Is Latin fun? (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

Is Latin fun?
Tags: Reasons for study \| Latin
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

44 messages over 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Sem
Tetraglot
Newbie
Italy
Joined 5222 days ago
3 posts - 3 votes
Speaks: Italian, Portuguese*, English, Spanish
Studies: Sanskrit, Pali, Mandarin

Message 41 of 44

26 September 2012 at 4:58am | IP Logged

Quam pulcher est videre Vilas linguam Latinam loquare!
1 person has voted this message useful

Rykketid
Diglot
Groupie
Italy
Joined 4636 days ago
88 posts - 146 votes

Speaks: Italian*, English
Studies: French

Message 42 of 44

26 September 2012 at 9:15pm | IP Logged

Latin is kind of helpful when it comes to study Romance languages especially for
etymology, indeed you get to understand where most words come from, actually Latin
could help you out also with non-Romance languages for the same reason, after all many
European languages (and not only) are more or less influenced by Latin.

But Latin has also many differences from its "sons" (Italian, French, Spanish etc etc),
such as that it has a neuter gender; you may think it's a helpful thing but actually it
is not because it's not as easy as in English, it's more like in German where the
grammatical gender not always coincides with the natural one.

Latin has quite a complex system of declensions as well... Nouns are divided into five
declensions and it's rather difficult to understand what declension a noun belongs to
since there are not precise rules... And each declension has six "cases" (nominative,
genitive, dative, accusative, vocative and ablative) that varies depending on the
gender and on the number (singular or plural).

Another different thing is that the phrase structure is SOV (subject, object, verb).

The verbs, on the other hand, are quite similar to Italian (with some exceptions of
course).

So, honestly I don't really know how much fun Latin could be... Don't expect something
so similar to Italian because even though you'll see that many words are close to it,
there are major differences in grammar and syntax.
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Josquin
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 4647 days ago
2266 posts - 3992 votes

Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish
Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian

Message 43 of 44

26 September 2012 at 10:18pm | IP Logged

You do realise this thread is two years old?

EDIT: By the way.

Sem wrote:

Quam pulchrum est videre Vilam lingua Latina loqui!

Edited by Josquin on 26 September 2012 at 10:30pm
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montmorency
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4631 days ago
2371 posts - 3676 votes

Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

Message 44 of 44

26 September 2012 at 11:14pm | IP Logged

An oldie but a goodie:

Quote:

Caesar ad sum jam forti
Brutus et erat
Caesar sic in omnibus
Brutus sic in at
which "translates" as
Caesar had some jam for tea
Brutus ate a rat
Caesar sick in omnibus
Brutus sick in 'at (hat)
but which actually means
Caesar towards I am already of the strong one
Brutus and was
Caesar thus in everything
Brutus thus in and

Dog Latin

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