Is Latin Hard?

Question

Is Latin hard to learn?

Answer 1

That depends on some factors, like which is your maternal language. If it comes from Latin, like Spanish, French, or Italian, it will not be so hard, but if it comes from a different root it can be difficult.
Some students, in an earlier time, said that the greatest marvel that the ancient Romans did was to speak Latin. Consider that plural is formed in 6 different ways, depending on the end of the word.
For example: plural of vertebra is "vertebrae"
Plural of alumnus is "alumni", syllabus "syllabi"
Plural of atrium is "atria"

Answer 2

It's not particularly hard, especially if you know a bit of some other romance language(s) already -- Spanish & Italian are particularly close.

If you don't have any such background knowledge, then the Latin vocab will be much more new to you, and in that sense will come a bit less naturally; however, even here, building up some basic reading and writing skills in the language is not super-hard. The most difficult part would probably be getting used to the declension/case system, since English doesn't really have one (only remnants left from Old English), but then the Latin system is no more complicated than that of any number of other languages. Gender of nouns, too, is new if the only language you know is English, but again, is as simple or simpler than grammatical gender in many other languages.

Another factor to keep in mind, which can impact on the difficulty of learning the language, is that Latin is "dead," so immersion &/or oral/aural practice is hard to come by :-). If you take a course, you'll probably be reading aloud and so on nevertheless, but it still won't be quite the same *type* of language learning that is a possibility for, say, Spanish or French; usually Latin is much more book-oriented, grammar-oriented. Anyway, this may or may not change how easy or hard it is for you, depending on how you best learn languages.

All in all, I'd say that every language has its specific difficulties and easinesses, but Latin is no harder than many others and shouldn't feel intimidating.
Good luck with it, and have fun!

Answer 3

It is not overly difficult, but because the language is inflected you must have excellent grammar. You need to know subject, direct object, indirect object, prepositional and possessive uses, clauses and more clauses - Latin is not reliant upon word order like English is. Also, the use of the subjunctive in Latin will curl your hair! English has nothing on it. But that said, it really isn't too hard. If you have good English grammar, then you should not have too many problems. (BTW, "should" in the previous sentence is in the subjunctive - it is a conditional clause.) Just one example of the many uses Latin assigns to it. I really enjoyed it. But like another person said, it is more book-intensive than other languages, not spoken so much. It just depends on how you learn best - some do better with the written word, while others do better verbally. If you fall into the latter category, then you may find it harder to learn than others would. Here is a website for learning Latin and Greek with free downloadable grammars and readers:

http://www.textkit.com/

Answer 4

No!
I don't know latin because I have no one to teach me, but what I have picked up from movies and dictionaries and such is pretty simple
Why?
Because Latin constitutes the base of A LOT of modern-day truths
Of course, a teacher would REALLY come in handy

Answer 5

Yes. Compared to like esperanto it indeed is.

The conjugations are difficult. I have never actually learnt it but one says you have to practically learn the conjugation for every verb. There are lots of different word endings, et cetera.

Answer 6

well latin is hard ay first but than it gets easyer

Answer 7

If you have the intrest , no language is hard to learn .

Answer 8

I shouldn't answer this, because I think whatever language I learn is easy.