racists.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| Conor loqui Latine cotidie, gaudio est!
| laGrenouille wrote:
| As somewhat alluded to in the article, there is a similar
| movement within the study of Classical Greek. In some ways this
| is even more interesting for classical Greek epics because there
| is good evidence that they were traditionally sung. There are a
| number of interesting recordings of the Iliad and Odyssey in the
| original Greek [1].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI0mkt6Z3I0
| drdec wrote:
| Seems like a good place to point out that during the pandemic
| John Linnel of They Might Be Giants recorded an EP called Roman
| Songs entirely in Latin. It's available on Spotify (you'll have
| to check other streaming services yourself).
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| The Vatican has a web site in Latin, but it looks like their site
| doesn't respect the "Accept-Language: la" header.
|
| https://www.vatican.va/latin/latin_index.html
| 1-more wrote:
| This is exactly as a Latin language website should look. My
| heart swells.
| wrinkl3 wrote:
| A Latin language website from 2004.
| 1-more wrote:
| They could have done lickable buttons and did not. A true
| retvrn to tradition. Art.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Mirabile dictu!
|
| (p.s., don't bother looking this up in Google translate. It's
| terrible on Latin.)
| akeck wrote:
| I've heard that "Vox Latina" is really good for classical
| pronunciation.
|
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/vox-latina/0D460CEF06E5...
| fidesomnes wrote:
| It is outdated now but it is the basis of modern restored
| classical pronunciation.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Lots of angst over the loss of 'unmediated' understanding of
| latin. But, of course, if you hear it then translate it in your
| head into your native tongue then its still mediated. What
| difference does it make? I'm not sure its as big a point as the
| article makes out.
| gliese1337 wrote:
| Uh... is that how you think people understand non-native
| languages? 'Cause it's not.
|
| If you are still at the point of translating in your head, you
| are not a competent fluent listener. Someone who is fully
| competent in Latin won't do that.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Some folks who have spoken a 2nd language for years, report
| they still sometimes translate in their head. The flat remark
| is not helpful.
| indigo945 wrote:
| Second language speakers do not translate words in their head.
| (In fact, if asked to do so, I often have trouble rendering
| English sentences in my native tongue, even though I understand
| them just fine.)
| wudangmonk wrote:
| Doesn't unmediated in the context of the text mean without
| first translating into your native tongue?. If you need to
| translate it to any other language first, that to me means that
| it is mediated.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Exactly. And if that's happening in your head, learning to
| speak latin isn't changing the mediation.
| leke wrote:
| Yle, the Finnish national broadcasting company used to have news
| in Latin. It ran for many years before being retired in 2019.
|
| Details about the broadcast:
| https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/yle_ends_latin_news_servi...
|
| Broadcast archive: https://areena.yle.fi/audio/1-1931339
| Dragonai wrote:
| This is awesome. Thanks so much for sharing!
| c-smile wrote:
| European Union should switch to Latin as an official language.
| That would be natural choice and will keep the language alive.
|
| At least it will create some intellectual barrier for policy
| makers.
| sterlind wrote:
| Mi ankorau esperas ke Esperanto estu uzata tiele. (I am still
| hoping that Esperanto be used for that purpose.)
| jvvw wrote:
| When I was at Oxford in the mid-nineties, there was a lady (a
| post-grad? not sure) who organised latin-speaking tea parties for
| interested parties across the university.
|
| I'm not sure I'd have enjoyed Latin as much at school though had
| I had to speak it. I found something calming about doing
| translation. But perhaps I would have learned it more thoroughly.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I had two letters to the editor of the Daily Illini in the 5 1/2
| years I was there, and they were both about the foreign language
| requirement. I hated it. Lately I got the Rosetta Stone course in
| Japanese, and I hated that, too. But if you like languages,
| you're lucky. I'm sure it's great for the brain.
|
| Lastly, "By the mid-19th century, however, the increasing
| dominance of national languages over Latin was causing alarm to
| some readers" stuck out for me. Johannes Brahms wrote his
| breakthrough hit (as it were) with his German Requiem right about
| then. Prior to that, requiems were always in Latin. Having sung
| that, I'm really glad it's in German.
| farleykr wrote:
| This couldn't be more timely. I've been wanting to get back into
| learning Latin. I took it in high school but faked my way through
| unfortunately. Does anyone have any recommendations for good
| resources to learn Latin outside of the obvious language learning
| apps/sites like Duolingo or Rosetta Stone?
| Quillbert182 wrote:
| One thing commonly recommended is the textbook Lingua Latina
| per se Illustrata. It uses illustrations to help you learn only
| in Latin.
| HPsquared wrote:
| What's interesting is that the book is 100% Latin - you need
| to figure everything out from context and examples. It's
| almost a logic puzzle, and learning Latin is a side effect.
| OJFord wrote:
| I really tried but ultimately found it frustrating - I
| think I honestly do learn best with a good amount of
| structured tables, going through grammar etc. Certainly
| that's how I've been learning Hindi (via Wiktionary &
| Snell, supplementing Duolingo) in which I've progressed far
| beyond where I ever got to with Latin via LLI.
|
| Just hit too many blocks where I sort of have the
| understanding of what it must mean, but I want to ask
| someone 'why is it inflected in this way here but different
| there?', and of course there's no explanation of that. (By
| design, I just don't like it.)
|
| Perhaps my ideal would be something like LLI but
| interspersed with grammar-oriented explanation between
| chapters.
| mabub24 wrote:
| It's just not a grammar book, it's a language book in the
| sense that it teaches how the language is used rather
| than "constructed".
|
| I always recommend people learn the use of a language
| before the grammar at the beginning, and then transition
| into much more intensive grammar study later, likely
| exactly at the point when you got frustrated is when
| introducing grammar would be perfect. This is especially
| true when the written grammar of a language can look very
| different than the sound of a language (especially if
| written differences are hidden by identical sounds in the
| language, like in French).
| OJFord wrote:
| Yes exactly, but I think the trouble is that it's too
| popular to say 'people learn by immersion, not by grammar
| and tables, immersion is how we learnt our first language
| after all'; when actually, _some_ people do prefer (or at
| least benefit from additionally) such rigid grammarian
| teaching.
|
| I've learnt so much more from studying
| conjugation/declension tables on Wiktionary than I have
| from trying to converse with fluent/native speakers, who
| can't explain to me _why_ or tell me how to spell it
| (sounding /typing it in the English alphabet).
| nerdponx wrote:
| Is this a sensible approach to learning _any_ language from
| a book? Or does it only make sense with a "dead" language
| that we mostly know from literature and inscriptions?
| coyotespike wrote:
| It does make more sense with Latin, because while Latin
| has always been and still is spoken, much of the value of
| the language comes from its literature (of which 90% has
| never been translated).
|
| BUT, the natural method plays well with extensive
| reading/comprehensible input, where you just read a lot
| at a simple, pleasurable level, allowing it to ramp up
| gradually.
|
| This is how I learned much of English as a native
| speaker, after all!
|
| So I intend to use this approach with other languages in
| the future as well.
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| That and Wheelock's Latin are the main book recommendations.
| Other than that, there are a bunch of subreddits and a large
| discord which might be nice if you want to get some daily
| active practice in (including voice chat). Or just see if
| there are any courses running near you - active training can
| be handy, but the style of course is very country-specific -
| every country has their own tradition for teaching Latin (or
| multiple), and the style/goal may not suit you.
|
| It's super low-effort, but I had fun with the (modern) light
| novellas by Andrew Olympi and kin - in some sense they're
| _too_ easy above a certain level and made me over-confident
| in a way that was damaging to my confidence when I looked at
| actual classical latin texts, on the other hand it 's nice to
| just be able to pick up a small book and read some beginner-
| level Latin without requiring any effort/strain.
|
| [ note: I've only been learning Latin for about a year, with
| very mixed success - I'm very much a beginner still and can't
| read any classical texts with any fluency/comfort, nor write
| without a dictionary to help with inflections ]
| handrous wrote:
| Is there a name for this kind of book? I have one, titled
| "Mein Erstes Buch", that, in one small and slim volume, takes
| you from "Dick & Jane" and "See Spot Run" levels, to an ~3rd
| or 4th grade reading level, entirely in German. I picked it
| up because it looked neat but tried reading it one day, made
| it about a third of the way through, and sure enough, I could
| follow along. Doesn't teach you pronunciation and it doesn't
| replace focused practice & drilling, but it was pretty damn
| cool. I'd like one in French, especially, but I don't know
| what term to search for. "The Natural Method" from that link
| yields some promising results, but are there other terms?
|
| (just checked archive.org, and sure enough, they've got a
| scan of the book I have, but it's a limited preview:
| https://archive.org/details/meinerstesbuch0000unse/mode/2up)
| maw wrote:
| In LLPSI's marketing materials, they call it the "natural
| method." (I've also seen "nature method.")
|
| Another term is "comprehensible input" -- but I am not
| certain precisely how the two relate to each other. But
| hopefully they're enough for you to go on.
| coyotespike wrote:
| Yes, the terms I've seen are "natural method",
| "comprehensible input", and "extensive reading."
|
| The latter two refer more to a large volume of simple
| reading materials which let you work up on your own,
| practicing and slowly learning more grammar and
| vocabulary.
| abecedarius wrote:
| For French I liked https://www.amazon.com/Mon-premier-
| dictionnaire-Roger-Pillet... which I picked up after some
| basic grounding with Duolingo. It's not a textbook but it
| is all in French yet for second-language learners.
| urubu wrote:
| Here's a website with a list of such textbooks for various
| languages:
|
| https://vivariumnovum.it/risorse-didattiche/propria-
| formazio...
| dvaun wrote:
| This is amazing, thank you!
| yawboakye wrote:
| There's 2 lively Latin Discord servers. One for general Latin
| and the other for everyone learning Latin using Lingua Latina
| per se Illustrata, a popular book for self-guided learning.
| Once in the community you'd easily discover resources like
| YouTube channels, Twitter accounts, podcasts etc. It's amazing
| how large and niche the community is at the same time!
|
| LLPSI Discord: https://discord.gg/uXSwq9r4
|
| Latin Discord: https://discord.gg/latin
| sterlind wrote:
| I love LLPSI. The approach of just building up without
| requiring translation into another language really feels like
| how we're supposed to learn - naturally, incrementally,
| through immersion.
| gnufx wrote:
| Whichever it is, remember, from a .sig on ancient posts by
| Vassil Nikolov:
|
| LEGEMANVALEMFVTVTVM (Ancient Roman programmers' adage.)
| jan_Inkepa wrote:
| [ For the curious : this is some kind of overly-literal
| rendition of RTFM "lege - manvualem - fututum", where the
| grammar appears somewhat strained, but a detailed analysis
| would be not appropriate on YCOMB for several reasons... ]
| vlod wrote:
| You might like this youtube channel:
|
| ScorpioMartianus https://www.youtube.com/c/ScorpioMartianus
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| This graphic novel could be fun, it is based on the writings of
| Julius Caesar who was said to write in a fairly simple style.
|
| Caesaris Bellum Helveticum: Scriptores Antiqui Romani
| Imaginibus Ornati by Karl Heinz Graf Von Rothenburg
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Caesaris-Bellum-Helveticum-Scriptores...
| em-bee wrote:
| there are latin versions of the asterix comic published in
| germany. they are supposed to be of high quality.
|
| https://new.egmont-shop.de/comics/asterix/latein/
| mbg721 wrote:
| In addition to whichever dictionary and textbook you use, as
| you get deeper in, an Allen & Greenough grammar reference is
| really handy. Because Latin word-order is looser than English,
| there are some a-ha! moments where it starts to click, "Oh,
| this entire clause is acting as the direct object, and it's
| here because Cicero wanted to emphasize this and this." Quickly
| being able to look up common constructions and how noun cases
| are used helps with that.
| nerdponx wrote:
| The word ordering stuff gets really wild, compared to my
| native English. I wonder about languages that have more
| flexible word order, do their speakers have greater ability
| to retain information in working memory?
| leetcrew wrote:
| keep in mind that most of the latin you end up reading in
| school is rather formal/complex. it's hard to parse in a
| similar way that charles dickens is harder to parse than
| casual/informal english. stuff like de bello gallico and
| some new testament books (greek) can be very
| straightforward.
|
| it is definitely hard to get started with latin/greek when
| your native tongue is a highly positional language like
| english, but I don't think it is intrinsically harder. the
| same information is there, it's just encoded in word
| endings rather than order. in english, the word order is
| only really important within individual clauses. you can
| still write very complicated (and syntactically correct)
| english sentences with clause orderings that are very hard
| to parse. I'd argue this requires just as deep of a mental
| "stack" as latin/greek.
|
| anyways, that's just my two cents as someone who studied,
| but never fully mastered, latin and greek in college.
| yepguy wrote:
| The Latinum Institute provides a lot of audio material for
| their Patreon subscribers.
|
| https://www.latinum.org.uk/
| voldacar wrote:
| I would recommend some combination of Lingua Latina and
| Wheelock's Latin. That's what my Latin tutor used and they
| complement each other very well.
| hyperstar wrote:
| https://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-forum/
|
| For spoken Latin, there are Corderii colloquia, which are also
| made into an audio book.
| sumobob2112 wrote:
| Wheelocks would be my goto, you learn by reading authors, in
| the original translation.
| Koshkin wrote:
| This one is an excellent resource for language lovers:
| https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol
| billfruit wrote:
| You could use a textbook specifically designed for adult
| learners like the Wheelock.
| jnwatson wrote:
| I studied Latin in high school and did well in JCL competitions.
|
| I'm skeptical that "active" is the way to teach beginners Latin.
| My daughter took 4 years of Latin in high school with this
| method, and they never got around to covering all the grammar
| (which is normally covered in two years).
|
| Spending too much time on the conversational stuff means less
| time actually being able to read the classics, which is, IMHO,
| where the real value of Latin is.
| ogogmad wrote:
| What do you think of reading an English translation of the
| classics instead of the original?
| jnwatson wrote:
| I think it is like any translation: you get much of the
| understanding. Still, it is important to understand the
| social and cultural background of the author, and reading it
| as the author wrote it is part of that.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| It's kind of like reading anything in translation. Goethe
| loses a lot in English. Shakespeare in German is the same.
| webreac wrote:
| Edgar Poe earned a lot in translation to french (translated
| by Baudelaire).
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Thanks, I need to check that out. It's conceivable that
| Baudelaire made a few improvements. It's certainly not
| unheard of. Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam is
| by some accounts close to an original work. [0]
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubaiyat_of_Omar_Khayyam
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Similar experience in my daughter's high school. In her case I
| think it was a defect of the teacher rather than the method.
| gnufx wrote:
| My father claimed once to have used clerical Latin as a common
| language talking to a priest somewhere in Europe. I don't think
| I'd have got far, despite it being one of my best subjects at
| school.
| _ZeD_ wrote:
| this reminds me of polyMATHY channel, look at
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYYpTfx1ey8 and at
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDhEzP0b-Wo for some "real world"
| latin usage
| pattisapu wrote:
| Just two generations ago, teaching Latin by "the direct method"
| was not uncommon in the West:
|
| http://www.arlt.co.uk/method.html
|
| Greek composition courses, too.
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| I'm happy for all those who enjoy Latin, but I loathed learning
| it. I was subjected to six years of mandatory Latin, and I hated
| every minute of it. Not to mention two years of classical Greek.
| I was more interested in science. I argued for learning a more
| useful language like German or Spanish.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I had Dutch (my native language), English, French, German, and
| Latin in high school. I actually live in Germany now but I
| mostly get by with English. My German is too broken to be of
| much more use than having simplistic conversations with people
| that don't speak English. I sound like a complete idiot when I
| need to speak German. And my job is (mostly) not sounding like
| an idiot so, I avoid professional situations where this is a
| thing.
|
| Getting my German to the same level I understand and speak
| English (or Dutch) is such a massive project that I've never
| really bothered making time for it. I always have more
| interesting things to do. And if I don't there's work. Learning
| a language is a big time commitment and the in between state
| where I can't really use it without sounding like an idiot just
| isn't that useful to me.
|
| I've also forgotten most of the French I knew even though I was
| getting quite good at it by the time I dropped the subject 30
| years ago. I chose science heavy classes instead of language
| heavy classes (the Dutch system makes you choose). So German,
| Latin, and French were out. The endless & mind-numbing
| memorizing of words, grammar, etc. was a big contributor to
| that choice. And I also enjoyed other classes a lot more
| generally. However, I had English until the end (six years) and
| was actively reading English books, watching BBC, etc. by the
| time I entered university. In university some of my books were
| in English. A lot of online content was English. Immersing
| yourself like that is what needed to master a language.
|
| English has kind of taken the place of Latin. It's the world's
| most popular second language. Without it you are a bit
| marginalized to specific areas or groups of people.
|
| But we might not need it much longer if translation tools keep
| on improving. The key moment will be if you can have an
| intelligent conversation with somebody without having a single
| language in common. Even if it is just in written form, it
| would matter a lot.
| gpvos wrote:
| I've heard from someone who teaches Norwegian to newly
| arrived expats that they simply don't get any Dutch students
| since these pick up the language in a matter of weeks without
| help. Between Dutch and German this should be even easier.
| Simply pick a social activity (choir, dancing, whatever)
| that's intended for locals, go drinking with friends, etc. If
| you want, of course.
|
| I've neglected my German and French since school, but found
| that I could still get to a basic level of conversation later
| in life by just trying when I was on holiday in those
| countries while still living in the Netherlands. YMMV.
| 3nf wrote:
| A lot of that learning experience depends on context- I had a
| nerdy, young (early to mid 20s) high school teacher teaching
| classic and not liturgical, many had strict Catholic school
| nuns.
| cafard wrote:
| I went to a mediocre high school, where Latin ended after the
| second year. But even that much helped with high school German,
| college French, and subsequent experiments with other Romance
| languages.
| gpvos wrote:
| How come you didn't get any choice in this?
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| I was enrolled in the 1960's in an antiquated system called
| "Cour Classique" in French. We had a strict curriculum,
| designed to produce priests, doctors, lawyers and notaries.
| The system spanned eight years, high school and college. We
| were given no options until the last two years. I got my B.A.
| at 19, and promptly joined the Canadian Peace Corps (CUSO),
| learned Spanish in two months, and taught physics (in
| Spanish) in South America.
| stormdennis wrote:
| Maybe his school scheduled classes so it was impossible to do
| a language and a science subject at the same time. For
| example I dropped History and also Geography in school
| because they clashed with Science subjects.
| throw0101a wrote:
| See also _Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin_ by Nicholas Ostler:
|
| > _The history of language is the history of politics, society
| and religion - and in the case of Latin it is a story of
| incredible staying power, the tongue sturdily outliving the Roman
| empire. As Nicholas Ostler points out, by the end of the first
| millennium AD Latin was the language of religion from Iceland to
| Sicily, from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, from Poland to
| Portugal; and 500 years later it was still the language of
| organised life throughout western Europe._
|
| * https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/dec/08/featuresreview...
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