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Comparative Difficulty of Latin | ||
Tags: Latin | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Rhesus Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4772 days ago 6 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin | Message 1 of 13 07 November 2011 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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I began studying Latin this semester, and though it has been challenging at times, I have greatly enjoyed it. And
after reading posts from this forum and other articles, I have been encouraged to study other languages. I'm curious as to what I'm in for. As I mentioned, studying Latin has been very enjoyable, but far from easy, so I'm wondering how I will be greeted by other languages. If you have studied Latin and could rank its difficulty from one to five, what would you give it? What would you rank other languages? I'm familiar with the topic of comparative difficulty (http://how-to-learn-any- language.com/e/languages/index.html), but I'd like a second opinion. &nbs p; Edited by Rhesus on 07 November 2011 at 4:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| H.Computatralis Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6304 days ago 130 posts - 210 votes  Speaks: Polish*, French, English Studies: German, Spanish, Latin | Message 2 of 13 07 November 2011 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Basically, it depends on which languages you already speak. IMHO, there are no objectively easier or harder languages and all difficulty is relative. If you speak just English then relative to other Indo-European languages Latin can be considered fairly difficult. I'd say more difficult than Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, etc) and Germanic languages (German, Danish, Dutch, etc) but less difficult than the Slavic languages (Polish, Russian, Czech, etc). However, if you go outside the IE languages to something like Mandarin or Arabic then I'd say it's WAY harder than puny Latin.
You might be interested in this link where various languages are compared from the perspective of an English speaker. Edited by H.Computatralis on 07 November 2011 at 7:39pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 3 of 13 08 November 2011 at 9:46am | IP Logged | ||
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It is difficult to compare latin with living languages. Because we do not need to read
complex texts in living languages. And if learn latin as a living language, it is only approximately latin. 1 person has 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 13 08 November 2011 at 11:18am | IP Logged | ||
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Your native language is English, and you study German AND Latin. That's a good point of depart for this discussion.
German also has a fair amount of morphology, and although the amount is larger in Latin it is in most cases things you find in both languages, but not to a large extent in English - such as a widespread use of the subjunctive, a dative form and diferent cases after different prepositions. So if you can learn German then Latin should not be much worse. As for the syntax, word order is said to be freer in Latin and you can certainly meet strange things in classical poetry, but the biggest obstacle here is that the old authors simply use more complicated and longwinded sentence constructions. Maybe German also has a slight tendency in that direction, but if you really should compare German and Latin then you have to read comparable texts, and then you would have to read things like Heidegger or Hegel or juridical texts to find something as opaque as the texts that are presented to intermediate learnes of Latin. The number of Latin words in English is roughly equal to the number of recognizable Germanic words - at least equal enough for this discussion. So in terms of shared vocabulary Latin should not be more difficult than German. But unless you use other sources the choice of words may be a problem - you might learn a lot of words for antique warfare, but preciously few words that describe the things you can find in your own home. There are ways to overcome this, but teachers and textbooks may not prioritize this aspect. The biggest problem in my view is that Latin is very different from both English and German in the way it defines its semantical units, or in other words: it is idiomatically very different from English and German - you often have to think in other cathegories even about fairly mundane subjects. For instance the Notre Dame online dictionary have these translations of "teacher" (my comments in italic writing) doctor -oris m. [a teacher]. (would inevitably be misunderstood today!) grammatista -ae m. [a teacher of grammar or languages]. (very limited) magister -tri m. [master , chief, head, director]; 'populi', [dictator]; 'equitum', [master of the horse, the dictator's lieutenant]; 'magister ludi', [a schoolmaster, teacher]; 'societatis', [director of a company]; 'elephanti', [driver]; 'navis', [master or helmsman]. Transf., [instigator, adviser, guide]. (different meaning now, but apparently also a far wider meaning in Rome) phonascus -i m. [a teacher of music]. (very limited field) praeceptor -oris m. [a teacher , instructor]. (probably your best bet) praeceptrix -tricis f. [a teacher , instructor]. (and this one if your teacher is female) rhetor -oris m. [a teacher of rhetoric , a rhetoritician]. (limited and extinct meaning - now you study marketing instead) rhetoricus -a -um [rhetorical]; subst. f. rhetorica -ae and rhetorice -es , [the art of oratory]; m. pl. rhetorici -orum, [teachers of rhetoric]; adv. rhetorice, [rhetorically]. (idem) scholasticus -a -um [of a school; esp. rhetorical]; m. as subst. [a student or teacher of rhetoric]. (idem) End of quote. As you see, the art of rhetorics was very central to the notion of teacher in the olden times, and most of the other terms have become highly academical .. simply because the idea of a country with millions of plain teachers teaching the children of ordinary people wasn't part of Roman culture. Wealthy folks employed a person which isn't even on the list above, namely a tutor ('huslærer' in Danish, 'Hauslehrer' in German). LatDictg says this about tutors: educator -oris m. [one who brings up; a foster-father or tutor]. nutricius -i m. [a tutor , guardian]. papas -ae and -atis m. [a tutor]. End of quote. As you see, the explanations don't even mention your typical school subjects, but refer to something that falls under the scope of 'general education'. the English word 'tutor' actually means someone who protects rather than teaches you. So this long rant shows that you can't take anything for granted when you discuss the meanings of Latin words or expressions - the world has simply changed a lot the last two thousand years (or thousand years if you specifically go for medieval church Latin), and the German society is much more like your own in the States than the one known to Petronius. Edited by Iversen on 08 November 2011 at 12:33pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5403 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 5 of 13 14 November 2011 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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I always found Latin to be one of the easiest languages on Earth. Maybe because I'm a
native speaker of two Slavic languages. For instance, the cases in Latin cause no problem for me. I just use them in my head the same way I use cases in my native language. So that is a big advantage. The verbal system is a bit more tricky. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 6 of 13 14 November 2011 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | ||
Really? But functions of cases are rather different. Besides them there are a lot of verb forms. The use of conjunctive is not always clear. Latin syntax is very complex, and, as usual, vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5403 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 7 of 13 14 November 2011 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe the functions are different when compared to Russian. Since my native language is
Slovak, and Slovaks and Czechs being Catholics who used Latin and tried to model their own grammars to be more like Latin. Except Ablative, all other cases of Latin fit the Slovak cases almost perfectly. Syntax even more. If I remember correctly our Slovak teacher in high school did mention something about the first Slovak grammarians and linguists trying to mimic Latin syntax in order to distinguish the literary or high Slovak language from the one of the commoners. Same thing with Czech, and possibly even Polish, not sure. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rhesus Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4772 days ago 6 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin | Message 8 of 13 16 November 2011 at 10:19pm | IP Logged | ||
I did find that link useful. What category would you place Latin in? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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