I am excited to commit to learning Latin in 2026 with the help of Beeminder! I’d really love to talk to anyone else who is studying Latin or has had past success with the language. What worked for you, what would you do differently, etc! Koneida, I don’t seem to be able to @ you, but you piqued my interest saying Latin was a win for you!
Latin has always interested me, with the way it lives everywhere in English today in the most unexpected of places. I’d also love to read the works of classical Roman authors in the original.
However, my language learning success so far with Japanese has been from approaching the language with a comprehensible input/sentence mining mindset: getting LOTS of native media input through anime, manga, youtube etc, and making Anki cards of pretty much everything I found. Latin is a bit trickier in that regard because the extant corpus is relatively small, and a lot of it is literary/less accessible for beginners: and while there ARE comp input creators out there, the choices and materials are limited.
So I’m going to try to take advantage of the resources that exist, and on my travels I found this amazing spreadsheet of reading material organised roughly by level created by reddit user justinmeister, which I’d like to work my way through! But I’m resigned to the fact that Latin might need a different approach (namely, a lot more focused grammar study, whereas with Japanese I mostly learnt grammar just from osmosis).
Right now my idea is to couple a formal grammar resource (maybe Wheelock’s? maybe D’ooge’s Elements of Latin? Recommendations welcome!) with daily reading input from the Legentibus app– they’ve just dropped their PC version, which makes it a lot more convenient for Anki card making!. The Familia Romana (immersion approach/completely in Latin) textbook is on there in full, although I also have a physical copy too.I’ve made a Beeminder goal to track time spent in Legentibus and another auto-data one to make sure I touch it daily.
Right now, the grammar is feeling ludicrously intimidating, but I am trying to reassure myself that if Roman babies could learn it, I can too. Surely I’m smarter than a Roman baby. Maybe even two.
To me it looks like you are already extremely well set up for success! My moderate success story took around five years and basically went: Wheelocks → Familia Romana → Years of Confused Intermediate Suffering → diligent daily Anki → PODCASTS! → SPOKEN LATIN!
What worked for me:
Memorizing the noun + verb forms! I know this is out of fashion, and a few years ago I wouldn’t have recommended this, but I’m pretty sure that getting to a place where I could just sit down and write out all the noun and verb charts systematically and then be able to look at a verb in context and name a bunch of facts about it really helped me. I get that the cost may be too high for others, and it’s obviously not the only approach, but if you have any inclination in this direction, I’d follow it for as long as it feels good. It pays off.
The Lingua Latina series: I read Familia Romana many times, added everything to Anki, listened to the audio constantly, etc. All the supplementary texts are great.
The Latin podcasting world: Once I could understand it, the Quomodo Dicitur podcast was probably the primary thing that catapulted me out of the intermediate doldrums. I listened to every episode more than once.
Having someone to talk to in Latin: Late in the process, I paid for a once-a-week tutor who was a confident spoken Latinist. We read Roma Aeterna together and discussed it in Latin alone.
Using Anki!
What didn’t work for me:
Jumping too soon to the second main book in the Lingua Latina series, Roma Aeterna. I made many attempts at it over the years, and I still have it in my bathroom, lol. I did technically finish it eventually but it was without pleasure.
Not having an ordered list of texts like you have. Like you said, Latin suffers from a lack of intermediate texts. It can be extremely demoralizing. It’s demoralizing even now. I feel like by modern-language standards, I am fluent in Latin. I could spend all day talking in Latin about any topic (and have!). I’m not at native fluency. But one can be fluent in English without being able to read, I dunno, Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Studying alone. I did my best when I had people to talk to, when I was connected to the spoken Latin world, when I felt accountable to teachers or students, etc.
These days I don’t use my Latin as much as I used to – I’m very focused on learning Hebrew. I feel like I’m waiting for some text to call out to me. Seneca could, probably? I still crack open his letters many days.
I’m always surprised I put in all this effort and got to this level of fluency and I’m left feeling like, “Wait, what did I want to read in Latin again?” It turns out, I think, that I most enjoy the way it affected my feelings about English – the way the history of the language bubbles up naturally and pleasurably.
Thank you for the thorough reply, and I’m glad to hear I seem to be on the right track! Being able to talk freely in Latin like you describe would be a dream, I would be so excited to reach that level.
I have to come to terms that there is going to need to be some upfront grinding with regard to the conjugations/declinations. It feels a bit similar to front-loading kanji study in Japanese, its boring and it sucks but it makes everything afterwards feel easy. I need to figure out the best way to do this, maybe just old school with lots of writing repetitions is the way to go?
I’ve also heard similar things about that gap between FR and RA being massive, I’m hoping to be able to plug it with lots of input from graded readers and adapted stories on Legentibus and elsewhere. Keeping playful and curious is my priority, if it starts to feel like a chore then I know I won’t stick with it.
It’s interesting to hear that you don’t use your Latin much: but I think that no learning is wasted learning, and I feel like learning a language teaches a lot about learning in general, and about oneself– I wonder if you would agree.
Thank you for the recommendations and encouragement! I am feeling even more hype!