LINGVALATINA - Calling all Latin pupils!

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

There are two things I want from this thread.
First, if you are reading from my Latin thread, then post your name here. Tell me who you are and why you're learning Latin. Any other information you wish to provide is also welcomed. I will keep a record of who is learning what on this first post.

Second, you can discuss the class here. Give me feedback. Anything that can improve about the class, let me know. Have I made any mistakes in spelling that you've noticed? If you have questions, post them here. You never know; one of your classmates may be able to answer your question too. As I've said before, don't be afraid to ask questions! No one will be thought of as less intelligent for doing so.

DISCIPVLI:
Ivan
Rea
Chris
Hermoine
Becka
Ookami

 

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

Excellent! My first student!
Tell me, how are the lessons going so far? Are you able to understand everything? Is everything going smoothly?  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

Considering my experience with French much more so than with any other Romance language, I often use it in examples to express Latin grammatical ideas that have descended into the modern day; I love those set-ups that have roots in Latin and suddenly make so much sense because we know their literal meaning now. I think you'll enjoy them. ;3

Welcome, new student! I am very happy to see that you are following along well. I hope that my teaching method doesn't conflict too much with the teaching method from your school. We shall see how things go.

EDIT!
I have added two new things to previous lessons:
In the lesson about Latin pronunciation:
"NOTE! In some texts or modern transliterations, the æ diphthong is often written as 'ae', which is obvious. In some of them, however, the -a- is completely left off and æ will be written as just e. Watch out for that."

In the most recent lesson concerning the noun cases, particularly the dative case:
"I should point out that this only concerns the definition after the first semicolon, i.e. if you are trying to "rule over" something. Everything in the first half must be III ACC. In other words, if you want to say something like "I command you!" then "you" must be III ACC. If you are trying to say "I will rule the world!" then "world" must be V DAT. Watch out for that!"  

[gravitybutton]

Hey! I'm Chris, and I've been really rather interested in Latin lately. I can speak Spanish and a *bit* of French, but I find it very interesting to look at the root language and see how it influenced the later ones. I've enjoyed the lessons so far, and you make things easier to remember wink I'd like to take an independent study of Latin in school, but I need to get through my current one in French first :/ Whatever. I hope you continue!  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

His Majesty Christopher

Hey! I'm Chris, and I've been really rather interested in Latin lately. I can speak Spanish and a *bit* of French, but I find it very interesting to look at the root language and see how it influenced the later ones. I've enjoyed the lessons so far, and you make things easier to remember wink I'd like to take an independent study of Latin in school, but I need to get through my current one in French first :/ Whatever. I hope you continue!

Of course I shall continue! The show must go on! I must also add your name to the list of students. Yay, student number three!  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

Hermonie Urameshi

I'm Hermonie. I've been learning Latin for about 6 years now, but barely got anywhere with it because I was more interested Japanese and exploring any other language I could at the time. We started learning because our mum wanted us to learn.

I'm sticking with Church Latin, though. razz But that's because I'm Catholic. And I find it more likely based on my experiences with modern Romance languages especially Italian.

I haven't gotten too much of a chance to read your lessons. The pronunciation is about as far as I got because I have a headache. I've never heard of y and u being pronounced that way...interesting...

Hello! Before anything, I must point out that if you learn Latin from me, there are going to be subtle differences in the way Latin is used here and by the Catholics. Perhaps I will make side notes of the differences, though I can hardly say I know all of them. It mostly boils down to ecclesiastical Latin ignoring some of the rules, such as placing pronouns in the nominative case when they should be other cases, placing the consonants in prepositions where they should be absent, and so on. You might be able to consider ecclesiastical Latin halfway between actual classical Latin and Italian. That would certainly explain why you've never heard of those letters being pronounced that way.
Anyway! Welcome, welcome. I hope you enjoy the lessons and I hope they are easy enough to follow. We shall see!  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

Hermonie Urameshi

The only differences I have heard of are pronunciation and certain words. When it came to grammar, I thought that was just literary style.

Even in my books, Classical doesn't have two vowels. I own Wheelock's, Oxford and my brother has one the 1930's. Those are the Classical. The Ecclesiastical are Henle and Scanlon and various websites. None ever mentioned grammatical differences or those two vowels. They said there were long and short vowels...

I can only assume they were trying to make it simpler for you to wrap your brain around it all.
In my own experience, I run into church-goers who use certain expressions in Latin and I take note of minor grammatical differences. I'll ask why or if they notice, and the usually say that they don't, very similarly to what you're telling me right now. As the modern Romance languages go, they are just simplified version of Latin for the most part, and I assume the same can be said for your books; they simplify it to make it easier.
Pronunciation is also not a particularly big deal when learning Latin for obvious reasons, so that is probably a greatly contributing factor as to why they tell you such concerning the vowels.
Alas, these are only theories. I can't really say for sure.  

[Tc Frorleivus Almus Ph]

Hermonie Urameshi

Just curious, where did you learn Latin?

I'm thinking that some of the grammatical differences may be mostly do to literary works. They're in every language. Like, the language you use for non-fiction works is different from what you use for fiction, and even within fiction, writing styles, including grammar can be different, and all this is different from the style used for poetry and verse.

I'd have to actually see some classical vs ecclesiastical works to get more perspective, but so far, I haven't seen any differences...

I learned from quite a number of sources over the years and a large part of it through trial and error. I haven't really read many of the literary works except for the Illiad, which was in Greek, not Latin.
A random example would be the phrase "priori ex nihilo quod ex deo". Both "nihilo" and "deo" are one case, but "quod" (which is functioning improperly in this case) is a separate case; it does not change to match either nihilo or deo, despite being linked to both of them. Likewise, "ex" shouldn't have the -x unless the next word begins with a vowel. Both words begin with a consonant, but the -x is still present regardless. "Priori e nihilo quo e deo." That's what I'm getting at; little things like that, where the rules are just kind of ignored.