Defining fluent might open up a can of worms here but by fluent I mean the ability to write and read in a way that isn't horrendously slow. Spoken Latin may also be added in here.
People on this forum seem to be able to write in Latin very well and be understood and reply to it. Yet when someone posts a translation request it often leads to pages of debate as to the best way of doing it, or even simply the correct way. How can those two situations be?
Regarding speaking, on various YouTube channels there would appear to be people speaking Latin, off the cuff, with ease. How is this? I can understand a fair amount of it but what is it? Modern Latin? Much of what I hear sounds like a whole bunch of memorised phrases with some conjunctions thrown in. I'm not convinced.
Finally regarding reading. I find that for a lot of stuff I read I can understand without issue for large chunks but invariably and all too frequently get bogged down. The amount of time I've put into studying seems phenomenal to me (2-3 hours a day for 4 years) and I still have no clue. How much time are the really good Latinists putting into this?
LLPSI is recommended all over the place, in some places with a passion bordering on the religious. I read a few of them and they are all, well meh They are not going to make me fluent in reading nor do I think I'm better at reading for using them. Not to say they aren't good but they ain't as good as the marketing men would have us believe.
Is 'the natural method' all its cracked up to be? Extensive reading, easy stuff that can be read without issue, also seems to be the recommended thing. I have collected as much 'easy' stuff as I could find, read it multiple times to try and get some kind of fluency, this did not work, I now understood easy Latin fairly well. That's all that seemed to achieve.
Sorry for the wall of text and all the questions.
People on this forum seem to be able to write in Latin very well and be understood and reply to it. Yet when someone posts a translation request it often leads to pages of debate as to the best way of doing it, or even simply the correct way. How can those two situations be?
Regarding speaking, on various YouTube channels there would appear to be people speaking Latin, off the cuff, with ease. How is this? I can understand a fair amount of it but what is it? Modern Latin? Much of what I hear sounds like a whole bunch of memorised phrases with some conjunctions thrown in. I'm not convinced.
Finally regarding reading. I find that for a lot of stuff I read I can understand without issue for large chunks but invariably and all too frequently get bogged down. The amount of time I've put into studying seems phenomenal to me (2-3 hours a day for 4 years) and I still have no clue. How much time are the really good Latinists putting into this?
LLPSI is recommended all over the place, in some places with a passion bordering on the religious. I read a few of them and they are all, well meh They are not going to make me fluent in reading nor do I think I'm better at reading for using them. Not to say they aren't good but they ain't as good as the marketing men would have us believe.
Is 'the natural method' all its cracked up to be? Extensive reading, easy stuff that can be read without issue, also seems to be the recommended thing. I have collected as much 'easy' stuff as I could find, read it multiple times to try and get some kind of fluency, this did not work, I now understood easy Latin fairly well. That's all that seemed to achieve.
Sorry for the wall of text and all the questions.
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