I've repeatedly tried and failed to learn many languages but I have gotten the furthest with Latin (maybe one month of good studying, then my depression got worse and my schedule fell apart). I tried to learn German too but the language was frustrating me. It felt so completely vague and arbitrary if that makes sense. I think I found Latin easier overall than German.But HOW do you learn a language? What exactly do you do? What are the better courses/books to learn from? I hate video lessons and Anki, so that sort of stuff is unacceptable to me. I might get back into Latin again. I liked Familia Romana and the kind of way it teaches you a language, it didn't feel boring, I just lacked structure while studying it.
>>25201668Get bookRead passageLook at translationRepeatThe only reason to not do that is if you are lazy and dont want to admit it
It's just a mater of consistency.
>>25201668I started learning English when I was 5 years old, I immersed myself in games, films and literature, and by 26 I got good enough at it to read Ulysses and understand maybe 70% of it. (plus GR at 27, and I feel like I understood less than 50%)
>>25201689Ulysses is overrated
Read along with someone reading something you know something about, or have read translation beforehand.Context is the only teacher.
>>25201668The only honest answer is "It depends on the language, and on the nature of the texts, which you are intending to read."If you're mainly looking to read scientific or technical literature, which has a very standardized method of communicating ideas, then you're best off familiarizing yourself with the base-grammar, and then with the methods prescribed by the various style-guides and other authorities. If you're mainly looking to read novels or plays with "Naturalistic Dialogue", then focusing on learning "Colloquial Xian" is probably your best approach. If you're looking to read Poetry, then it's important not only to learn to read the language, but to understand and *speak* it. Most poetry is written with the understanding that the reader will subvocalize it, and in so doing, unterstand the nuances of rhythm and pitch that come with the word-choice. So it's important to focus heavily on learning the phonetics of the language, including and especially the *prosodics* of it. If you're looking to read novels or plays with purposefully unnaturalistic, or poetic dialogue, then you basically need to master all three of the above-described skillsets. There are a few universal rules that can be followed when learning a foreign language (whether for reading, or otherwise), though. First: Focus on learning the phonology and orthography of the language first, otherwise your brain will keep instinctively misreading things, because it's yet to unlearn many habits it developed while learning English as an infant. Second: Front-Load the learning of grammar (whether that's inflexional, and derivational morphology; syntactic structures; or the proper use of 'grammar-words' in the target language), and then flesh out your vocabulary after that's done. This is best practice for two reasons:1. Learning vocabulary can be easy, but it's inherently time-consuming, whereas learning grammar can never be easy (it can be fun, if you have a certain sort of personality, but never easy), but it can be done relatively quickly if you know what you're doing, and are willing to put the work in. 2. If you know all the morphemes in a sentence individually, but have little understanding of word-order, verb-conjugations, noun-declensions, etc., then you have no hope of effectively discerning the meaning of a given sentence. However, if you know all the grammar of a sentence, and are able to discern the component parts of it, but don't know what half the words mean, you can look them up, and thus plug in the gaps fairly easily. It's the difference between "The gostak distims the doshes.", and "I [men] before go no go [le] that-within.", which is a word-for-word translation of how you say "Have we gone there before?" in Chinese. Which of those sentences do you think it would take you longer to eventually decipher?
>>25201668Did you ever hear of memory systems, I love this book you should try it, especially since its quick and light, it came from those roman authors you like>During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, many other books were written on the subject. It’s important to realize that oratory was an important career during those early days. “We should never have realized how great is the power [of a trained memory],” wrote the philosopher Quintilian, “nor how divine it is, but for the fact that it is memory which has brought oratory to its present position of glory.” The ancients also knew that memory training could help the thinking process itself. From a fragment dated about 400 B.C. we learn that “A great and beautiful invention is memory, always useful both for learning and for life.” And >Aristotle, after praising memory systems, said that “these habits too will make a man readier in reasoning.”>In 1491, Peter of Ravenna wrote The Phoenix, which became the best known of all early memory-training books and brought the art of trained memory out into the lay world.
>>25201668By reading in that language. Things you like, at that. Immersion is THE best way to learn language, supplementing with grammar and vocab along the way. Note there's a different between production and recognition. Writing/speaking is another beast entirely.
>>25201668>I have gotten the furthest with Latin (maybe one month of good studyingThat's very little time for a language, if you want to learn one you should expect to take more time. If you spent even less time with German you shouldn't be surprised if it feels "vague and arbitrary". Just keep going.>then my depression got worse and my schedule fell apartIf you can do a bit every day or almost every day you will progress faster, but if you have to stop for a while you can always take it up again later. The main thing you have to remember is that it will take time to get to a decent level and not get demoralized when you don't learn it in a month.>I hate video lessons and Anki, so that sort of stuff is unacceptable to meYou will have to see what works for you, but personally I don't like those either nor apps like duolingo etc.. I find textbooks to be much better for learning languages
>>25203765>>25201668>But HOW do you learn a language? What exactly do you do?Find a good textbook for the language you want, when you finish it start reading texts in your target language that are within your reading level. If you feel your level is still too low you can try a more comprehensive textbook to improve a bit more/ review stuff. But when you can read actual texts you should transition to them, don't get stuck forever doing learning materials. At an intermediate level you won't struggle with grammar but will encounter lots of words you don't know the meaning, the best way of improving your vocabulary is to look those words up in a dictionary as you find them in texts.>What are the better courses/books to learn from?For Latin:Familia Romana, afterwards you might need to do something more grammar heavy like Whellock's, then do easy texts like the Vulgata or Caesar and shorter poetry like Catullus and Martial.For other languages you have the Sandberg German/French/Spanish For Reading, Athenaze for Ancient Greek, the Cours de Langue et de Civilisation Françaises series for French, the Russian Through Propaganda/Poems and Paintings series, Living Italian, etc.
>>25201668Find or make targeted sentence cards as you pick up more vocabulary. It's tedious but vocabulary acquisition is still the best way to improve in a language.
>>25201668>I've repeatedly tried and failed to learn many languagesWtf does it even mean to "fail to learn a language"? Right off the bat your post shows the wrong mindset. You're mixing up mastering a language with learning a language. Classic mistake. That's your key issue, wrong mentality.You need to stop mixing up the two concepts of mastering something and learning/studying something. If you're learning 5 words one day, then you're learning that day. Learn for intellectual cultivation, not utility. Learn for yourself, not for anyone else's opinion or for comparing yourself to anyone else, or comparing yourself to perfection. Get into the meditative zen bubble where you're alone with one page, right then that page is all there is to know in the universe, once you've learned that page you've learned all there is to know. School takes away this magic. It’s a matter of taking it in manageable chunks. Comparing yourself with perfection is the wrong approach. You compare yourself with your previous self. People are taught helplessness by public school.I learn languages to read. There are books that specialize in reading.To get more structure for Familia Romana you have Neumann Companion.https://leftychan.net/edu/src/1608528074592-0.pdfYou can also try reading parsed books like:https://archive.org/details/CommentariesOnTheGallicWarCaesarCompletelyParsedBookIFor German you have:https://annas-archive.gl/md5/d041c9cfe501cacecdac11cdc3af46b3https://archive.org/details/progressivegerma00adleThis is my favorite German graded reader. There are many graded readers for German, it's a great way to learn for reading, just find one that's the right level for you.https://annas-archive.gl/md5/4402dfb824853ccf06d456a09cc8f009https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044102864030https://archive.org/details/deutsch-nach-der-naturmethodehttps://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf8XN5kNFkhc0J7rC_vQMUBIVdaj---V5https://archive.org/details/interlinear-german-reading-book-hahn-thimm-1901-marlboroughhttps://archive.org/details/erstesdeutsches00wormgooghttps://annas-archive.gl/md5/9224ada56a31a157e0942e86c26bd6a6
>>25203802Sandberg's French for Reading kind of sucks, it's riddled with typos. The other books in the series I think are better.
You might want to try French, Italian or Spanish. These languages are easy.Frenchhttps://archive.org/details/childsillustrate00keethttps://annas-archive.gl/md5/98ae65df102363389e715697b2832775https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000006968175https://archive.org/details/tudeprogressived00sterhttps://archive.org/details/longmansillustra00bidghttps://archive.org/details/jensen-arthur-le-francais-par-la-methode-naturehttps://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf8XN5kNFkhdIS7NMcdUdxibD1UyzNFTPhttps://archive.org/details/progressivepro00collhttps://archive.org/details/selectionofonehu00perrhttps://archive.org/details/premierlivredele00unseItalianhttps://archive.org/details/LitalianoSecondoIlMetodoNaturahttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf8XN5kNFkhfQonvCySTrKEUV742WzshJhttps://annas-archive.gl/md5/c978003645a26b54f7950b316dc17c48https://archive.org/details/storiesfromital00panigoogSpanishhttps://annas-archive.gl/md5/f8024a0105df20bae5f2b311c401917bhttps://archive.org/details/firstspanishbook00wormrich
>>25203856One more for Spanish:https://annas-archive.gl/md5/70a87ad182361704a158ebf9e96cb2ed
>>25203840one more for German, but it's not really beginner level:https://annas-archive.gl/md5/b648b2504602852dc5efc8a7311de13e
>>25203857two more for Spanishhttps://archive.org/details/allspanishmethod0000guilhttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf8XN5kNFkheNPqxA2mTuX65COM1R3S90https://archive.org/details/pocoapocoanelem00avilgooghttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLf8XN5kNFkhe4D2BPBKaUb2JvDHuzAGPI
I posted a few interlinears already. Interlinears are great. Here are more:https://www.latinum.org.uk/shadowing/interlinear-method
>>25203847I don't recall the typo problem when I used it, maybe you used an older edition or a poorly scanned version? Some scans use software to extract the text and can cause "typos" by misunderstanding letters when the image quality is low, I've run into pdf files with that issue before. Anyway the textbook itself is very good and you can find versions without the typos floating around on the internet.
>>25201829How dare ye!
>>25202936The same shit Yates and Ricci did?
>>25203976No. I'm not talking about OCR. There is only one edition of the French book in that series. It's a known problem that is full of proofreading errors. Anyway I have to run.
>>25204010There are a few alternatives to try:https://annas-archive.gl/search?index=&page=1&sort=&display=&q=French+for+reading
>>25204010There were no major revisions but the book was edited several times, for example there was one in 1997 which appears as the 4th edition in some places, so it's possible that that kind of errors was removed. I've used the book a while ago so I can't recall exactly about the typos, but at any rate if there were any they didn't cause any hindrance.
>>25201668start with nouns, and get a children's book in the language you want to learn.
>>25204194No, it wasn't edited. There were multiple printings, but only one edition. My screenshot which contains errors is the 1997 printing. You're just a sloppy reader.
>>25201668>then muh depression got worseThe answer to your question is: stop being such a faggot.
>>25204316What errors do you see in the screenshot? If you mean the correspond/corresponds thing it's because sometimes it's talking about two suffixes and sometimes only one, that's not a typo.
>>25203840I honestly really hated Familia Romana, because despite reading some of the chapters 14 times (actual number, not all in a row either) I still wouldn't understand them. I think I'm just too retarded or stupid to just pick up a language through context. Maybe I need some kind of very dry grammar heavy course instead?
You learn to read by reading, of course. The trick is just to start with the most basic shit you can find and gradually increase complexity, so you don't get frustrated with looking up every single word in a sentence. Software like LWT/Lute helps you make it more systematic (keeping track of words and when you last read a text).For me the roadmap usually goes: >beginner textbook like Assimil/Colloquial that has a ton of text/audio, skip the exercises>graded readers (A1/A2/B1/B2, beginnner/intermediate/advanced, etc.)>tv shows/movies/youtube with TL subs (language reactor for quick lookups)>easier translated fiction like Harry Potter or other popular genre fiction>news/non-fiction>easier novels by natives i.e. krimi/thriller/mystery slop>pretentious/"high brow" novels by natives>specialized domains with their own special vocab i.e. science, tech, cooking etc.So really, it's all about choosing the right content so that you're challenging yourself but not so much that it's frustrating and you quit. Re-reading also helps a lot, especially in the beginner stages, you rarely acquire a word the first time you look it up, it requires repetition. Also, it takes time and patience to git gud, 6-12 months before you're fully comfortable reading without a dictionary. Good luck.
>>25204442I don't understand one thing. HOW do I actually read it?When it comes to Latin, Familia Romana, I didn't ever know HOW to study, what my routine should be. WHAT I should precisely do every day. All people do is seemingly just refer you to this book and to "read, do the exercises, read old chapters again sometimes" but I don't understand what this means. What I need is a very strict routine of very specific things. Like, I don't just "read", but I read in this way or this way this specific chapter for this specific amount of time today, something else the next day. I need THIS. I'm not sure if I'm autistic or something, but I don't know HOW I am actually supposed to study. HOW? The ACTUAL things that you DO. All people tell you is to just study with it.I don't want to find out "what works for me". I don't want to experiment. I don't want to have the freedom to choose what I prefer. I want something very specific.For example. Today, I must: read chapter x y amount of times, the first time in one way, the others in other ways for one hour. Then, I must do the exercises for one hour. Then something else. I mean something more precise than this, with a specific schedule for the day that I am studying, say, that I do this and that on the 10th day of studying. But I can't find any examples of this whatsoever.
>>25204534The smallest unit of studying is going through one sentence with the singular goal of understanding it, grasping the message. The step-by-step of what's happening in my head might look like this:>try to understand a sentence>if nothing new or confusing, great, move on to the next one>otherwise, lookup any unknown words then try to understand again>if i understand, move on>otherwise, translate the full sentence using some service and come back and try to understand how the sentence relates to the translation, try to fill in the missing gap in your comprehension, notice patterns etc.>if you still can't wrap your head around it, accept it and move on to the next sentence, it's just beyond your current levelOk, so that's one sentence. A short text is maybe 50 sentences. You read it once and do all the lookups, then you re-read it the next day, in 3 days, in a week, etc. to review. It's completely up to you how many sentences you want to go through in a single session. Maybe that's one chapter in your textbook, maybe it's one page of a graded reader, maybe it's a 30 minute episode of some TV show. It's very scalable and you know you're making progress because you're understanding more and more complex sentences, acquiring more words, exerting less mental effort, getting faster at understanding and so on. Eventually, you just understand everything you encounter, and that's it.
>>25204534>When it comes to Latin, Familia Romana, I didn't ever know HOW to study, what my routine should be. WHAT I should precisely do every day.Read the text with the side notes as they come along (or the notes first and the corresponding part of the text after), then the grammar and the exercises. Depending how much time you're putting in you can do the whole chapter in a day, or else doing the the text one day and the grammar and exercises on the second, or one section of the text per day and so on. You just need to do it in order, how much you want to do in a sitting is up to how much you want do. Also if you don't understand something just keep trying instead of glossing over, if you really need look it up online. If you need a routine try doing it by chunks of time, like you'll sit for an hour a day and go as much as you can in that time.
>>25201668I learned Spanish and French for reading. One mistake I made was I focused too much on reading and writing, granted that was my objective, but now learning pronunciation is much harder because of all the habits built up. First, I watched a bunch of YT videos and movies; start off easy, and stuff with subtitles. You won't understand much at first but you must stick through it, watch a second time, a third time, etc. For French, I watched a lot of political debates (this was during the presidential election), political speeches, documentaries etc. Just watch what interests you, you can start with children shows if you find it too hard. For reading you can do children's books as your first ones, I did Le Petit Prince for French; then, you can move on to harder things: I followed it by L'Etranger. I used Anki too but honestly I don't find it to be necessary, I'm now learning Portuguese without using it and have had no problems. The most important thing of all is to be consistent and study everday.
>>25204427Try neumann companion, and the parsed book I posted, and something like this:https://archive.org/details/collardaniellsfi00collrichThere are many methods. Try different things, see what suits you.
>>25204349
>>25204442>>pretentiousYou don't know what that word means.
>>25204534There is no one way to study. You have to experiment. See what works for you and what doesn't. What you enjoy and what you don't. But I will give you a routine you can try.1) Read one chapter in Neumann Companion.2) Read the corresponding chapter in Familia Romana. Use videos or audio files to hear the pronunciation. 3) Do the exercises of that chapter in Familia Romana.4) Do the corresponding exercises in Exercitia Latina.5) Read the corresponding chapter of Colloquia Personarum. Use videos or audio files to hear the pronunciation.6) Reread the chapter in Familia Romana.Everything is here:https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/528296959/#528300719https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/528296959/#528300775You could also try Latin by the Natural Method by William Most, Oxford Latin Course, Cambridge Latin Course, Ecce Romani or Jenney's First Year Latin, these might suit you better. There are others too. Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata is kind of messy.
Another good book for Frenchhttps://archive.org/details/easyfrenchreadin00fish
>>25201668>tried and failed to learn many languagesthis speaks volumes.
>>25201668>It felt so completely vague and arbitrary if that makes sense. I kind of get arbitrary because of how things are gendered, but vague, really? German is much more precise than, let's say, English or Japanese.
>>25205008Found the pretentious book reader.
>>25205006Yeah, that's fair. I checked it and the rest of the section has a few more of the same typos, apparently they accidently switched almost all of the masculine suffixes. Still the book is far from unusable
