To learn a language, where does one begin?
Charts of declensions, lists of deponent verbs, stacks of vocabulary flashcards...
Sound familiar?
For the majority of Latin students in the world, this is not only [non solum] the basis for learning the language, but also [sed etiam] the often insurmountable deterrent.
MEMORIZE THESE PATTERNS! BUT ALSO THESE EXCEPTIONS! YOU CAN DO IT BECAUSE I SURE DID
Thank you, Latin teacher. I can do that. I can memorize. You have inspired me with your passion to approach a challenging language. I recognize that it takes patience and dedication. I recognize that this is a complex system that will take me many, many years to process and explore. Yet...
In my years of studying Latin, I was never discouraged by the hours of memorizing forms (well, perhaps a little), nor by the exceptions to the rules, or the irregular everything [read here: 'duc, dic, fac, fer' is kind of fun to say over and over]. It was something far more simple.
I never understood what it meant to learn a language.
Sure, I could read English. Write English. Process English. But not really understand English. So when it came time to learn Latin, I was faced with not only the seemingly unending wash of case endings and verb forms, but the sneaking sensation (growing into an overwhelming realization) that I had no idea what was going on.
Here is our first conceptual exercise. This is the best analogy I can construct to explain the painful process of learning Latin, so bear with me: It was as if I was introduced to a kitchen for the first time, given a big pile of forks, knives, spoons, and other utensils and asked to sort them. Naive but eager to apply myself I jumped at the opportunity to learn, "Sure! This is a strange exercise, but with practice I can do it!" Yet my mind raced: Why?! WHY AM I SORTING THESE THINGS?! What on earth are they used for? What did they call this thing... a fork? How do I hold it? Why is this useful? And panic began to set in. To make it worse, now people were beginning to talk about sitting down for a "meal". Forcing a smile, I nodded, making the vague connection that these sorted piles would somehow become useful. I was shown blurry pictures of people eating at a dinner table using... a fork?! That's what they do with those things? Oh dear, now I am being taken to a fancy dinner party with Caesar, Ovid and Virgil and told... "Now eat. And don't embarrass yourself."
I know it was largely my own fault for not asking more questions, but at the time, I had no concept of language: verb tenses, antecedents, indirect statements. I was thrown so suddenly into learning foreign words and charts, that I did not even have a basis for which to ask those questions. "Imperfect... is the "was" tense? What does that mean? Uncompleted action? but it happened in the past, so wouldn't it have already been completed? Like it already happened, right? Wait, -bam -bas -bat... slow down." Even the most simple exercises in the most simple cases seemed overwhelming if I attempted to look beyond the straight forward memorization. "Find the subject. I can do that. The subject takes the Nominative case ending. Got it. Wait, what about this one? '-ae' Genitive? Its... possessive? Like, it possesses the other noun? So wouldn't it be the subject? Hold on, '-ae' is... dative? but I thought you said genitive? What makes an object 'indirect'? Ok, sorry, I'll just memorize these and figure it out later..."
Figure it out later. When would I have time to do that? Who was going to answer my questions? And why did I get this sneaking suspicion that learning Latin was not a simple matter of (as everyone would imply) "this word means this, this word means this, now put it together and you can translate Latin!"
Let me go ahead and say it. It doesn't work like that. At all.
My experience in learning the language has lead to creating this blog. It is not to teach you Latin, to help correct your translation, or to miraculously aid in your memorizaiton skills, but to give you a context with which to better learn Latin. Returning to my fork and spoon metaphor, I want to supply you with a conceptual understanding of why we use utensils at meals, the importance of why we don't use a salad fork to eat our soup, and most of all the confidence that when you do sit down at a meal, you know why exactly (with a quiet comfort) you are holding a fork.
Enjoy.
