Is learning Latin via the Direct Method a valid option?
As the title suggests, is self teaching yourself Latin viable with the Direct Method? If so, what resources do you recommend?
I’ve recently taken an interest in the Lingua Latina series by Hans Oerberg. It genuinely looks very interesting, if there’s any content you’d recommend that complements it I’d be glad to know.
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The Direct Method is not only a valid option, for the Great Unwashed (everyone who isn't inclined to remember abstruse grammar terminology or think in terms of tabular data) it is the only option, autodidact or not. This is why Latin has a reputation of being élitist; it is being taught in exactly the wrong way, and consequently everyone drops through the cracks but a few.
The better question is: do I want immersion where Latin and only Latin is taught, or do I want a more typical foreign-language intensive (the sort of thing you get on an extended international business trip)? This will inform your approach extensively.
In the spirit of internationalism, Ørberg's Method is total immersion. He wanted a course usable on every continent, and a course that assumes any mother tongue at all Would Definitely Not Do. Mason Grey and Thornton Jenkins had no such objective; they cheerfully adopted English as an absolute prerequisite and produced a veritable treasure of knowledge in Latin for Today. Then there's Joseph Mir's Integrated Method, which is pretty much Ørberg + glossary, with the difference that the former leavens the dry historical content with modern, secular lessons (notwithstanding that it's the work of a Catholic priest). Finally, there's a semi-integral primer, reader, what-have-you that I've redacted out of articles by aforementioned Mir, Alphonse Gonzalez, et al.
The optimal approach, on the other hand, is to mix these four resources to compensate for each other's *lacunæ—*and yes, there are many lacunæ of varying deepness. Ørberg's Method has a first-"year" course (Familia Romana) beyond further reproach to "it focuses overmuch on Ancient Roman domesticity", but its second "year" consists overwhelmingly of unadapted primary sources (that you could get for the price of bugger all!). Grey and Jenkins have a four-"year" course with a shallow gradient... that you'll no doubt breeze through in half the time intended, particularly if you focus on the questions for flexing your Latin muscles (rather than your English ones). The articles in Mir's integrated course are flawless, but there are too few of them and the glossaries translate into Spanish and French, not English or German. My own primer is reflective of my pædagogical philosophy, which is that Latin is a foreign language like any other (in contradistinction to Demotic Egyptian or Babylonian—sorry, Maj. Gen. Stanley) and deserving of treatment as such.
My suggested order is: Familia Romana and Latin for Today (book one) concurrently, followed by Nova et Vetera and Latin for Today (book two, if possible) concurrently, and my (heretofore anonymous) reader for, well, reading betwixt-and-between (for vocabulary expansion). If you can get books three and four of Latin for Today, well, you can guess in what order to follow them. That'll easily get you a five-thousand-"word" vocabulary (i.e. pædico, pædicas, pædicat count as one "word"); the rest is grammar and extensive practice of reading and writing, with the ideal scene of being able to think in Latin.
You can get many of these for the price of sweet bugger all. Orberg's Familia Romana is available here. Grey and Jenkins' Latin for Today (book one) is here, with book two often available cheaply (for an American) on eBay. Mir's Nova et Vetera is here, but attention! His contributions to the (defunct) magazine Palaestra Latina are also called «Nova et Vetera» form the core of my reader-primer, so don't confuse the two. The reader is available here.
As someone who has long considered learning some other language for more than a decade-- and only recently decided to stop toying between two emotionally charged personal and family history connected options, and after attending an antiquarian book fair and realizing how many beautiful books are in Latin, I realized I could combine my love of history and desire to learn language, together!-- I'm thrilled to have stumbled into your very thorough instructions! Reddit can be wonderfully brilliant and helpful at the most odd moments in my life.
Thanks for this "order of operations" as it were.
I would highly recommend Lingua Latina and think my Latin was better served by going through those books on my own than it was from many years tearing my hair out trying to translate works I barely understood in school.
If you go to the “how to learn latin” link on this sub, you’ll find a very thorough guide to using LLPSI and a link to a discord of fellow learners. The “all the resources” link has some more general latin resources like dictionaries, websites, blogs - it’s extremely comprehensive.
I am trying to selt-learn Latin with the so called natural method. I started with Cambridge, then Familia Romana, then Cambridge again followed by several graded readers. I think my approach is a hybrid method through because I also work directly with vocabulary and use Anki.
Morover I already had memorised all paradigms even when I started with Cambridge. Cambridge II was in the original gang of books I borrowed but I couldn't read it until Cambridge one was available for borrowing. The first book I used was sort of a first indtroduction to the language in Swedish with several short excerpts and with all the paradigm tables. I also used some grammar books of which one was in Swedish. Also Cambridge's Latin grammar. That was ca 2 1/2 years ago. I've got far since then but still consider myself as a newbe. Latin is a hell of a son of a bitch of a language to learn. Even Finnish is easier.
How does Latin differ in difficulty from Finnish? (I invite an elaborate answer)
I Mostly because Finnish texts are modern in character while Latin texts are ancient in character and always highly literary; this does a hell of a difference. Also modern Latin texts are scarse. Finnish has a living child literature which is easy to approach for language learners.
II Finnish has no grammatical gender, which mitigates the difficulties somewhat.
III Finnish has a smaller core vocablurary.
IV Finnish has compound nouns which gives you thausands of words for free.
V Finnish grammar is more regular (although very large and form rich).
VI Finnish has only unpersonal passive, so it's enough to learn one passive form per tense and mode.
VII Finnish lacks a subjunctive mode. It has a conditional mode, but it is not used as often as the subjunctive in Latin.
VIII Latin case system is more degenerate than the Finnish one. For instance puellae can be plural nominative, genitive singular or genitive dative. This causes ambiguity in the text. Finnish has unique endings for all cases and uses the plural marker "i" to form form plural endings, so they are easily distinguishable from each other. However fnnish stem formation is more complicated than in Latin including consonant gradation, but you get used to it quickly.
IX Finnish has lots of swedish lone words (good for me because I'm a swede).
X Finnish has native speakers, whom you can interact with. Latin has no native speakers at all.
For a speaker of what language, exactly?