Language Learning General

Native english speaker here. I tried learning latin by myself over quarantine, but gave up pretty soon. Now I'm learning it in college, and in between semesters I've been keeping myself from falling behind by reading through LLPSI. It's a very useful tool, but I'm doubtful that by itself it would be a good enough tool to teach Latin. It's pretty a grammatically dense language, and without that grammar being better explained I can imagine you might end up with some pretty incorrect assumptions about things.

gingermilk

Depends on what your goal is regarding learning classical languages, I think it is fair to say that a heavy emphasis on grammar is overkill for those who learn these languages for the sole purpose of reading classical texts in their most original state, but maybe necessary for those who want to analyze classical languages from a more linguistic perspective and in this case practicability is not considered as much.

I studied biblical philology at university, so I don't mind the grammar per sé, but I do think it becomes an issue when it's given precedence over reading. And it's not just the grammar by itself, you are also given poor advice like to "start with the predicate" when reading, which turns the sentence into a crossword puzzle. I think that good reading skills are an important foundation for philology. For example, I think most people would be unimpressed by a Proust scholar who couldn't read In Search of Lost Time without having to consult a dictionary and an extensive grammar commentary every couple of words, but this is unfortunately the case with classical and especially biblical philology.

A lot of it just has to do with a declining interest in classics. Historically, Latin and Greek were taught more like living languages, but that's harder to justify today. The grammar-translation approach is also easier to organise a curriculum for and gives superficially quicker results. In my first Greek class we were "reading" the Bible within two months, which looks good on paper and everyone except me and another person were priest candidates who just needed some academic credits in Greek to get ordained, but really we were stumbling over every other word and needed to rely on extensive grammar commentaries to make sense of 1 John, which is supposed to be very simple. Of course, by using this approach they were able to constrain what really should have been a full semester to a half-semester class.

Woland

and without that grammar being better explained I can imagine you might end up with some pretty incorrect assumptions about things.

This is a good point. I also think it can feel a bit tedious at times if you already know what Ohrberg is trying to demonstrate. I think LLPSI mostly works because Latin has had such an enormous influence on European languages. I don't think an LLPSI for Sanskrit or even Greek would work, or at least they would be incredibly tedious to read.

gingermilk

English is native, and I'm working on learning Japanese. There should be no question as to why, honestly.

Oh and I know a little bit of Latin. A very little bit.

English is my native language. But I also speak intermediate spanish.

I talk French, English, and a bit of Spanish.

Is there anyone here currently learning Norwegian ? I moved in Norway more than one year ago but my level is A2 at best. I struggle a bit with motivation, because I am not good enough to have actual conversations and all norwegians speak English anyway, so I don't get to practice very often...

Woland
This is why I switched from latin to finnish. As little sense as that may make.

German, but only enough to read and navigate but not great conversation skills. I used to be much better, but my skills have diminished.

I took 3 years of BING QI LING in high school, but have not kept up with it at all.

I'm monolinguist english however due to years of exposure I have a limited understanding of spanish, not enough to hold a conversation but enough to go to a restaurant and order for myself or how to curse someone out. I also know a bit of written russian though I don't understand any spoken phrases

gingermilk
I don't think they were a complete waste of time, but they definitely had diminishing returns after the first few years. It's good as a kid to be forced to study some grammar to get through the boring parts of learning a new language, they stopped being useful after that, though.
My teachers knew their language decently, but not good enough to correct our pronunciation nor good enough to help us write more naturally.

Lessons consisted of reading some very sterile articles from our textbooks on English/French culture and doing the related exercises, usually answering some questions about the article we had just read. You could answer every question by copy and pasting the right phrase from the article, so they weren't very useful exercises.

I'm native in English and Belizean Creole but can mostly understand Jamaican, too.

Japanese, Serbian and Esperanto have been what I want to learn but getting a job last summer threw off my studies and I haven't gone back since. I'm also learning into Spanish music even though I don't intend to speak it.

Working on Korean, and a little of Indonesian. I feel the same way about Japanese that Remove feels about Spanish.

Remove How did you come to choose Serbian?

Gigachad I became friends with a Serbian and we both like stories and music in other languages. They started learning English by reading webcomics and I want to help them make one in their own language.

Makes me feel a bit inadequate only knowing English-based tongues though...

gingermilk German was helpful enough that even today I can make sense of german posts and comments.

Chinese didn't stick, because I fell out of practice.

I'm fluent in English and arguably better at it than my native Finnish because I was raised by the internet. I often mix the two.

I studied Swedish like everyone else here but still don't understand any of it. Just like everyone else.

I can also read Cyrillic letters and I'd like to learn Russian but я лентяй.