Cum verbo loquendi non accusativus linguae, sed ablativus usurpatur. Lingua enim est quasi instrumentum quo loquaris.
Non loquor ea lingua.
How long did it take you to learn Latin?
- Thread starter soror mystica
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Non loquor ea lingua.
Another question that just occurred to me. I've heard it said before that a good marker of fluency in reading a language is whether one can "skim" it as people generally can in their native tongue. Do you find this is possible in Latin -- or does the very nature of the language (where meaning is generally more diffused) make it more difficult than English?Just coming across this thread (which is a couple years old) now, brings to mind an interesting question. Of the people who posted to it, who felt they weren't "fluent" in Latin (by whatever definition) 2-3 years ago, and who are still on the forum:
Have things changed? Do you still feel the same way? Or do you feel like you can read a Latin text with the same level of ease that you can read, say, English, or your native tongue (if it is different from English)? When you write something in Latin do you feel like you're thinking it up in your native language first and then translating, or just putting your thoughts directly into Latin?
I'm curious to see people's responses on this.
Mmm... I hardly ever want to skim a Latin text, because generally, when I pick one up, it's because I want to read it all. Now I guess it must have happened to me a few times, when, say, I looked at a thread where someone had posted a rather big chunk of text, and I didn't have time but just looked at it a bit to see what it was all about... To be honest I have no precise memory of it, lol, as it isn't something I've ever really payed attention to; but I suppose I'd be able to skim a text and gather only a few important points — I don't see why I couldn't, at any rate.
For prose, at least, I can skim through without stopping. Not as easy as English, that's for sure, but that's due more to being heavily exposed to the latter than to any inherent difficulty in the former, I think.