I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as English, is in fact, Latin/English, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, Latin plus English. English is not a language unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning Latin system made useful by the Latin alphabet, roots and vital lingual components comprising a full language as defined by Luke Smith.
@Hans-Hermann Hoppe You have a point, given that Greek and Lisp predate Latin and C respectively. And Greek is certainly more fluid and less rigid than Latin. On the other hand, what about the ML family for Latin? Standard ML, OCaml, etc.are classical Latin and Haskell is medieval or Church Latin.
So it's been a while and no one has called me out on my grammatical error. At this point, I am going to claim it was deliberate to see if it would elicit some criticism rather than make the excuse that it has been over 40 years since my last High School Latin course. That is true enough, but still, I really shoulda caught it before I hit . The correct syntax is "Carpe cersiam!"
As a non-native speaker, English has some elegant parts to it, particularly the many ways you can navigate in time, but it's definitely bloated dialect-wise, synonym-wise and has the most retarded orthography hands down.
@@user-hufgfdsddssdfdsdsdsdd2 We have a global lingua franca that has the (probably) unique feature of absolutely no consistency in the way the words are pronounced and the writing system not helping that at all. I don't have the autism to love or hate a language but comparing them and talking a out pros and cons is fun.
Aa an Indian, I learnt sanskrit on my own a while ago. Amazing language. It has descendant languages everywhere in the indian subcontinent. I can pretty much understand 15~18 indian languages because of it. What kinda shocks me is how methodical sanskrit was. It's surprisingly modular. I mean it in a sense of clarity of thought, there is no room for ambiguity in it from the beginning. It's almost like coding/programming.
Jonas this is true. I study a lot of subjects tho to the point that it consumes my life and have to remind myself that there's more to life than just learnings things.
Being Italian, I've been taught Latin in high school. I haven't used it in years and it would take me a few days of practice to start translating Latin effortlessly once again, but I can tell for sure that studying Latin wasn't just about learning the language itself, it's been incredibly useful because its structure makes so much sense... it's useful for developing logical thinking imho. I didn't like studying it in high school (how surprising), but I realized later that it gave me something useful, beyond the language itself
@@worldeconomicforum7210 Sono d'accordo, anche ci sono molte opere (scritti) "classiche" in italiano. Sto imparando italiano per il mio patrimonio e per leggere le opere scritti.
@@Gigachad-mc5qz why learn Latin after Japanese lmao, you might need to learn mandarin after Japanese since it's the mother language so you can easily learn taiwaness, vietnam, hokkien, etc.
As an interesting parallel to your point, learning English was the best thing that I could have ever done as a kid since it allowed me to read 99 percent of the books I have ever read in my life, only a tiny fraction of them were available in Portuguese, if that is true between two huge languages in the globalised world we have, I can only imagine how little of Latin has been translated into English.
Very true, it's interesting to point out something that has come to my attention is that scholars believe that the Northern tribes and decedents of the early norsemen (Anglos, Saxons, etc.) were using a writing system of runes, which has kind of a Eastern Character thing going on with it, with symbols representing whole words and were modular to some extent. They are also reminiscent of Latin's early alphabet. I wonder how these two writing systems diverged and if there is something to be gained from using this system, like quicker recognition of words or saving of page space by virtue of less letters. What are the tribal divergences? Do we know any of this stuff?
"Lingua Latina per se Illustrata" is almost exactly the same as in Portuguese, "Língua Latina por si Ilustrada". For a moment I thought Luke was talking Portuguese.
This is why I love Icelandic, Arabic, Latin, Nahuatl, and Chinese. All were advanced ambassadorial languages with rich culture and history. Ancient Greek too I guess...
Very important point that Latin allows you to access primary sources. Working documents of the time are especially illuminating, unlike biographies/memoirs written decades later, usually to make the writer look good. If you can read something like actual correspondence between diplomats that's amazing.
surprising your public school experience taught this. Learning the root meanings of words has been fascinating and definitely my driver to want to lean more about latin
@Rishab Tirupathi Your choice in the end. But you save a lot of time and effort by going to summer school. Its literally free of effort. I still don't know what we were supposed to learn in my history class but I still got an 89%.
Hi, @@LukeSmithxyz, do you think it would be beneficial to learn Latin also for a native slavic language speaker? I wonder, because most of slavic languages have 7 declensions, so the person is already familiar with it. Also, Latin is fusional language, same like slavic languages, in contrast to english analytic language. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to learn eg. finnish language, which has 14(15) declensions and is not from Indo-European language family? Thanks for reply :) ps: i hope you will notice the message like this, when i tag you :D
Latin was my first second language, I started taking online Latin classes in 2014 or so. I was taught to translate, not speak Latin, and moving to a new high school I was forced to select French or Spanish. I am currently working to re-teach myself Latin from my old Wheelock's Latin textbook. It's a beautiful and extremely useful language that everybody should learn.
I didn't expected this video, muchas gracias, as Latin and Greek philologist, this video has been a little breath of acknowledgement that usually our studies and field don't have. Gracias, espero que sirva para que muchas otras personas se animen a aprender latín y griego. Gratias tibi ago.
You're right that Latin is a great foundation to understand the underlying structures of languages. I find that there's a big difference between understanding a language and actually being able to speak it though. Especially with languages like English or Russian, where you basically need to have heard every single word spoken by native speaker to know how to correctly pronounce it. Some languages are way easier to pronounce though since you can just string together fixed phonemes, like in Spanish, Japanese and to a lesser degree, German.
Eh, in Russian u can pronounce almost any word if u know where the stress is. And same with Japanese btw, if u want to pronounce the word properly u have to know where the pitch accent is. Yeah of course Russian words pronunciations change a lot more with stress, but there's still a system to it
@@maxim_ml Yes you can, but if you come across new words while reading, you won't know where the stress is. You'll still say the word in your head though, probably the wrong way. Then later you need to unlearn it, using the correct stress. Not to mention the stress changes all the time as words are inflected! It would reeeaaally help if Russians put accents on the stressed letter, the way Spanish does.
In Quintillian's manual for teachinghe makes the case that boys should start learning Latin shortly after they start Greek, but the Greek should definitely come first.
I'm French and I learned English (of course) and 2 years of Latin followed by 1 year of Greek. I then traveled Europe and I found that I could learn pretty much every western languages (Spanish, Italian, German, etc) in a few days to a day to day level. I really think that, at least for Europe, knowing a bit of Latin, a bit of Greek and English or German does wonders as far as picking up languages.
I went to Poland for a week when I was 13 and just starting Latin. I already was 'good enough' in English but far from fluent. Sadly I was lost, we learnt some vocabulary but, at least at the time, nothing clicked for me. What language is it close to? I would love to learn a little bit of polish nowadays, because I don't even remember the few world/phrases we learnt back then. I was in Varsovia (not sure about spelling) at the time.
@@KubrickFR It's close to Ukrainian. In general, the same thing you described applies to Slavic languages, as well. Learn any East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian) and West Slavic (Polish, Czech, Croatian) language and you'll be able to pretty much understand every other variation of it.
If you really wanna challenge yourself,try out Sanskrit it's an alien language unrelated to any other language on Earth,they add weird endings to words.
Did you use Assimil? I have their courses (French L1) for Latin, Attic Greek and Sanskrit. French was the 2nd foreign language I studied, and I did that on my own with French penpals.
I read LLPSI from your advice about a year ago. It taught me more about English than anything I learned in school. I recommend checking out old church documents, specifically old encyclicals. Some really interesting stuff and a great insight into the mind of the time.
I teach Latin online (actually speaking it, and I'm not autistic as far as I know 😉), I have a channel here on TH-cam. I just stumbled upon this video and found your insights very interesting: thanks for sharing them! I also love LLPSI and use it for teaching. If you ever want advice on how and where to meet other Latin speakers, I'll be glad to help you.
Great video. While learning Latin was no joy to me as it was to you, the benefits of understanding grammar, other languages and many other things is something I enjoy greatly. But I think you overestimate the historical education of your temporaries: in my experience most people still think about the "middle ages" as "dark ages".
i don't even know why there is an idea of enlightenment if there are no dark ages, i mean it's fair if you talk about Europe only due to slow progression, with the existence of middle-east and their advancement in technology they occupied Spain as a basis of the greek study, which the fallen of Arab making Spain become the basis of science for Europe that inspired globalization.
@@werren894What are you talking about? Europe advanced faster than the muslims even in the middle ages. Spain got taken over for completely different reasons. First of all being that they were outnumbered severely from start to finish. Also how common treason was, and no wonder due to how awful the Visigoths were to Spain. The Englightenment is badly named as well. Witch hunts peaked in the Enlightenment, not the Middle Ages, as an example.
I learned (basic) Spanish from an old book of my father's, actually a radio / vinyl disc series, from the 1950's. But I managed with the book only, as it was so very pedagogic, and also engaging, as it was about a family. At the time I was working a simple job, so had time to read, and it didn't take long.
Currently learning Latin in a course of 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, one month in total. Unlike classes in university I have to pay for this one at a private Institution and indeed... normal classes are horrible. Dog bles gabidalism :-DDDD Need it for my degree in history, translating Latin into German can be a pain in the ass at times but i keep myself motivated, your video including. Appreciated!
Me: Spends 2 years learning French but still in A1 Also me (after watching so many videos about Latin on TH-cam): *E f f i c e r e O M N I A A A A A A*
I was writing a (not very good) prep-school novel taking place in 1907. To add proper detail, I found a prep-school catalog from 1906 that listed the required textbooks for different classes. Your first Latin textbook was apparently the one they used: Collar and Daniell’s The Beginner’s Latin (1891) apparently still in use years later. I even downloaded a copy from Google Books to see what my protagonist was up against. For a long time, English grammar instruction suffered from the wrong-headed idea that Latin was some kind of perfect grammar of which English was an imperfect imitation. And so, split infinitives were forbidden, and ending sentences with prepositions was a punishable offense ("We are such stuff as dreams are made on." Sorry, Will, "We are such stuff as that on which dreams are made," is the correct version). In 1910, James Fernald (of Funk and Wagnall’s) wrote in his very interesting book, 'Expressive English' (he is here arguing for the value of English translations of great works rather than expecting people to read them in Greek or Latin, or modern foreign languages for that matter): ”…the average college graduate is more to be pitied than blamed. From the time when he plowed through Vergil and Cicero in the high school, he has been forced to treat the classic authors simply as exercises in etymology. In old time the classics were endeared to the schoolboy by sound floggings, and in more recent times by “keeping after school.” … Hence, they must go into the garden plot of one of Vergil’s most beautiful descriptions, and pull up every word by the roots to see what it is made of. They must massacre every line of Homer, till the slaughter of Greeks and Trojans becomes a negligible quantity. If by any chance a student is caught feeling any real interest in a passage, he is dragged through some wire-fences of syntax or some underbrush of Doric or Æolic variants, till not only the conceit is taken out of him, but also all interest in the author’s thought. … We know one boy who was kept two hours after school because he was indiscreet enough to see the joke in a story in his German reader and to laugh at it.“ The problem with an analytical grammar book like Collar and Daniell, then, is that you aren't encouraged to 'think' in the language and read the classical texts for their meanings, let alone poetry. Circa 1900, prep school boys learning Latin-in the US and also in UK public-schools-would 'construe' texts, for stern schoolmasters, and would be punished by writing out a number of 'lines' of Latin text. We see that this was still the practice when the Monty Python group was young. "Romani Ite Domum, one hundred times, Sir? Yes Sir. Hail Caesar and all that, Sir." I suspect that the modern storytelling 'Cambridge Latin Course' approach is more realistic.
Είσαι πολύ μάγκας, άπειρος σεβασμός από Ελλάδα, love your channel, love what you do, love (and use) your i3 configurations, you helped me to be much more efficient in my life and work, HUGE THANKS!!!
This video unlocked a memory I have of my philosophy teacher, who knew latin and ancient Greek, getting triggered whenever someone mentioned the medieval period as a dark age lol. I really liked him, he was a great guy with a very sad life story
What was his opinion on that statement? I thought that most of the Medieval Period was always considered the “Dark Ages”, did he consider a different time in history to be the Dark Ages or was the term just not fitting in his opinion?
I decided to take Latin in high school because I wasn't particularly interested in Spanish or French (the only other languages they offered). I enjoyed the first year so much that I took a second, and then two semesters in college. It's useful to know in ways that may not be immediately apparent.
Latin 1000 years ago was used in the church which is what defined the vocabulary. It was when they excavated Pompei they realised that the Romans spoke coarse Latin. Proper Latin was only for books.
Latin is great. I've learned it for a few years back in school (because who would possibly want to learn french?), was really bad at it and got rid of Latin as a subject. But it turns out I remember a lot and it has helped me a lot with romanic languages and understanding where many of the words commonly used are coming from. Of course it also helps with seeing through all the newspeak nowadays.
@@zendariun101 I learn best from practical experience but you don't really get that with latin. The classes didn't feel like english or spanish classes, the way it was taught was much more similar to math or physics classes.
It is always fascinating to learn an ancient language. As a person who still speaks an ancient living language it really gives goosebumps to read something written 2000 years back and still able to understand even now!
Bought a used copy of Wheelock’s Latin for $5. Best money I ever spent. Used to wake up before sunrise and study it with a cup of tea. “Wtf is dative case ? Why are all the endings changing ?” Good times.
I have a latin dictionary from 1805. I've always wanted to learn latin but never had the time. I might try and learn it when I'm not so busy. If you ever have the time to do another language focused video could you make on how pronunciation is written if you haven't already covered it? This dictionary from nineteenth century has weird spellings and symbols as expected for something this old but it all just seems like magic incantations to me. Forr instance I think the long dash over a letter extends the syllable so the upwards curved line would be to shorten it no?
If you really want to stretch your linguistics, then learn classical Arabic, not modern standard Arabic. It will give you a bunch of background for the Medieval texts your are talking about. The sciences flourished during this time. It is also a highly nuanced language.
@@catapulte1 The Madinah books are a good introduction. They are fairly cheap, about $30 on Amazon, and there are a ton of videos on TH-cam that teach them for free. You have to learn how to read and write before you can use these books. A book called "The Arabic Alphabet" by Awde and Samono is good for this.
Classes are not useless, lecture might be useless. Getting help and feedback from experienced and knowledgeable people in a convenient and immediate way is faster and more efficient than combing through forums or engaging in endless hours of trial and error. For something like learning a language one of those softwares like Rosetta Stone or Duolingo or something like that is probably better than a traditional lecture style class, but even traditional college courses use software like that. In addition you have one on one and get real time feedback with the language expert if you pay for some sort of a class. Like all of the people who built the Linux kernel who originally wrote the languages that Luke uses learned not only by doing but at first through traditional college courses...
Protip: the Latin you studied has never been un langue maternae. It was a construct because by the time Rome was "ancient" (relative to our modern period) in their time those "Romans" (Latins) were already widespread and speaking MANY "vulgar" tongues (the reality of which are obscured ironically by the newer constructs known by terms like "Spanish", "French", "Italian" etc.) Latine gaudium est
How I'm viewing Latin in a general sense is that it was the classical Era of the West's most prominent colonial language and the most prominent source of the shared western vocabulary we use to this date.
I bought 'Gwynnes Latin' about 10 years ago, very nostalgic, reminded me of learning Latin at school. Very inspiring too, I want to give it another try.
So learning Latin first and then other languages is like first learning computer architecture and assembly and only then learn higher programming languages? I learned a little bit of Latin out of curiosity.
Had Latin in school for 5 years and don‘t remember a thing. But I actually have been thinking of trying to get back into it for a couple months now. I might just start again...
Apart from this, the part of the world that was leading all intellectual thought at the time i.e. the Islamic World got all its source material from Latin itself. Most Islamic scholars were versed in Latin and/or Greek. It's crazy how understated Roman influence was on the rest of the world
Hi, @Luke Smith, do you think it would be beneficial to learn Latin also for a native slavic language speaker? I wonder, because most of slavic languages have 7 declensions, so the person is already familiar with it. Also, Latin is fusional language, same like slavic languages, in contrast to english analytic language. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to learn eg. finnish language, which has 14(15) declensions and is not from Indo-European language family? Thanks for reply :)
h₁sn̥tyom h₁éweukʷes btw, please make a list of suggestions of what to read in Latin. All I’ve read so far is classical, except for the Historia Brittonum and some of Marsilio Ficino...
And now imagine that your mother tounge wold be one of living slavic languages like e.g. Slovak (as mine is; or Russian, Czech, Polish, etc.). 90% of the gramatical structures you find in Latin are still there in practically the same form in these langages. And they are still living and people are using them in everyday talk :) Actually, their development was quite suppressed, so they brought those "relict" features over the centuries to present. The deeper reasons behind such complex grammatical phenomena is that they tightly reflect the subtle mechanics of human psychology and subconscious structures supporting human language. If you grow up with such language that preserves this as your mother tongue, it stimulates development of those subtle structures right from the beginning because they just get used and loaded. Also such a language may provide you more effective tools for expressing subtle detalis and nuances. This was scientifically proven by Israeli researchers sometimes in 1970s. In practice, it does not mean that people here would be more clever than those born with English, it's not so, but there is some slight still measurable difference. It simply gives a little advantage, but not everybody benefits from it equally even in our environments. People who tend to be simpler also use the language in a simpler way, not to its full potential. And people with English mother tongue in their personal development find other ways how to stimulate its psychological development by other means. But from the perspective of collecting as many as possible positive factors to human development, mother tongue also adds its little contribution. In my opinion, the best next step beyond this is Sanskrit. Sanskrit not only preservs this subtle internal mechanics in its gramatical phenomena but also teaches you to realize them consciously. It is not just a deeply logical/rational system like in Latin, it goes deeper inside and beyond the logic in some ways. Especially significant it becomes with word creation. You just learn a few thousands (I guess 2-3 thousands) of word roots and all the rest is derived from them by certain combinations and inflections. And the vocabulary is as rich as in English. Also if you look at phonetic side of Sanskrit, you understad that the whole matter of pronounciation is consciously using the possibilities of our vocal organs. Another extremely important feature is that written form strictly reflects the phonetic expression of language. So, even you have never met living ancient speaker of Sanskrit, with some training and correct understanding you can be pretty confident that you speak very closely to how they did. In other words, every written letter represents one constant primitive sound (phonem), so you always just pronounce what is written without any ambiguities. If e.g. some part of the world loses contact with living English pronounciation, it starts to deviate so heavily that after some years native English speaker will not recognize those people are actually speaking English. English was forced to be a language of international communication from the position of power. Well, although the motivation was not the best, it is important that we have a language through which significant part of mankind across the globe can understand each other, and not only on level of diplomacy, or science but common people. This way we can much more feel ourselves as part of one mankind and extend beyond limitations like nations and similar. We can learn to cooperate instead of fight, but the process is slow. I think even the gramatical simplicity and logical nature of English played important role in its adoption. We can hope that one day mankind will realize the need to bring the international communication language to a higher level of sophistication, like e.g. Latin. Well principal difference between Latin and ancient Greek is that Latin is limited to be a rational langange (understanding can be based purely on logic) while ancient Greek has other dimensions to it, when proper getting the meaning of statement requires not only logic, but also understanding cultural context of the period and region and moral views of the times, etc. This makes it more dificult and less suitable for international communication nowadays. The mankind has come to the point, when logical thinking is more or less present all around the globe, while different local views on moral standards, etc. are varying. But I think that over long time this will also change. Actually the step from English to Latin is quite natural bacause of shared vocabulary (to significant extent) with English and other European languagies, which implies also Latin and South Americas speaking Spanish or Portugese as their second language. And half of Asia is also speaking Indo-European languages with common roots with Latin. One last idea I'd like to bring up is the concept of ancient people on Indian subcontinent regarding languages. They distinguished between Sanskrit and Prakrit. This is often misunderstood by linguists as they tend to think that Prakrit was some younger derivative of Sanskrit or simply another language there. It is not so. The words Sanskrit and Prakrit do not refer even to some particular language. Sanskrit means a scientific language or standardized language that strictly reflects the subtle internal mechanics of human speech. This has always to remain the same until we as a biological species remain the same and so our mechanisms of speech. This language is universal for all of us and could be the language of science, high art and culture or even international communication. We can say that e.g. Latin was set to be a Sanskrit for Europe in medieval times. While Prakrit is the practical spoken form of language. Even if you introduce Sanskrit as an official language in some area, it will change over time and will change with various influences as well as it migrates geographically, because of the influence of so called spirit of place or genius loci. This is actually the mechanism (according to my understanding) of the differentiantion of languages into different branches like we see in Indoeuropean or Slavic languages e.g. So, I think the idea of further establishing some language in possition of unified global communication and adapting it to the real life needs is something that is and will be on the table further on. Esperanto was a rather foolish experiment that failed. English is actually the first successful trial in the global scale, and I think it will evolve further as some of the discussed aspects become more urgent. I'm sorry for a long comment, you just insired me. :) And also thank you for your great Linux related videos that are source of many useful information to me. All the best wishes!
Hello Luke, some years ago I wanted to learn Latin. I was checking out different books and styles to learn it and got very fast the impression that one had to learn all things in Latin by hard, grammar and vocabulary. This kept me away from learning it. I have learned 3 foreign languages using a different style. I have used old school textbooks with lessons on vocabulary and a specific grammar issue. I avoided learning vocabulary by hard with flashcards. Instead I was practising them. The grammar issues I was learning and practising. All textbooks I found in Germany seem to force the learner to learn every step in grammar by hard. That was the reason I refused to learn Latin. Do you have any suugestions on my issue? Of course not regarding useful german textbooks. Peter
Yeah get Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. You aren't frontloaded a bunch of grammar to memorize, instead you slowly pick up the grammar naturally; the book uses a method of language acquisition called the inductive contextual method.
If you already know a bit of Latin my personal recommendation is to listen to Nuntii Latini. Basically the Finnish radio is so amazing that they sometimes have the news in Latin.
I just watched a TH-cam video where the guy said: “me, and my friends, are gunna hit the bar”. The downside of learning Latin is having things like this grate on me.
Hey Luke, you've been making a lot of interesting videos recently related to language, so I gotta ask, have you ever looked into Generative Anthropology before? I've only looked a little bit into it and if you've already looked into it, it would be nice if you make a video about it.
I love languages. I'm learning it so I can read the philosophical and scientific works in their original, as well as finding the history of language interesting, which words have evolved over time and which others remain the same etc. I think it was a mistake to remove Latin among other things from the school cariculum. The only languages my school taught when I was there were French and German, although since then they added Spanish. Learning greek would be useful too.
I learned Latin using Wheelock’s and “Lingva Latina”, but it didn’t click until I read “Latin Grammar” by Bennett (1909). Attic Greek was an absolute bitch until I found White’s “First Greek Book” (1896) because my class text was utter garbage. It’s been awhile since I’ve actively read any Latin. What would you recommend for a refresher for syntax (my memory of inflections is still pretty good) & vocabulary? Should I just go through “Lingva Latina” again?
There are six latin languages French, Spanish, Portugese, Romanian, Latin, Italian. I married a Spanish woman, I live in Quebec and had to work (read,write,joke) in French, and tried to follow Italian. With the French,Spanish, I can follow Italian. The addition of two other languages to my knowledge of English, has done wonders for my outlook on life. --Tolerance to people of all colours and bents, In terms of problem solving or designing software, I have done much better than my peers because I can think "outside of the confines of a one language box". More of my brain is available, used, and cultivated. Americans, take the opportunity to immerse yourself in a second language. Spanish is the second USA language. Take advantage. It will help you learn any other language, programming languages included. By the way, want to learn a second language. Find your religious institution that is in the second language and visit there for a while. Get a bilingual bible, or prayer book. Do the visits for a year. Before the end of that year, you will understand and follow when others speak their language, even if you can't respond I subscribed to a second language newspaper. I spent an hour a day following the headlines, and comparing them to what I heard on the radio, or saw on TV. I also took the puzzle page and used the "search for the hidden words". I had the car radio turned to the second language. What a low cost way to master 2 or 3 languages.
Say I got through Lingua Latina per se Ilustrata and polished my knowledge using an accompanying grammar book, what other resources would you recommend to hone more my understanding of Latin? Something like a website that conveniently compiles written Latin material could work.
I would say vocabulary IS the most important aspect, and though you say otherwise, you immediately contradict yourself by saying latin is easy bc of vocabulary similarities to english. I'm brazillian and I learned english easily bc of that as well. I also learned japanese, but even with a lot of hard work I still am at best intermediate and I am very slow at reading it (and it's not kanji's fault, even with furigana I suck). Why? because the majority of words have absolutely nothing to do with european languages so you gotta learn them all, instead of easily recognizing them by their roots.
It would be interesting to hear what you think about German. I guess German is considered "one of the trickier" western European languages, since it is somewhat reliant on cases. Do you think it could serve as mental exercise in the same way Latin does? I mean, it shares a lot of vocabulary with English, just like you said Latin does, while it could be considered more complex grammatically for English speakers. Love these language vid, keep them up!
A lot of information in English is communicated by word order, instead of inflection. But we try to treat English grammar the same way. That is why English grammar seems so arbitrary. It doesn't get to the logic of the language. We should be looking at how word order determines whether something is a "subject" or "direct object" or "indirect object," but this is not taught. Rather, the student is asked to identify these by considering the MEANING of the sentence. That is not grammar! Grammar is supposed to be an entry into a language, not a by-product of its mastery.
I have heard this multiple times before and people keep saying it to this day "Learning Latin makes it easier to learn other languages". Do you agree? Or is just something people say to justify why they taught themselves Latin in the first place?
>"Learning Latin makes it easier to learn other languages" Believe me it's not, I'm french and if you were to show me text in Latin I wouldn't be able to understand jackshit . It's not because we share a common root with Latin that it's completely similar. For instance, for a french speaker only Italian would be incredibly easy to understand or intelligible at some extend, I can understand about 60% of what they say and I don't speak Italian where as Portuguese or Spanish it feels completely different. Besides that'd be completely retarded to learn Latin first for afterwards move on to french.
hey luke as a native speaker of what i hear is an interesting language (albanian) please let me know what you might think of its structure compared to latin or any other indo european languages, also please do a video on interesting languages and why they are interesting that might be accesible to people who have not studied linguistics
I already speak russian due to my upbringing and grammatically it's all very similar. I guess I want to learn Latin to be able to read Latin and Roman stuff, even medieval hymns etc.
i speak a forked version of Latin that uses sytemd called portuguese
@@alexvig2369 fuck i made this comment 8 moths ago
I speak a fork of original portuguese called brazilian portuguese which is way more bloated than its original
@@gustavomariz7769 >brazilian
Sorry you have to go back
i am using another fork of latin known as spanish but it’s so bloated due to the many global collaborators that I might as well try portuguese
KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK
Wow, such a smart dude. I bet he uses Arch...
amirite
@@jalepezo lul
I wonder if he's single
He uses artix
he is smarter, he uses artix
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as English, is in fact, Latin/English, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, Latin plus English. English is not a language unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning Latin system made useful by the Latin alphabet, roots and vital lingual components comprising a full language as defined by Luke Smith.
What even... ??¿¿?!?!?!¡?!!
@@sjuns5159 it's poking fun at 'GNU/Linux'
Best. Comment. Ever.
😂😂😂😂😂
This made me audibly kek
Latin is the C of human languages
@@harpyproductions6771 and indo-european is binary
It's obviously the Lisp of human languages. C is Greek.
@Hans-Hermann Hoppe You have a point, given that Greek and Lisp predate Latin and C respectively. And Greek is certainly more fluid and less rigid than Latin. On the other hand, what about the ML family for Latin? Standard ML, OCaml, etc.are classical Latin and Haskell is medieval or Church Latin.
And I suppose english is javascript.
@@Architector_4 I think it's more like body language is binary and shouts/gestures are asm
**crack** **sip** Yup, Latin... now that was a good language
Carpe cervisia!
So it's been a while and no one has called me out on my grammatical error. At this point, I am going to claim it was deliberate to see if it would elicit some criticism rather than make the excuse that it has been over 40 years since my last High School Latin course. That is true enough, but still, I really shoulda caught it before I hit . The correct syntax is "Carpe cersiam!"
@Suffer No Fools Seize the beer
Carpe cerevisiam = Seize the beer. Spanish *cerveza* and Portuguese *cerveja*
English is bloat.
Analytical languages are where it is at
As a non-native speaker, English has some elegant parts to it, particularly the many ways you can navigate in time, but it's definitely bloated dialect-wise, synonym-wise and has the most retarded orthography hands down.
Grunting is efficient.
@@user-hufgfdsddssdfdsdsdsdd2 We have a global lingua franca that has the (probably) unique feature of absolutely no consistency in the way the words are pronounced and the writing system not helping that at all.
I don't have the autism to love or hate a language but comparing them and talking a out pros and cons is fun.
English is python
American English is PHP
Aa an Indian, I learnt sanskrit on my own a while ago. Amazing language. It has descendant languages everywhere in the indian subcontinent. I can pretty much understand 15~18 indian languages because of it. What kinda shocks me is how methodical sanskrit was. It's surprisingly modular. I mean it in a sense of clarity of thought, there is no room for ambiguity in it from the beginning. It's almost like coding/programming.
What learning resources did you use?
Mama nama _____ asti, I think that's right.
Based indoeuropean
Learning German showed me how limited English is. Especially for talking about feelings.
Good morning dear sir or madam. May I kindly ask you to not to redeem.
Luke please stop making me want to learn stuff I don’t have time to learn lmao
Jonas this is true. I study a lot of subjects tho to the point that it consumes my life and have to remind myself that there's more to life than just learnings things.
TEHGOVERNAT0R very good way to put it. Often times I never get around to producing things bc I wanna just keep learning.
The like count is 256 but I don't want to ruin it...
@@sessonid5082 In Unix terms, you are in a blocked state.
@@bitterlemonboy powers of 2 are goated
Latin speakers have the widest skull circumference
Circumspectabant
they must have tumors
Source?
And does that apply to the people who speak a Latin based language?
So basically neanderthals ?
Yep, look at Luke Ranieri. Massive brain shell right there
Being Italian, I've been taught Latin in high school. I haven't used it in years and it would take me a few days of practice to start translating Latin effortlessly once again, but I can tell for sure that studying Latin wasn't just about learning the language itself, it's been incredibly useful because its structure makes so much sense... it's useful for developing logical thinking imho. I didn't like studying it in high school (how surprising), but I realized later that it gave me something useful, beyond the language itself
Sei fortunato
@@worldeconomicforum7210 Sono d'accordo, anche ci sono molte opere (scritti) "classiche" in italiano. Sto imparando italiano per il mio patrimonio e per leggere le opere scritti.
After im done with japanese i may look into latin
@@Gigachad-mc5qz why learn Latin after Japanese lmao, you might need to learn mandarin after Japanese since it's the mother language so you can easily learn taiwaness, vietnam, hokkien, etc.
@@happygofishing whos latin
As an interesting parallel to your point, learning English was the best thing that I could have ever done as a kid since it allowed me to read 99 percent of the books I have ever read in my life, only a tiny fraction of them were available in Portuguese, if that is true between two huge languages in the globalised world we have, I can only imagine how little of Latin has been translated into English.
Very true, it's interesting to point out something that has come to my attention is that scholars believe that the Northern tribes and decedents of the early norsemen (Anglos, Saxons, etc.) were using a writing system of runes, which has kind of a Eastern Character thing going on with it, with symbols representing whole words and were modular to some extent. They are also reminiscent of Latin's early alphabet. I wonder how these two writing systems diverged and if there is something to be gained from using this system, like quicker recognition of words or saving of page space by virtue of less letters. What are the tribal divergences? Do we know any of this stuff?
Et tu, Luke?
@@kanedacier916 Wouldn't the vocative case of Luke's Latin cognate Lucas be _Luca?_ So it would be _Et tu, Luca?_
Sorry to burst the bubble but Julius originally said that in Greek.
Kai su, teknon?
@@beybladeguru101 Kaj vi, Raptoro?
"Lingua Latina per se Illustrata" is almost exactly the same as in Portuguese, "Língua Latina por si Ilustrada".
For a moment I thought Luke was talking Portuguese.
J. G. R. Araújo br?
Lingua Latina per se Illustrata is valid italian
Yeah, Italian is "lingua latina per sé illustrata"
Greetings from Brazil.
I'm a Latin translator and Arch user 😁. That's why I love your channel.
Parou com o Ubuntu? Alhamdulillah
@@meydjer Ubuntu nunca mais... Kkk
seu diabo
>not learning tupi
caralho eu não esperava um comentario desses aqui kkkkkkkkkkkkk
This is why I love Icelandic, Arabic, Latin, Nahuatl, and Chinese. All were advanced ambassadorial languages with rich culture and history. Ancient Greek too I guess...
Are there any languages with a "poor history"
@@goyonman9655 Nope, they're pretty much all fascinating either through their historical uses or their internal workings.
@@goyonman9655 All those that died and we never get to know anyone
@@goyonman9655 Those without an extensive written history
@@crusaderACR
If it's not written, how do you know if it's rich or poor??
Very important point that Latin allows you to access primary sources. Working documents of the time are especially illuminating, unlike biographies/memoirs written decades later, usually to make the writer look good. If you can read something like actual correspondence between diplomats that's amazing.
The moment you said "gateway drug" to "classical Greek," and now "Sanskrit," lmao I felt that
Learning about the concept of 'root words' is possibly the most useful knowledge I got out of public school.
surprising your public school experience taught this. Learning the root meanings of words has been fascinating and definitely my driver to want to lean more about latin
Should we drop out of elementary school?
Yes. It's a waste.
@Rishab Tirupathi take summer classes. Free grades, waste a lot less time.
@Rishab Tirupathi Your choice in the end. But you save a lot of time and effort by going to summer school. Its literally free of effort. I still don't know what we were supposed to learn in my history class but I still got an 89%.
Hi, @@LukeSmithxyz, do you think it would be beneficial to learn Latin also for a native slavic language speaker? I wonder, because most of slavic languages have 7 declensions, so the person is already familiar with it. Also, Latin is fusional language, same like slavic languages, in contrast to english analytic language. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to learn eg. finnish language, which has 14(15) declensions and is not from Indo-European language family?
Thanks for reply :)
ps: i hope you will notice the message like this, when i tag you :D
He's taken on the same format of video as Varg...
Andai on earth breathing oxygen!
Let's find out !
Latin was my first second language, I started taking online Latin classes in 2014 or so. I was taught to translate, not speak Latin, and moving to a new high school I was forced to select French or Spanish. I am currently working to re-teach myself Latin from my old Wheelock's Latin textbook. It's a beautiful and extremely useful language that everybody should learn.
I didn't expected this video, muchas gracias, as Latin and Greek philologist, this video has been a little breath of acknowledgement that usually our studies and field don't have.
Gracias, espero que sirva para que muchas otras personas se animen a aprender latín y griego.
Gratias tibi ago.
You forgot that you sound super smart and cool when speaking latin.
Priorities.
You're right that Latin is a great foundation to understand the underlying structures of languages. I find that there's a big difference between understanding a language and actually being able to speak it though. Especially with languages like English or Russian, where you basically need to have heard every single word spoken by native speaker to know how to correctly pronounce it. Some languages are way easier to pronounce though since you can just string together fixed phonemes, like in Spanish, Japanese and to a lesser degree, German.
Eh, in Russian u can pronounce almost any word if u know where the stress is. And same with Japanese btw, if u want to pronounce the word properly u have to know where the pitch accent is. Yeah of course Russian words pronunciations change a lot more with stress, but there's still a system to it
@@maxim_ml Yes you can, but if you come across new words while reading, you won't know where the stress is. You'll still say the word in your head though, probably the wrong way. Then later you need to unlearn it, using the correct stress. Not to mention the stress changes all the time as words are inflected! It would reeeaaally help if Russians put accents on the stressed letter, the way Spanish does.
@@maxim_ml the most confusing thing is the endings/how words constantly change due to grammar
japanese are just like the Austronesian language and grammar with some Chinese hybrid and syntax, it's not that consistent.
Can you reference some of thse texts that hold great insights but are unavailable in English?
Ironically roman patrician would learn greek as a first language with latin as a second language
In Quintillian's manual for teachinghe makes the case that boys should start learning Latin shortly after they start Greek, but the Greek should definitely come first.
Greek basically played the role for them that Latin would play in Medieval Europe
- Learned English.
- Ended up whatching Luke's motivation video about Latin(after couple of videos about suckless).
- Started learning Latin.
Me
I'm French and I learned English (of course) and 2 years of Latin followed by 1 year of Greek.
I then traveled Europe and I found that I could learn pretty much every western languages (Spanish, Italian, German, etc) in a few days to a day to day level.
I really think that, at least for Europe, knowing a bit of Latin, a bit of Greek and English or German does wonders as far as picking up languages.
I might have to read the book you recommended at the end of the video, looks great, thanks for the recommendation!
I went to Poland for a week when I was 13 and just starting Latin. I already was 'good enough' in English but far from fluent.
Sadly I was lost, we learnt some vocabulary but, at least at the time, nothing clicked for me. What language is it close to? I would love to learn a little bit of polish nowadays, because I don't even remember the few world/phrases we learnt back then.
I was in Varsovia (not sure about spelling) at the time.
@@KubrickFR It's close to Ukrainian.
In general, the same thing you described applies to Slavic languages, as well. Learn any East Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian) and West Slavic (Polish, Czech, Croatian) language and you'll be able to pretty much understand every other variation of it.
If you really wanna challenge yourself,try out Sanskrit it's an alien language unrelated to any other language on Earth,they add weird endings to words.
Did you use Assimil? I have their courses (French L1) for Latin, Attic Greek and Sanskrit. French was the 2nd foreign language I studied, and I did that on my own with French penpals.
I read LLPSI from your advice about a year ago. It taught me more about English than anything I learned in school. I recommend checking out old church documents, specifically old encyclicals. Some really interesting stuff and a great insight into the mind of the time.
How far did it take you? I am just starting the book. How long did it take you to read it?
@@tjs.5044 this, i also wnana know
"Classes are useless; just drop out." Based Luke speaks truth.
as a grad student
Would it be worthy endeavor to translate my computer UI into latin?
Yes.
I teach Latin online (actually speaking it, and I'm not autistic as far as I know 😉), I have a channel here on TH-cam. I just stumbled upon this video and found your insights very interesting: thanks for sharing them! I also love LLPSI and use it for teaching. If you ever want advice on how and where to meet other Latin speakers, I'll be glad to help you.
I'd take a private lesson from you any day! 👩🏻🏫🙋♂ Like uh, _omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori,_ and stuff ;)
Great video. While learning Latin was no joy to me as it was to you, the benefits of understanding grammar, other languages and many other things is something I enjoy greatly.
But I think you overestimate the historical education of your temporaries: in my experience most people still think about the "middle ages" as "dark ages".
i don't even know why there is an idea of enlightenment if there are no dark ages, i mean it's fair if you talk about Europe only due to slow progression, with the existence of middle-east and their advancement in technology they occupied Spain as a basis of the greek study, which the fallen of Arab making Spain become the basis of science for Europe that inspired globalization.
@@werren894What are you talking about? Europe advanced faster than the muslims even in the middle ages.
Spain got taken over for completely different reasons. First of all being that they were outnumbered severely from start to finish. Also how common treason was, and no wonder due to how awful the Visigoths were to Spain.
The Englightenment is badly named as well. Witch hunts peaked in the Enlightenment, not the Middle Ages, as an example.
I learned (basic) Spanish from an old book of my father's, actually a radio / vinyl disc series, from the 1950's. But I managed with the book only, as it was so very pedagogic, and also engaging, as it was about a family. At the time I was working a simple job, so had time to read, and it didn't take long.
What dialect
Currently learning Latin in a course of 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, one month in total. Unlike classes in university I have to pay for this one at a private Institution and indeed... normal classes are horrible. Dog bles gabidalism :-DDDD
Need it for my degree in history, translating Latin into German can be a pain in the ass at times but i keep myself motivated, your video including.
Appreciated!
I only had one year of Latin and reading a bit through that book felt amazing. I actually want to pick it up again.
Me: Spends 2 years learning French but still in A1
Also me (after watching so many videos about Latin on TH-cam): *E f f i c e r e O M N I A A A A A A*
im too small brain what is efficere omnia
@@visagemsc im too small brain mate don't go hard on yourself. "Efficere omniaa" means "accomplish everything"
@@mehmetedexthanks
I was writing a (not very good) prep-school novel taking place in 1907. To add proper detail, I found a prep-school catalog from 1906 that listed the required textbooks for different classes. Your first Latin textbook was apparently the one they used: Collar and Daniell’s The Beginner’s Latin (1891) apparently still in use years later. I even downloaded a copy from Google Books to see what my protagonist was up against.
For a long time, English grammar instruction suffered from the wrong-headed idea that Latin was some kind of perfect grammar of which English was an imperfect imitation. And so, split infinitives were forbidden, and ending sentences with prepositions was a punishable offense ("We are such stuff as dreams are made on." Sorry, Will, "We are such stuff as that on which dreams are made," is the correct version).
In 1910, James Fernald (of Funk and Wagnall’s) wrote in his very interesting book, 'Expressive English' (he is here arguing for the value of English translations of great works rather than expecting people to read them in Greek or Latin, or modern foreign languages for that matter):
”…the average college graduate is more to be pitied than blamed. From the time when he plowed through Vergil and Cicero in the high school, he has been forced to treat the classic authors simply as exercises in etymology. In old time the classics were endeared to the schoolboy by sound floggings, and in more recent times by “keeping after school.” … Hence, they must go into the garden plot of one of Vergil’s most beautiful descriptions, and pull up every word by the roots to see what it is made of. They must massacre every line of Homer, till the slaughter of Greeks and Trojans becomes a negligible quantity. If by any chance a student is caught feeling any real interest in a passage, he is dragged through some wire-fences of syntax or some underbrush of Doric or Æolic variants, till not only the conceit is taken out of him, but also all interest in the author’s thought. … We know one boy who was kept two hours after school because he was indiscreet enough to see the joke in a story in his German reader and to laugh at it.“
The problem with an analytical grammar book like Collar and Daniell, then, is that you aren't encouraged to 'think' in the language and read the classical texts for their meanings, let alone poetry. Circa 1900, prep school boys learning Latin-in the US and also in UK public-schools-would 'construe' texts, for stern schoolmasters, and would be punished by writing out a number of 'lines' of Latin text. We see that this was still the practice when the Monty Python group was young. "Romani Ite Domum, one hundred times, Sir? Yes Sir. Hail Caesar and all that, Sir." I suspect that the modern storytelling 'Cambridge Latin Course' approach is more realistic.
Είσαι πολύ μάγκας, άπειρος σεβασμός από Ελλάδα, love your channel, love what you do, love (and use) your i3 configurations, you helped me to be much more efficient in my life and work, HUGE THANKS!!!
This video unlocked a memory I have of my philosophy teacher, who knew latin and ancient Greek, getting triggered whenever someone mentioned the medieval period as a dark age lol. I really liked him, he was a great guy with a very sad life story
What was his opinion on that statement? I thought that most of the Medieval Period was always considered the “Dark Ages”, did he consider a different time in history to be the Dark Ages or was the term just not fitting in his opinion?
I decided to take Latin in high school because I wasn't particularly interested in Spanish or French (the only other languages they offered). I enjoyed the first year so much that I took a second, and then two semesters in college. It's useful to know in ways that may not be immediately apparent.
Latin 1000 years ago was used in the church which is what defined the vocabulary. It was when they excavated Pompei they realised that the Romans spoke coarse Latin. Proper Latin was only for books.
Latin is great. I've learned it for a few years back in school (because who would possibly want to learn french?), was really bad at it and got rid of Latin as a subject. But it turns out I remember a lot and it has helped me a lot with romanic languages and understanding where many of the words commonly used are coming from. Of course it also helps with seeing through all the newspeak nowadays.
pog
How do you learn
@@zendariun101 I learn best from practical experience but you don't really get that with latin. The classes didn't feel like english or spanish classes, the way it was taught was much more similar to math or physics classes.
@@ltxr9973 thanks
@@zendariun101 Also my Latin teacher was a very strict, even somewhat scary old lady. Nobody wanted to disappoint her too much 😁
It is always fascinating to learn an ancient language. As a person who still speaks an ancient living language it really gives goosebumps to read something written 2000 years back and still able to understand even now!
Bought a used copy of Wheelock’s Latin for $5. Best money I ever spent. Used to wake up before sunrise and study it with a cup of tea. “Wtf is dative case ? Why are all the endings changing ?” Good times.
I have a latin dictionary from 1805. I've always wanted to learn latin but never had the time. I might try and learn it when I'm not so busy.
If you ever have the time to do another language focused video could you make on how pronunciation is written if you haven't already covered it? This dictionary from nineteenth century has weird spellings and symbols as expected for something this old but it all just seems like magic incantations to me. Forr instance I think the long dash over a letter extends the syllable so the upwards curved line would be to shorten it no?
Man, I decided to come back to latin studying after have watched this video. Thanks
If you really want to stretch your linguistics, then learn classical Arabic, not modern standard Arabic. It will give you a bunch of background for the Medieval texts your are talking about. The sciences flourished during this time. It is also a highly nuanced language.
@@catapulte1 The Madinah books are a good introduction. They are fairly cheap, about $30 on Amazon, and there are a ton of videos on TH-cam that teach them for free. You have to learn how to read and write before you can use these books. A book called "The Arabic Alphabet" by Awde and Samono is good for this.
Luke cabeção inclua os nomes dos livros na descrição do vídeo!!
Malditos brasileiros, estão em todo lugar!
Soh os gamer
@@daggawagga topp
apenasmeucanal será ?
@@daggawagga Obrigado pela lista de sites. Tenha um ótimo dia. ^^
Been thinking about it for some time. Will definitely give it a try.
Well I took the Latinpill and just finished the DuoLingo course. Next will be your book, thank you for the recommendation.
I'm so grateful that my mum made me learn English since 4 years old.
Classes are not useless, lecture might be useless. Getting help and feedback from experienced and knowledgeable people in a convenient and immediate way is faster and more efficient than combing through forums or engaging in endless hours of trial and error. For something like learning a language one of those softwares like Rosetta Stone or Duolingo or something like that is probably better than a traditional lecture style class, but even traditional college courses use software like that. In addition you have one on one and get real time feedback with the language expert if you pay for some sort of a class. Like all of the people who built the Linux kernel who originally wrote the languages that Luke uses learned not only by doing but at first through traditional college courses...
Protip: the Latin you studied has never been un langue maternae. It was a construct because by the time Rome was "ancient" (relative to our modern period) in their time those "Romans" (Latins) were already widespread and speaking MANY "vulgar" tongues (the reality of which are obscured ironically by the newer constructs known by terms like "Spanish", "French", "Italian" etc.)
Latine gaudium est
How I'm viewing Latin in a general sense is that it was the classical Era of the West's most prominent colonial language and the most prominent source of the shared western vocabulary we use to this date.
I bought 'Gwynnes Latin' about 10 years ago, very nostalgic, reminded me of learning Latin at school. Very inspiring too, I want to give it another try.
(Mr.) Lucas Smith, can you recommend a book for classical Greek? I've come across plenty for Latin, but far fewer for Ancient Greek.
So learning Latin first and then other languages is like first learning computer architecture and assembly and only then learn higher programming languages? I learned a little bit of Latin out of curiosity.
Had Latin in school for 5 years and don‘t remember a thing. But I actually have been thinking of trying to get back into it for a couple months now. I might just start again...
'Lingua Latina' does have explicit grammatical instruction, it's just in Latin. They also publish English language companions if you need that.
Apart from this, the part of the world that was leading all intellectual thought at the time i.e. the Islamic World got all its source material from Latin itself. Most Islamic scholars were versed in Latin and/or Greek. It's crazy how understated Roman influence was on the rest of the world
Luke, how do I find these mediaeval and renaissance works you kept talking about? I want to find this secret vault of knowledge.
I second this. Where do we find these texts?
@@murfnturf23 I third this, I want the sources to the original alchemical discoveries!
You should do a series on teaching latin
Hi, @Luke Smith, do you think it would be beneficial to learn Latin also for a native slavic language speaker? I wonder, because most of slavic languages have 7 declensions, so the person is already familiar with it. Also, Latin is fusional language, same like slavic languages, in contrast to english analytic language. Wouldn't it be more beneficial to learn eg. finnish language, which has 14(15) declensions and is not from Indo-European language family?
Thanks for reply :)
Best video I've seen in a while
I learned Latin for six years in school and forgot most of it again already, help.
You actually sold me.
Lunchtime with Luke. I like it. 6 seasons and a movie!
Portuguese-speakers searching for good material, take a look at "Gradus Primus" by Paulo Rónai.
Daaamn Lingua Latina per se Illustrata is epic. Also: Fuck you, Luke! I already know that imma stay up for way too long this night.
h₁sn̥tyom h₁éweukʷes
btw, please make a list of suggestions of what to read in Latin. All I’ve read so far is classical, except for the Historia Brittonum and some of Marsilio Ficino...
I'm Brazilian, and Latin is really great.
Sanskrit is to me, as Latin is to you.
And now imagine that your mother tounge wold be one of living slavic languages like e.g. Slovak (as mine is; or Russian, Czech, Polish, etc.). 90% of the gramatical structures you find in Latin are still there in practically the same form in these langages. And they are still living and people are using them in everyday talk :) Actually, their development was quite suppressed, so they brought those "relict" features over the centuries to present. The deeper reasons behind such complex grammatical phenomena is that they tightly reflect the subtle mechanics of human psychology and subconscious structures supporting human language. If you grow up with such language that preserves this as your mother tongue, it stimulates development of those subtle structures right from the beginning because they just get used and loaded. Also such a language may provide you more effective tools for expressing subtle detalis and nuances. This was scientifically proven by Israeli researchers sometimes in 1970s. In practice, it does not mean that people here would be more clever than those born with English, it's not so, but there is some slight still measurable difference. It simply gives a little advantage, but not everybody benefits from it equally even in our environments. People who tend to be simpler also use the language in a simpler way, not to its full potential. And people with English mother tongue in their personal development find other ways how to stimulate its psychological development by other means. But from the perspective of collecting as many as possible positive factors to human development, mother tongue also adds its little contribution. In my opinion, the best next step beyond this is Sanskrit. Sanskrit not only preservs this subtle internal mechanics in its gramatical phenomena but also teaches you to realize them consciously. It is not just a deeply logical/rational system like in Latin, it goes deeper inside and beyond the logic in some ways. Especially significant it becomes with word creation. You just learn a few thousands (I guess 2-3 thousands) of word roots and all the rest is derived from them by certain combinations and inflections. And the vocabulary is as rich as in English. Also if you look at phonetic side of Sanskrit, you understad that the whole matter of pronounciation is consciously using the possibilities of our vocal organs. Another extremely important feature is that written form strictly reflects the phonetic expression of language. So, even you have never met living ancient speaker of Sanskrit, with some training and correct understanding you can be pretty confident that you speak very closely to how they did. In other words, every written letter represents one constant primitive sound (phonem), so you always just pronounce what is written without any ambiguities. If e.g. some part of the world loses contact with living English pronounciation, it starts to deviate so heavily that after some years native English speaker will not recognize those people are actually speaking English. English was forced to be a language of international communication from the position of power. Well, although the motivation was not the best, it is important that we have a language through which significant part of mankind across the globe can understand each other, and not only on level of diplomacy, or science but common people. This way we can much more feel ourselves as part of one mankind and extend beyond limitations like nations and similar. We can learn to cooperate instead of fight, but the process is slow. I think even the gramatical simplicity and logical nature of English played important role in its adoption. We can hope that one day mankind will realize the need to bring the international communication language to a higher level of sophistication, like e.g. Latin. Well principal difference between Latin and ancient Greek is that Latin is limited to be a rational langange (understanding can be based purely on logic) while ancient Greek has other dimensions to it, when proper getting the meaning of statement requires not only logic, but also understanding cultural context of the period and region and moral views of the times, etc. This makes it more dificult and less suitable for international communication nowadays. The mankind has come to the point, when logical thinking is more or less present all around the globe, while different local views on moral standards, etc. are varying. But I think that over long time this will also change. Actually the step from English to Latin is quite natural bacause of shared vocabulary (to significant extent) with English and other European languagies, which implies also Latin and South Americas speaking Spanish or Portugese as their second language. And half of Asia is also speaking Indo-European languages with common roots with Latin. One last idea I'd like to bring up is the concept of ancient people on Indian subcontinent regarding languages. They distinguished between Sanskrit and Prakrit. This is often misunderstood by linguists as they tend to think that Prakrit was some younger derivative of Sanskrit or simply another language there. It is not so. The words Sanskrit and Prakrit do not refer even to some particular language. Sanskrit means a scientific language or standardized language that strictly reflects the subtle internal mechanics of human speech. This has always to remain the same until we as a biological species remain the same and so our mechanisms of speech. This language is universal for all of us and could be the language of science, high art and culture or even international communication. We can say that e.g. Latin was set to be a Sanskrit for Europe in medieval times. While Prakrit is the practical spoken form of language. Even if you introduce Sanskrit as an official language in some area, it will change over time and will change with various influences as well as it migrates geographically, because of the influence of so called spirit of place or genius loci. This is actually the mechanism (according to my understanding) of the differentiantion of languages into different branches like we see in Indoeuropean or Slavic languages e.g. So, I think the idea of further establishing some language in possition of unified global communication and adapting it to the real life needs is something that is and will be on the table further on. Esperanto was a rather foolish experiment that failed. English is actually the first successful trial in the global scale, and I think it will evolve further as some of the discussed aspects become more urgent. I'm sorry for a long comment, you just insired me. :) And also thank you for your great Linux related videos that are source of many useful information to me. All the best wishes!
Hello Luke,
some years ago I wanted to learn Latin. I was checking out different books and styles to learn it and got very fast the impression that one had to learn all things in Latin by hard, grammar and vocabulary. This kept me away from learning it. I have learned 3 foreign languages using a different style. I have used old school textbooks with lessons on vocabulary and a specific grammar issue. I avoided learning vocabulary by hard with flashcards. Instead I was practising them. The grammar issues I was learning and practising. All textbooks I found in Germany seem to force the learner to learn every step in grammar by hard. That was the reason I refused to learn Latin. Do you have any suugestions on my issue? Of course not regarding useful german textbooks.
Peter
Yeah get Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. You aren't frontloaded a bunch of grammar to memorize, instead you slowly pick up the grammar naturally; the book uses a method of language acquisition called the inductive contextual method.
If you already know a bit of Latin my personal recommendation is to listen to Nuntii Latini. Basically the Finnish radio is so amazing that they sometimes have the news in Latin.
I've found the book that he mentions if anyone is interested:
archive.org/details/collardaniellsfi00collrich/page/n6
I just watched a TH-cam video where the guy said:
“me, and my friends, are gunna hit the bar”.
The downside of learning Latin is having things like this grate on me.
Hey Luke, you've been making a lot of interesting videos recently related to language, so I gotta ask, have you ever looked into Generative Anthropology before? I've only looked a little bit into it and if you've already looked into it, it would be nice if you make a video about it.
I believe he hates it
wot, no heinlein reference? Luke, could you put your literature recommendations in a textual form in the description?
I love languages. I'm learning it so I can read the philosophical and scientific works in their original, as well as finding the history of language interesting, which words have evolved over time and which others remain the same etc. I think it was a mistake to remove Latin among other things from the school cariculum. The only languages my school taught when I was there were French and German, although since then they added Spanish. Learning greek would be useful too.
Wow! I looked up that book on Amazon - Lingva Latina Per Se Illvstrata - and I was in fact able to understand the dialog on the first page. Cool!
Luke, please recommend your favorite latin texts
Luke, what do you do for a living? (in a weird way, you are a big inspiration for me)
Sanskrit is an alien language unrelated to any other language on earth. They add weird endings to words.
I learned Latin using Wheelock’s and “Lingva Latina”, but it didn’t click until I read “Latin Grammar” by Bennett (1909). Attic Greek was an absolute bitch until I found White’s “First Greek Book” (1896) because my class text was utter garbage. It’s been awhile since I’ve actively read any Latin. What would you recommend for a refresher for syntax (my memory of inflections is still pretty good) & vocabulary? Should I just go through “Lingva Latina” again?
How do I install Latin on Ubuntu?
sudo apt install latin
fucking love this comment
0:58 Is that a Pilot G2 pen I see?
Edit: indeed it is, i see i have found a fellow Pilot G2 brethren.
You have a keen eye, brother.
learn Neo-Latin, there are several dialects
Isn't neo-latin essentialyl just interlingua?
that was my joke about the Romance languages being modern Latin
Jasper Zanjani Interlingua leaps immediately to mind.
I use Neo-Latin’s Germanic rewrite fork. There’s a lot of errors but hey it compiles and it runs most the time.
There are six latin languages French, Spanish, Portugese, Romanian, Latin, Italian. I married a Spanish woman, I live in Quebec and had to work (read,write,joke) in French, and tried to follow Italian. With the French,Spanish, I can follow Italian.
The addition of two other languages to my knowledge of English, has done wonders for my outlook on life. --Tolerance to people of all colours and bents, In terms of problem solving or designing software, I have done much better than my peers because I can think "outside of the confines of a one language box". More of my brain is available, used, and cultivated.
Americans, take the opportunity to immerse yourself in a second language. Spanish is the second USA language. Take advantage. It will help you learn any other language, programming languages included.
By the way, want to learn a second language. Find your religious institution that is in the second language and visit there for a while. Get a bilingual bible, or prayer book. Do the visits for a year. Before the end of that year, you will understand and follow when others speak their language, even if you can't respond
I subscribed to a second language newspaper. I spent an hour a day following the headlines, and comparing them to what I heard on the radio, or saw on TV. I also took the puzzle page and used the "search for the hidden words". I had the car radio turned to the second language. What a low cost way to master 2 or 3 languages.
What do you think of Sanskrit? I've heard that linguists say sanskrit is beautiful
I got these lessons I high school still regret not doing anything, I want to learn Latin and I will do it!
Facta, non verba!
Luke's videos are very educational. I think he picked the correct major, linguistics.
I recently started considering it because of religion, it's tempting.
Caecilius est pater
Say I got through Lingua Latina per se Ilustrata and polished my knowledge using an accompanying grammar book, what other resources would you recommend to hone more my understanding of Latin? Something like a website that conveniently compiles written Latin material could work.
Like thelatinlibrary.com/ ?
@@LukeSmithxyz
Didn't know that site existed. It's exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you.
@@LukeSmithxyz
Nice, I just recommend this site to someone else. Its one of the best out there.
I would say vocabulary IS the most important aspect, and though you say otherwise, you immediately contradict yourself by saying latin is easy bc of vocabulary similarities to english. I'm brazillian and I learned english easily bc of that as well. I also learned japanese, but even with a lot of hard work I still am at best intermediate and I am very slow at reading it (and it's not kanji's fault, even with furigana I suck). Why? because the majority of words have absolutely nothing to do with european languages so you gotta learn them all, instead of easily recognizing them by their roots.
It would be interesting to hear what you think about German. I guess German is considered "one of the trickier" western European languages, since it is somewhat reliant on cases. Do you think it could serve as mental exercise in the same way Latin does? I mean, it shares a lot of vocabulary with English, just like you said Latin does, while it could be considered more complex grammatically for English speakers.
Love these language vid, keep them up!
It has only 4 cases and 3 in practice. The verbal inflections are fairly poor too
A lot of information in English is communicated by word order, instead of inflection. But we try to treat English grammar the same way. That is why English grammar seems so arbitrary. It doesn't get to the logic of the language. We should be looking at how word order determines whether something is a "subject" or "direct object" or "indirect object," but this is not taught. Rather, the student is asked to identify these by considering the MEANING of the sentence. That is not grammar! Grammar is supposed to be an entry into a language, not a by-product of its mastery.
I have heard this multiple times before and people keep saying it to this day "Learning Latin makes it easier to learn other languages". Do you agree? Or is just something people say to justify why they taught themselves Latin in the first place?
>"Learning Latin makes it easier to learn other languages"
Believe me it's not, I'm french and if you were to show me text in Latin I wouldn't be able to understand jackshit . It's not because we share a common root with Latin that it's completely similar. For instance, for a french speaker only Italian would be incredibly easy to understand or intelligible at some extend, I can understand about 60% of what they say and I don't speak Italian where as Portuguese or Spanish it feels completely different.
Besides that'd be completely retarded to learn Latin first for afterwards move on to french.
Learning any language makes it easier to learn other languages, the more practice/experience the better you get. How much easier will vary.
hey luke as a native speaker of what i hear is an interesting language (albanian) please let me know what you might think of its structure compared to latin or any other indo european languages, also please do a video on interesting languages and why they are interesting that might be accesible to people who have not studied linguistics
I already speak russian due to my upbringing and grammatically it's all very similar. I guess I want to learn Latin to be able to read Latin and Roman stuff, even medieval hymns etc.