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| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5228 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 1 of 9 08 April 2014 at 8:48pm | IP Logged |
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How would you go about achieving spoken fluency in (classical) Latin?
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 DavidStyles Octoglot Pro Member United Kingdom Joined 3941 days ago 82 posts - 179 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, French, Portuguese, Norwegian Studies: Mandarin, Russian, Swedish, Danish, Serbian, Arabic (Egyptian) Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 9 09 April 2014 at 12:42am | IP Logged |
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Find some like-minded friends and speak Latin with them :)
Not sure the utility of this, besides fun, but can be done. Besides, as with any language, if you study it a lot, it'll be on your mind, and your thoughts will turn to that language. Where your thoughts go, your words can follow. This isn't just pretty rhetoric - if you can think in a language, you can talk in it. "To whom" is another matter entirely, of course ;) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5408 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 3 of 9 09 April 2014 at 9:57am | IP Logged |
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I would have said just the opposite, "sure of the utility but can't be done" :)
Jokes aside, the "is it useful?" question is a heatly debated point, so I'm not going to dwell on it. But as far as I'm concerned, it is evident that speaking a language will greatly improve other skills in it. So even if reading is the only thing you want to do with Latin, learning to produce it will help. As for the "can't be done" part, it is a bit a tongue in cheek comment. Still, given the very nature of the exstant material in Classical Latin (highly crafted literary works), I'm not sure it is possible to reach fluency in spoken Latin by using only this material. My guess is that you could make this easier by including non-Classical material. E. g., there's a wealth of dialogues books from the Renaissance written in order to teach spoken Latin to children/young adults. Their quality, difficulty and content vary greatly but they are, in my opinion, a fine and enjoyable gateway to spoken Latin. If you're interested, I can post some links. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 9 09 April 2014 at 9:57am | IP Logged |
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Spoken Latin is not high on my agenda right now because I have other more pressing plans, but a couple of years ago I decided to revive my desiccated Latin, and I decided that it had to be made into a normal active language - otherwise it would be too fragile and too uninteresting. So I listened to sources on the internet and started thinking in Latin, and I guess that I woould have been able to have simple conversations in Latin at that point if an opportunity had accurred. OK, it never did, and I didn't expect it to do so, but I have kept my Latin alive not only with 'free' thinking, but also with other relevant techniques like those I use with modern languages - like retranslation of intensively studied text fragments and simultaneous (rotten) interpreting while I listen to speech in other languages. And if something like a conference in Latin should manifest itself in an accessible part of this planet I just might choose to brush up my Latin and try it out.
But maybe it would be seen as a problem that I think of Latin as a living language (= Neolatin), roughly as it is used in Ephemerida. And Classical Latinists may be to focused on endless discussions about the Eneid and arcane grammatical features for my taste.. Edited by Iversen on 09 April 2014 at 10:03am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5320 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 5 of 9 09 April 2014 at 10:00am | IP Logged |
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If you want to be able to talk about current affairs in Latin, check out Conversational Latin for Oral Proficiency.
You also might find Henry Beard's over the top translations in X-Treme Latin: All the Latin You Need to Know for Survival in the 21st Century helpful. :-) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5228 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 6 of 9 09 April 2014 at 4:05pm | IP Logged |
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David,
Have you ever tried to find like-minded Latin speaking friends? It makes DIFFICULT TASK X look like EASY TASK Y! I do attempt thinking in Latin at time, but I find it hard to keep at it. How do others keep at it? Perhaps set aside blocks of time and give all one's concetration to thinking in Latin? Iversen, I think we've spoken about this before and agreed: I prefer to conserve Latin's grammar as it was in Cicero's day, but have no problem with increasing the vocabulary of the language every time a new term is needed for the modern world. Dotsujin, Thanks! I have those books, and enjoy them greatly. All, Finding language partners is, I think, probably the most necessary part of developing the spoken language. I imagine the best thing to do is find such folks online. Or ask on the forum. Edited by ScottScheule on 09 April 2014 at 4:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jondesousa Tetraglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/Zgg3nRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6264 days ago 227 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Mandarin, Spanish | Message 7 of 9 09 April 2014 at 5:18pm | IP Logged |
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I recently found out about a group called the Boston Active Latin group on meetup.com.
In addition to this there are several Circuli Latini throughout the world in major cities. You can check for some using this website: http://www.latinitatis.com/vita/circuli.htm I also am working on making my Latin more active and while talking to myself and thinking in Latin are easy tasks I can do on my own nothing will get me going as surely as speaking with other speakers without having an upfront knowledge of what may be thrown at you. Best of luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| dmaddock1 Senior Member United States Joined 5433 days ago 174 posts - 426 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Esperanto, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 8 of 9 09 April 2014 at 6:18pm | IP Logged |
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Evan from the Latinum project, promotes Schola for active Latin meetups and finding conversation partners. Haven't tried it myself.
As for other resources, Latinum's Adler course is designed to drill oral skills. I also found this Pimsleur-style course recently which is okay, albeit basic. I also bought the Assimil Il Latino senza sforzo which has a colloquial style. I played around with all of these and have come to the conclusion that it is all rather pointless if I'm not going to go out and find a real life conversational partner. So, since my reading proficiency is still not great, I'm focusing my energy there for now. If/when I decide to give spoken fluency a serious attempt, my plan is to work through a book of spoken dialogues thoroughly until I feel I have mastered them then find a conversational partner online. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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