Write in latin

[SpeedPocok5]

Today I read about someone who was used to take notes in latin, I guess, how can someone achieve that? For me is very very difficult.

I also read that when you write in latin you achieve your self latin.

 

[Godmy]

Today I read about someone who was used to take notes in latin...

I did...

"achieve yourself Latin" <- I suppose you mean "achieve fluency in Latin"?

Well, I mean, once you become fluent in one foreign language, then it's no big deal to become fluent in another to some degree of correctness. I mean, the mental process necessary for the fluency is similar: at the beginning you need to be creative, you need to be able to say something with the words, vocabulary and grammar you control well. More creative you are, better you can express yourself even with limited "mental resources" for that language. More frequently you do it, the bigger "dictionary" of "ready to use" phrases & grammatical structures you build for yourself and easier it becomes to use them again. Later on, you find that most of your creative 'creations' (pleonasm) were, in fact, unidiomatic, and "unnative" while maybe grammatically strictly 'correct' and you start composing sentences in the target language not by creativity but by a clever combination of your previous knowledge of native phrases and idioms, so in the result your text (with some a mistake here and there) may look and read quite native.


Anyway, for starters, you need to be able to compose grammatical Latin sentences. My recommendation for a beginner is to take some beginner's Latin text (if you read the Lingua Latina Per se Illustrata book, that is quite a good source), translate it as best as you can into your native language and then translate it back without looking to Latin. Compare the original with your translation, find serious mistakes, if you count too many of them, attempt the translation again and again until you achieve a reasonable perfection.

And then be creative... read a lot the native litterature (Roman litterature for Latin; but some Erasmus won't hurt either), use the phrases you have learnt in your own compositions, and so on and so forth.

 

[Godmy]

translate it as best as you can into your native language

Here I'm not completely honest. In fact, the translation doesn't need to be "best possible" at all, it just needs to translate the meaning well, but if you bastardize your native language word order to keep the Latin one (to make the Latin translation then easier), if you use non-standard words in your native language, if you even put little hints in brackets with the first few consonants of the target Latin word you want your-language word to be translated with, all these "cheats" will work in your advantage too! And in fact, it may be more fun. It did for me...

There is some price to be paid to make such a weird and stylistically maybe even "wrong" translation ... and you also remove some of the work from your future self in the retranslation, but it may make the whole process faster, more dynamic, more fun... If you like typing like me, if you touch type (if you are a typomaniac), then making the whole process as automatic as possible with you having to pause in the process as little as possible WILL work into your advantage (even with the price to be paid!).

 

[Bitmap]

Today I read about someone who was used to take notes in latin, I guess, how can someone achieve that?

I think most people just use Latin words in accordance with Latin grammar ...

 

[SpeedPocok5]

I did...

"achieve yourself Latin" <- I suppose you mean "achieve fluency in Latin"?

Well, I mean, once you become fluent in one foreign language, then it's no big deal to become fluent in another to some degree of correctness. I mean, the mental process necessary for the fluency is similar: at the beginning you need to be creative, you need to be able to say something with the words, vocabulary and grammar you control well. More creative you are, better you can express yourself even with a limited "mental resources" for that language. More frequently you do it, bigger "dictionary" of "ready to use" phrases & grammatical structures you build for yourself and easier it becomes to use them again. Later on, you find that most of your creative 'creations' (pleonasm) were, in fact, unidiomatic, and "unnative" while maybe grammatically strictly 'correct' and you start composing sentences in the target language not by creativity but by a clever combination of your previous knowledge of native phrases and idioms, so in the result your text (with some a mistake here and there) may look and read quite native.


Anyway, for starters, you need to be able to compose grammatical Latin sentences. My recommendation for a beginner is to take some beginner's Latin text (if you read the Lingua Latina Per se Illustrata book, that is quite a good source), translate it as best as you can into your native language and then translate it back without looking to Latin. Compare the original with your translation, find serious mistakes, if you count too many of them, attempt the translation again and again until you achieve a reasonable perfection.

And then be creative... read a lot the native litterature (Roman litterature for Latin; but some Erasmus won't hurt either), use the phrases you have learnt in your own compositions, and so on and so forth.

I meant that I think that each one adquire his own latin style.