how long to self-study latin?

Test Preparation
1

<p>just for kicks. how long would it take to learn latin on one’s one if, say, you were already fluent in french or spanish?</p>

2

<p>Very very very long</p>

3

<p>yes i wouldn’t advise it. the subject is hard enough even in a class with a teacher.</p>

4

<p>Latin is several steps up from French or Spanish. Maybe even a mile or two up.</p>

<p>It was easy for me, but languages are easy for me, and I don’t speak Spanish nor French.</p>

<p>In Latin, the grammar is incredibly complex.</p>

<p>For example, I’ll use possibly the easiest word in Latin: puella (which means girl).</p>

<p>In English, we say “beautiful girl, more beautiful girl, most beautiful girl.”
In Latin, it’s “puella pulchra, puella pulchrior, puella pulchrissima.”
In English, we say “of the girl, of the more beautiful girl, of the most beautiful girl.”
In Latin, it’s “puella pulchrae, puellae pulchrioris, puella pulchrissimae.”
Plura: “puellarum pulchrarum, puellarum pulchriorum,” and so forth.</p>

<p>But the words come in sets, and the endings are different for all of them.</p>

5

<p>Well I’ve self-studied latin for 3-4 years, and it’s a lot harder than Spanish. but there’s no pronounciation issues, unlike french. the grammar is really complex, but really organized, and there are only like four irregular verbs you will ever see up to AP level, compared with 100s in Spanish. For an analytical, clear-cut person like me, Latin is fun and like a puzzle.</p>

6

<p>There was one senior who self-studied Latin and took both AP Latin classes offered by my school AT THE SAME TIME. It was only his first year in Latin, and he was easily one of the smartest kids in my class. This was after he had self-taught French and Spanish and had taken all the AP classes offered… so my point is, if you’re extremely good at languages and have already taken AP level French and Spanish courses, it might only take you a few months to master Latin. It’s mostly memorization anyway. But for an average person, it would take his whole high school career.</p>

7

<p>Yeah, Latin is extremely organized. Just by looking at the word, you can tell if it’s the direct object, in the possessive, the subject, singular, plural.</p>

<p>It’s a beautiful, and rather easy to speak (every letter is pronounced the same each time, unless it has a macron on top, which makes it a long vowel).</p>

<p>Like cant<em>wait</em>to<em>leave</em>ky said, it’s a lot like a puzzle.</p>