/clg/ Classical Languages General

Just got an Old Bulgarian dictionary, it's pretty cool, two volumes with ~2400 pages.

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I'm on 17, but I'm also doing the workbook, reading two of the supplementary story booklets, and generally read the main story text of each chapter twice. It's slow going but I think it's getting it into my brain more than it would if I just breezed through only the main textbook. I will likely do Wheelock after I'm done in order to get a stronger grasp of the grammar. I wish I could get good quickly but I understand how the process works.

>oh I'm sorry, you thought this adjective having perfectly normal -ος and -ον masculine and neuter endings also has a normal -ᾱ feminine ending?
>too bad, feminine = masculine, get fucked, you need to remember which ones are three way and which aren't, cope

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Long shot, but I'm a Latin/Greek student interested mainly in pastoral poetry. Does anyone have experience (Hebrew or not) with the pastoral content of the Bible, or perhaps other near-eastern literature? Do you see parallels or even influences?

Whatever works for you! I think it would still help to read after Wheelock to reinforce core vocab.

One month is pretty fast. I would like to ask:

1. Are you a native English speaker?
2. Do you speak a Romance language?
3. Do you speak another inflected language like Russian, German, Japanese etc...?

I haven't given the LLPSI and its Greek equivalent anything more than a glance. My experience with fake Latin novels and using the LLPSI as a supplement is non-existent. However, people in this general and irl have told me not to bother with them at the end of last semester. Now, approaching the end of this semester with excellent grades, there is absolutely no reason for me to read fake Latin or Greek, since I can read the real stuff just fine. It's only a matter of reading more of it. I will admit that such books may have been useful to me in the past to keep in-shape and improve a little during breaks.

Experiencedbros, what how do you go from reading this
>Epaphroditus, a Paride atque Domitia elusus, eos ulcisci vehementissime cupiebat. Imperator quoque, ira et suspicione commotus, Epaphroditum saepe hortabatur ut Paridem Domitiamque puniret. Epaphrodito tamen difficile erat Domitiam, uxorem Imperatoris, et Paridem, pantomimum notissimum, aperte accusare. auxilium igitur ab amico Salvio petivit. Epaphroditus 'non modo ego,' inquit, 'sed etiam Imperator Paridem Domitiamque punire cupit. si me in hac re adiuveris, magnum praemium tibi dabitur.' Salvius, re paulisper cogitata, tranquille respondit: 'confide mihi, amice; ego tibi rem totam administrabo. insidiae parabuntur; Domitia et Paris in insidias elicientur; abo capientur et punientur.' 'quid Domitiae accidet?' rogavit Epaphroditus. 'Domitia accusabitur; damnabitur; fortasse relegabitur.' 'et Paris' Salvius risit. 'emovebitur.'
to this
>Nōn dubitō fore plērōsque, Attice, quī hoc genus scrīptūrae leve et nōn satis dīgnum summōrum virōrum persōnīs iūdicent, cum relātum legent, quis mūsicam docuerit Epamīnōndam, aut in ēius virtūtibus commemorārī saltāsse eum commodē scienterque tībiīs cantāsse. (2) Sed hī erunt ferē, quī expertēs litterārum Graecārum nihil rēctum, nisi quod ipsōrum mōribus conveniat, putābunt. (3) Hī sī didicerint nōn eadem omnibus esse honesta atque turpia, sed omnia maiōrum īnstitūtīs iūdicārī, nōn admīrābuntur nōs in Grāiōrum virtūtibus expōnendīs mōrēs eōrum secūtōs. (4) Neque enim Cīmōnī fuit turpe, Athēniēnsium summō virō, sorōrem germānam habēre in mātrimōniō, quippe cum cīvēs ēius eōdem ūterentur īnstitūtō. At id quidem nostrīs mōribus nefās habētur. Laudī in Crētā dūcitur adulēscentulīs quam plūrimōs habuisse amātōrēs. Nūlla Lacedaemonī vidua tam est nōbilis, quae nōn ad cēnam eat mercēde conducta.
which is supposed to be the easiest beginner Latin of all time

What does it feel like to go from the basic stuff to the real stuff. I feel like the jump between the two doesn't make sense, there are so many things in the second text where I am completely lost.

>I can read the real stuff just fine.
Do you have to constantly stop and check a dictionary? If not, how did you gain a large enough vocab? I'm a Wheelock user too, but it doesn't even teach 1,000 words.

Thoughts on the Thebaid?

Large vocab comes from reading. Your brain associates words with context very well. At first, reading authentic Latin will involve lots of dictionary use, but the more you read, the less necessary this is.

Okay, but this is why people use LLPSI because it teaches the 2,000 most common words which are essential in any language learning. You can read somewhere between 80-95% of all words that appear in texts by learning them.

You haven't finished LLPSI and cannot read Latin

An exercise for /clg/
This is the entirety of the infamous Catullus 16. It would get posted here eventually so why not now. Post your translations and see how they compare with others.

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Good read. More difficult than Virgil, not as prodigious but still a great work in its own right. Statius' language borders on purple at times.
The Aeneid should be read first.

XXXVII
Im on Roma Aeterna right now. Extremely Kino

can you be more specific? do you sit down and then write it down 100 times or do you write it down 100 times on different days? if it's the former how many times do you do that?

You see, the LLPSI doesn't teach 2,000 words. This is because the LLPSI is not a teaching instrument. People who read the LLPSI will not learn how to read Latin.

on 13 right now
I haven't done any of my latin for over a week now and it's getting to me

I didn't asked about Wheelock.

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I will buttfuck and mouthfuck you,
Aurelius faggot and faggot Furius,
who, from my little verses, thought I wasn't very bashful,
for those are tender.
In fact, being chaste suits the pious poet himself,
it's not necessary for his verses;
which then finally are edgy and salty,
if they are tender and not very bashful,
and can incite, because they're exiting,
I'm not saying boys, but these hairy satyrs,
who can't even move their rigid backs.
You, who've read several thousands of kisses,
considered I was a bad male?
I will buttfuck and mouthfuck you.

There's something I don't understand. Catullus seems angry because he's accused of being indecent because his verses are "molliculi". But then he threatens to rape those two guys. Is it irony or was corrective rape considered "decent"? Maybe are two different forms of indecency?: he will transmute the indecency of being "mollis" into the indecency of being a raper?

He's shittalking his friends, just a bit of banter

you losers out here still arguing about a textbook while this lil nigga is perfecting his greek and latin
youtube.com/watch?v=F2mMnx7q21Y

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honest questions:
how many great greeks works there are?
they are more greeks or roman ones?
which language is harder to learn, greek or roman?
which of them gives you more satisfaction?

Catullus is being called a man-whore because of the previous poem with the thousand kisses. This is what fires him up. His argument is that, while it is good for the poet himself to be chaste, his poems should be vulgar. Therefore he drives the crudeness up to eleven to be consistent with his argument and hyperbolize.

I said large vocab, not common vocab. All Latin textbooks teach you the one or two thousand most common words, rightly so. In a limited amount of space you pick the ones that are most important. But literacy requires you learn many more than that. If you see words like "erus" or "mancipium," which appear only rarely, the easiest way to remember them is context in a sentence. I did anki for all the words in Wheelock but found that it was far easier to remember vocab from Lucretius and Plautus through just reading.

>how many great greeks works there are?
enough that you'll not be able to read all of them in your lifetime (in greek), and that goes only for the ones that have survived
>they are more greeks or roman ones?
yes, greek had a 500 year head start and their literary tradition shined through the ages of the roman empire. also some romans preferred to write in greek as well.
>which language is harder to learn, greek or roman?
people say that the learning curve at the beginning is steeper for greek but it evens out later. however given all the superior learning materials that latin has i'd say that even later in your studies greek offers a greater challenge.
>which of them gives you more satisfaction?
greek, but only because i find the authors more worthwhile. i do think that latin is still the more elegant and beautiful language.

okay thank you for your answer, i'll be learning greek so. But, how it is come that
>enough that you'll not be able to read all of them in your lifetime
? I mean sure there are a lot of greek works but are there that much of quality ones?

>are there that much of quality ones
depends what you are into i guess but let's say you're interested in philosophy so you bang your head against Plato for who knows how long, then read every major work from Aristotle, then to move to Plotinus, then Iamblichus and then to Proclus. we're talking about decades of work and that's just the most famous neo-platonists. there are plenty of gems when you dive deeper. what's good to remember is that the texts that we have today are copies of copies of copies of copies so you have to ask yourself: would someone put so much effort into preserving a mediocre work?

that makes sense thanks

Why do you guys like fuckin gay people so much?

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>would someone put so much effort into preserving a mediocre work?
Diogenes Laertius's book has survived

>would someone put so much effort into preserving a mediocre work?
pretty good observation, i hadn't thought of that.
You have convinced me, i'll learn greek. Can you give me some resources? I can search them but if you know which are the better ones i would appreciate if you share them.

Another question: is it the modern greek the same language as the ancient one? I know it is different but how different? as different as old english and modern english? more? that could be the case since it has passed so many years

Anti-feminism and appreciation of traditional culture.

>Can you give me some resources?
The Italian Athenaze is the best textbook i have seen, however I didn't use it myself to learn Greek but a much inferior book that i wouldn't recommend.
>I can search them
That's good and you should look for as many different resources as possible. Textkit, the forum for classical languages regularly discusses and compares the best materials and methods for learning.
>is it the modern greek the same language as the ancient one...
Don't have much experience with modern Greek, apparently the differences are about as big as with old English, as you said.

thank you so much, i'll be around here in some time

Here's the complete Loebs classical Green is Greek, red is Latin, there's more in Greek but this isn't a perfect comparison necessarily, but gives you a rough idea. Latin has much larger corpus in the Renaissance if you're into that

Greek is harder I'm told but I don't know why as I don't know Latin.

Personally I'm interested in Greek history, Greek philosophy, and Greek thought, so i chose to learn Greek, choose something that interests you and commit 100% that's all there is to it.

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I can read both Latin and Greek more or less "fluently" and I feel that they are both about the same level of difficulty. The reason Greek feels harder is that more of the words are unfamiliar, but grammatically speaking, I think Greek is actually somewhat easier. The verb system is Greek is a bit more elaborate (and therefore often less ambiguous) and the noun system has articles and an easier case system, so I found that Greek, if anything, becomes easier after the initial hump (maybe 1 year of dedicated study in).

Literary Latin, especially poetry, is imo quite a bit harder than literary Greek (prose and poetry).

Does knowing one in depth make the other easier to learn in your opinion? (if you didn't learn them at the same time)
It seems both have some grammatical similarities, so maybe learning one first can make thing easier, like learning a romance language is easier if you already know one.

>but gives you a rough idea
it does, ty

>choose something that interests
i'm interested in both probably because i don't know much about both of them. I know about greek philosophy: tales, anaxminenes, anaximander, plato, aristotle, socrates, pitagoras, gorgias, heraclitus, etc. About roman/latin i know some roman empire history, some christian philosophy (pe aquinas) and seneca (one of my favourites philosophers of all time).

>commit 100%
you can be sure i'll do it. Starting today studying greek because obviously im not reading translations

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq5ea-jR9u2puDaLoRL-nBkpwrkURbLjT

I used this video series but I didn't follow Hansen and Quinn like they did. I used pic related, which I would recommend as it forces you to drill tones, 1st and 2nd declension, and active and middle voice within the first couple chapters. It was a big learning curve at first but it pays off as it gets a big chunk of memorization done with right away. I also liked how things were organized and the fact it made you do challenging readings right away.

Forgot pic

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>youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq5ea-jR9u2puDaLoRL-nBkpwrkURbLjT
wow 114 videos, thank you

>I used pic related
ok i'll use that an intro to ancient greek, The Italian Athenaze (which this user recommended) and Hansen and Quinn, better 3 sources than one :)

>Forgot pic
np

Their grammatical systems work essentially in the same way, so yes, knowing one provides a massive leg up on learning the other. Consider that these languages only split from one another maybe 2000 years before they are first attested, so while they definitely differ from one another, you can see the same underlying structure in each one and there are many obvious cognates.

what's a typical series of increasingly difficult texts students of Greek go through in their learning process?
e.g for Latin it's maybe something like Caesar/Nepos/Phaedus -> Cicero/Virgil/Sallust -> Tacitus, etc..., with maybe medievals or ecclesiastical texts here and there in their varying difficulty

Interesting, thanks

im interested in that, too

reciting this with my friend on trumpet at my college's open mic night soon. will post results once I do if anyone is interested

Xenophon / New Testament / Herodotus are generally considered on the " easy end", Thucydides one of the hardest prose writers

Here's a post on the topic
textkit.com/greek-latin-forum/viewtopic.php?t=62690#:~:text=Plato reads somewhat more easily,level found him very difficult.

I'm feeling burnt out, /clg/. I'm tired and I can't make myself care about Latin anymore. After a few lines, I can't help but wonder why I even bother. Nothing interests me now, prose or poetry, long or short.

Do I take a break? Push through? Finally start on Greek instead? What was the last piece you read that you were really excited about?