The pile of books in the photo above depicts a "Latin factory." The red book is my Virgil. The open book behind it is a dictionary. The shiny taped-up blue book in the back is a well-used grammar. And then of course there is the beat-up relic of my original Virgil word-list notebook, which I photographed to show solidarity with your reference-book dependence.
After my Sibylline prophecy that it will take seven years (magic number) to learn Latin, I decided I should clarify. There are stages of learning Latin. You are in one of them. You may have to look up everything in a dictionary or Wheelock at this point, but that is the respected method of classicists everywhere. Eventually, when you finish Wheelock, you may become a whiz at Caesar, Seneca, Virgil, or Catullus, but it takes practice, practice, practice, and experience. Will you reach a magic moment when all conjugations, declensions, grammar, and syntax converge? Yes, many times. But then a few sentences later you may find yourself doing hard work again. It can be humbling. It is, however, always challenging and fun. You will eventually find yourself reading paragraphs or stanzas without consciously translating.
See this faded, stained notebook? This is the ancient receptacle of my original Aeneid Book 2 word lists. When you translate a Latin author, it is necessary to keep a running word list. You look up words you don't know, and often words you do know when they express a unique meaning in a specific passage. You work from your word lists to translate. These two pages covered Book II lines 39-104. I looked up almost 60 words.
When you translate even a few lines of the Aeneid, make a word list. Once you have the vocabulary, you can use Wheelock to identify grammatical forms, which are the backbone of your translation. The word lists can also help you prove your translation, or show where you went astray.
No comments:
Post a Comment