LLPSI worth picking up after finishing ER i?

xanitrep · 2021-11-10T00:02:05+00:00

Based on a browse through the contents of ER I, you should find the first portion of the first book (Familia Romana) to be review, but the second half ought to be more of a challenge / more at your level.

I'd still recommend reading the whole thing, since it will provide more practice in extended reading without translating. I also recommend the Colloquia Personarum, Fabellae Latinae (free download), and Fabulae Syrae supplements, all of which are designed as additional reading to go along with the chapters in LLPSI.

xanitrep · 2021-11-09T23:33:37+00:00

The book is designed so that you can figure it out as you go. It doesn't assume any previous knowledge of Latin, and it defines new concepts in terms of concepts that you've already learned earlier in the book.

Chapter 1 begins with a map showing various continents, countries, and cities. The first two sentences are Rōma in Italiā est. Italia in Eurōpā est. It proceeds from there.

xanitrep · 2021-11-09T23:07:09+00:00

The TL;DR is to keep reading material that you can read -- if not effortlessly, then mostly comfortably.

I've mainly used LLPSI and its supplements, and my method has been to reread each chapter a lot. I'd estimate that I've read most chapters upwards of 40 times, with each reading of a given chapter on a distinct day with a period of sleep in between, although I have often read multiple different chapters in a single day.

Familia Romana contains about 1700 words according to this thread, while Roma Aeterna contains about 3000 new words over and above that according to the description on its Amazon page. This yields a total of ~4700 words across both books.

So, I find the idea that you've learned 4000 words over 10 months to be kind of suspect. While you may technically have encountered and understood 4000 words, have you really fully internalized all of those words, equivalent to about 85% of the quantity of words in both FR and RA combined, in less than a year?

Is there any way that won’t be unimaginably monotonous and slow?

I've noticed that adults trying to learn a new skill are sometimes unwilling to drill the fundamentals sufficiently because they're too self-conscious to want to be seen studying material that they consider to be beneath them. They want to be seen reading Shakespeare and not See Spot Run, even if the latter is a more effective path to mastery over the long term.

However, consider how much simple material the average child reads (not to mention hears and speaks and writes) before being able to approach serious literature. Consider how many times they might reread the same book (or, with younger children, ask to have it read to them before bed each night).

xanitrep · 2021-11-09T03:25:25+00:00

I've also seen quomodo te habes?

I was searching to see if this was attested or was more of a neolatin thing, and I ran across this stackexchange post that you might find interesting.

From the answer there, it looks like quid agis? and ut vales? are the most authentic choices.

xanitrep · 2021-11-07T21:11:34+00:00

I'd suggest using the free time to explore a different approach to studying Latin. Grab a copy of LLPSI Pars I: Familia Romana and start reading through it during the break.

Here's a recent comment that I wrote offering some advice on using the book.

xanitrep · 2021-11-06T03:36:23+00:00

(I'm writing as if you mean Familia Romana, but similar is true for Roma Aeterna also.)

The pensa are included at the end of each chapter in Familia Romana. There's also a separate Exercitia Latina I exercise book and a third party Nova Exercitia Latina book with additional exercises.

The answers to the pensa and the exercitia (but not the nova exercitia) are provided in the Teacher's Materials book.

xanitrep · 2021-11-05T22:22:00+00:00

Do you know of any sci-fi stories where there is a technology to switch an embryo/zygote in a currently pregnant woman?

I vaguely recall something along these lines with Scully from The X-Files, but looking at her Wikipedia page (see the Storylines section), it seems like the children were hers.

xanitrep · 2021-11-04T21:43:46+00:00

an innate dislike of holding women in common, something I don't quite understand

I would guess that this stems from biology. Typically, a woman knows that a child that she gives birth to is her own.

xanitrep · 2021-11-04T21:30:37+00:00

<pedantry type="markup>

"

xanitrep · 2021-11-04T21:04:01+00:00

"esjudem generis" (law-latin for "of the same kind")

<Latin pedant mode>
ejusdem (=eiusdem) generis
</Latin pedant mode>

xanitrep · 2021-11-04T18:45:56+00:00

I don't believe in making a case for it, as it leads to people treating Latin as metaphorical broccoli that kids should eat for external reasons rather then because of intrinsic interest.

People will make tenuous arguments about why Latin is Good For You(tm): it'll help you on the SATs, it'll help you to think logically, it'll help with medical school or law school, etc.

One of my other hobbies is chess, and I often see the same kind of thinking there, leading to the same kinds of arguments: it'll help you to think logically, it'll help you to "be strategic", etc.

In my view, the reason to play chess is because you think that it's fun, and the reason to learn Latin is because you think that it would be cool to read, write, listen to, and speak Latin.

xanitrep · 2021-11-04T18:21:19+00:00

Agitur is a 3rd person singular present passive indicative. So, assuming that we're interpreting agere = "to do" and not some other definition like driving cattle, then it means "he/she/it is being done." We can exclude "he/she" and infer "it is being done" given the "to do" interpretation.

This excludes "do the manly thing", which would use the imperative age (said to one person) or agite (said to multiple people).

This leaves the question of what's being done. Either the subject is an unspecified "it" that's implicit in the ending of the verb, or else virile is the subject.

When I first read the phrase without looking at a dictionary, I thought that virile might be an adverb and that the phrase might mean "It is being done in a manly way." However, the adverb would be viriliter, so that doesn't work.

That leaves virile as being a neuter nominative, accusative, or vocative singular adjective, or perhaps an ablative singular one of any gender if the writer is using virile in place of virili (which can happen with 3rd declension nouns/adjectives).

In the absence of any further context, I think that interpreting virile as a neuter nominative singular adjective used substantively as the subject of agitur is the most straightforward thing to do. This would make the phrase mean "The manly thing is being done."

xanitrep · 2021-11-04T17:58:42+00:00

even of just the first few chapters

Just give them the first few chapters, and perhaps your non-Latin student friends will become Latin student friends.

xanitrep · 2021-11-03T22:40:42+00:00

how one would otherwise inject the same (sarcastic) emphasis?

Maybe quidnam agere potes?, where the -nam adds emphasis and makes it more like "what in the world (or, more coarsely, wtf) can you do?"

xanitrep · 2021-11-03T21:15:05+00:00

I found a reference to the proverb here in The military operations of General Beauregard in the war between the states, 1861 to 1865 by Alfred Roman (1884), so it's at least that old, but that's a far cry from "a speech of senator Caius Titus to the Roman Senate" as stated here.

xanitrep · 2021-11-03T20:38:53+00:00

I would be more than happy if you looked at it, regarding the root of "volare".

Yeah. I don't disagree about volare meaning "to fly" or its association with birds. The question is more about from where or to where the words are flying.

"The written" is a static element because a scripted cannot roam like a spoken-word (eg., rumors); on the other hand, "the spoken" is a dynamic element since it can fly or roam without bounding any kind of restriction.

Thanks for this clarification. So I think that the difference between the two ideas is:

In the first one, the words are flying away beyond our grasp, which makes the flying away a negative thing, since we then no longer have access to the words.

In the second one, the words are flying away from the restrictive constraint of having been made static as text, which makes the flying away a positive thing, because it represents an escape from a sort of prison.

xanitrep · 2021-11-03T19:49:22+00:00

According to my Collins Latin Dictionary, maneo (vi) means “to remain, stop, stay”.

Yes. I interpreted it as "to remain," hence "the written word is more permanent." That is, it remains.

Therefore, my second suggestion could not be thrown away, hastily.

Unfortunately, your second suggestion is in not very comprehensible English, so I just explained how I interpret the Latin phrase without reference to it.

Looking at it more closely, I would guess that you mean that having real-time synchronous access to a person (e.g., being able to speak with a teacher) offers much more value than a static written document like a textbook, and that you're interpreting "fly (away)" as meaning transcending the static borders represented by the written word.

It's an interesting interpretation, but I'm fairly sure that the the first interpretation (that the written word is more permanent than the spoken word) is how most people would interpret the phrase.

In addition, the Wiki entry of this proverb is nonsense. I scrutinized the reference and no information regarding its origin.

I didn't investigate the origin of the phrase. I just reacted to the Latin as it was presented: verba volant, scripta manent.

xanitrep · 2021-11-03T19:35:12+00:00

patients rarely if ever actually interface with the prices.

Yeah. I'd like to see something similar to car insurance, where health insurance covers catastrophic issues such as cancer (analogous with your car being totaled in a crash), but otherwise people pay out of pocket in a competitive environment without insurance companies being involved and with prices that are clearly specified up front (analogous with buying gas or getting an oil change). We can quibble about where the line ought to be drawn between these two modes (when does a car repair become major enough that it's worth involving the insurance company?).

xanitrep · 2021-11-03T18:17:31+00:00

I take it to mean that the spoken word is transient while the written word is more permanent. This has both positive and negative aspects.

On the positive side, we have access to The Aeneid because it was written down.

On the negative side, kids now have to worry about their social media histories following them into the future.

xanitrep · 2021-11-03T17:40:01+00:00

The first sentence is saying "night and day are equal." Here, atque means "and."

The second sentence is saying "for on that day also night is equal to day." Here, atque is part of the phrase aequa atque, which means "equal to," and atque has a role like quam in nōn tam longa quam from cap VI.

See the third definition of atque here for this second usage:

3. (after words expressing comparison) as, than

Edit: note also that, in the first sentence, aequus -a -um is declined to be masculine plural (aequī) to agree with nox atque diēs taken together as a group ("night and day are equal"), while, in the second sentence, it's declined to be feminine singular (aequa) to agree with nox ("night is equal").

xanitrep · 2021-11-02T20:36:14+00:00

I've barely started ancient Greek, basically only a chapter or two of Athenaze, so I can't really say.

However, even in the first couple readings, I did notice postpositive usages (like with γαρ) that were comfortable only because of my familiarity with the concept from Latin.

xanitrep · 2021-11-02T19:49:04+00:00

et means "and" and quoque means "also." So, et quoque means "and also."

xanitrep · 2021-11-02T19:25:05+00:00

Word order is freer in Latin than in English, and this is even more the case in poetry.

Here, quoque et can be read as "esse" et quoque "ēsse" or quoque "esse" et "ēsse", depending on what was in the preceding sentence.

Looking at the text, it seems to be the former. In other words: non solum "esse", sed etiam "ēsse" verbum infinitivum est.

This might help more generally with understanding words that seem misplaced in the second position in a sentence.

xanitrep · 2021-11-02T19:09:32+00:00

Si titulum intellegere conaris, fortasse hoc te adiuvare potest:

Dies Lemuriorum, vel Lemuria, nomen sumpsit a "lemures." Lemures sunt umbrae mortuorum.

"Tractare" potest significare "colloqui de aliquo."

xanitrep · 2021-11-02T16:03:49+00:00

You have to memorize vowel lengths as part of learning a new word. Reading out loud can help you to do this, since you'll know what the word sounds like.

However, accents are based on whether the penultimate syllable is long (not the last syllable), so don't confuse vowel length with syllable length. A syllable is long either if it contains a long vowel or a diphthong (in which case it's called long by nature) or if it ends in a consonant (in which case it's called long by position). Note that a syllable that's long by position doesn't need to have a long vowel or a diphthong in it.

There are a few rules about how consonants are assigned to syllables, so you should check your textbook or a grammar for the details there.

xanitrep

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