Welcome. If you have an interest in Classical Latin and try to learn it , you might find this website helpful. This ancient language is the language of science, art, literature as well as some religious ceremonies. It's also the father of romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan). It is interesting how Latin became a dead language. Even though it is a dead language, we have many words which have Latin roots in many European Languages. For this reason, learning Latin vocabulary can be easy for some people. On the other hand, learning a foreign language might come with some difficulties and little problems. As a speaker of different languages, I know difficult parts of learning a new language. Therefore, I will try to approach this matter from different aspects and simplify complexity of grammar. I am still an active learner of Latin. It's difficult to find an environment to speak Latin in our daily lives. Moreover, there is no country which Latin is spoken as an official language. Fortunately, internet is helpful to reach enormous information about any subject. I find it useful to share my Latin knowledge with you, keep my knowledge fresh and keep learning Latin with this discipline. I write Latin texts by myself. Since I am not a native speaker of Latin like everyone, I might make little mistakes. If you see any wrong, misspelled part in reading text, please let me know. I would appreciate it. You can simply bookmark this page and follow me. If you have any suggestion, you can send an email, or can leave a comment on my posts.
About Latin
Latin language is an italic language which is a branch of indo-european languages. It was spread through Italian peninsula by the extending roman control over the land. While Roman Empire was extending its borders from North Africa, to Central Europe, from East and West Europe to Asia Minor, Latin became one of the most spoken language in ancient world. If we include Eastern Roman Empire after the fall of Western Empire, Latin was officially spoken about 2000 years. It was spoken with different dialects from place to place. As we know, every language changes within time. After fall of the Roman Empire, linguistic differences increased among the people who was speaking Latin. With barbarian invasion of Europe, different group of people carried their languages to Latin spoken lands. This led Latin to change from place to place in Europe. This events created Romance Languages(mainly Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian, and Catalan). But it doesn't mean these languages became 100% different from each other. Quite the opposite, Romance Languages have so many same vocabularies, roots and grammatical similarities. 60% to 80% of their vocabularies came from Latin. Even English language which is considered as a Germanic language is consist of approximately 60% to 70% Latin vocabularies(including the words from French). As we know, even as a death language, Latin has a great influence on our languages today.
Why Learning Latin?
As I mentioned influence of Latin on European languages, it is right to say that Latin is a key language. There are many benefits of having some Latin knowledge. Major ones are:
- Firstly, Latin is a beautiful language. It is ancient and unique. Why not learning this beautiful language, if you are interested in it.
- Latin helps you to learn other European languages. Especially romance ones. With Latin knowledge, people increase their success in learning other languages.
- Latin increase your English vocabulary knowledge dramatically! English has lots of words, and we use only a little part of them. Knowing Latin will give you a special knowledge of Latin roots of English words. You will be able to communicate better by learning Latin.
- There are too many Latin terms in biology, laws, history...etc. Knowing Latin will bring you a better understanding and use of those terms.
How to learn a new language?
Some people might think that learning a new language is almost impossible for them. This is probably because of their bad experiences with learning a foreign language somewhere in the past. Skill can be a little bit important to learn a language. However, if you speak a language, you can always speak another one. Your learning speed might vary, but at the end, you will have another language to communicate in. Now, I am giving you the golden rules of learning a language.
- Passion: It is the most important thing, not only for learning a language, but for almost every new beginning.
- Communicating: Well, why there are languages? Of course, for communication. If you don't use a language to communicate, there is no point in learning it. It is not important knowing, or studying grammar. If you don't use the language that you learn to communicate, to read, to listen or to write, you will most likely to forget most of the things that you've learned about it. Internet can be a unique place to communicate. You can also read, listen or write in a given language to improve it.
- Learning vocabulary: It is the most important part of learning a language in my opinion. Without vocabulary, you cannot use grammar to express yourself. Imagine little kids. Firstly they learn vocabularies. They don't even study grammatical rules. They just try to communicate. And, they become a fluent speaker of their language by trying and combining the words which they' learned. Just like a little kid, you should give more emphasis to vocabulary and communicating rather than grammar.
- Patience: There can be hard times when you learn a language. You might have some difficulties with learning some parts of it. Never give up! Take your time. Also practice. Practice makes perfect ;)
