Is Latin Hard To Learn? (Helpful Content!)

Latin is considered very difficult to learn for a lot of reasons. It has complex grammar and it is very different from English so you’ll have to take a lot of time to get to grips with it. Not to mention the fact that it being a dead language makes opportunities to speak it hard to come by.

Latin is a tough language and there is no two ways about that.

At the same time, learning it is entirely possible and plenty of people have done so before you.

Learning it is going to be very different to other languages and will require even more diligent study.

Let’s find out more.

How difficult is Latin to learn?

Simply put, Latin is very difficult to learn for an English speaker.

There are many aspects of Latin that are incredibly hard for English speakers, not to mention its immensely complex grammar and systems of declension and conjugation.

Mastering Latin is very difficult and will take a lot of time and commitment.

It’s a very different question when we are talking about a dead language, but nonetheless it’s helpful to consider the language families to which both English and Latin belong.

English is a Germanic language, and most closely related to things like German, Dutch, or Norwegian.

These languages are all still Indo-European, the classification to which the vast majority of European languages belong. Latin, on the other hand, though still Indo-European, is Italic, and belongs to the Latino-Faliscan family of languages.

So, English and Latin are only distantly related. Indeed, “English” in any form we would recognize it was really never spoken alongside Latin when Latin was not a dead language.

That said, Latin remained the language of the church and of general communications for centuries after it stopped being spoken in the vernacular.

In any case, the point is that Latin is so far removed from English that you will not get much help from your knowledge of English in learning Latin.

Latin has lots of complex cases for both verbs and nouns which English lacks, meaning that you need to learn many different forms of lots of the words.

As mentioned, one of the big problems you’re going to face in learning Latin is that learning a language typically involves a long period of immersing yourself in the language by living in the country in which it is spoken.

Latin has not been a spoken vernacular for as much as 1,400 years.

How long will it take to learn Latin?

To fully master the language is going to take rather a long time—you can expect at least 600-750 hours of continuous study to be at the point that you can understand the language both written and spoken.

This equates to around 24-30 weeks in a classroom.

While this makes Latin a lot easier to learn than many other languages, it’s still going to be a difficult period of study that will trip you up at many points.

Once you’ve completed this period of study, though, you’ll still have a lot to learn.

This is where the real difficulty of Latin comes in. You will not have any chance to live in a place where Latin is used as a spoken language since it has been a dead language for 1,400 years.

There are countless resources out there to help you, but lacking the ability to use the language constantly is going to make it harder to truly master.

Most who learn Latin, then, do so in order to read it, and not to speak it.

If you are only aiming to be able to read it, then 24-30 weeks should give you a great baseline to then go and read it and get a better grip on it.

The Catholic Church, for example, still uses the language in some written communications, but even priests of the church are usually fairly reluctant to speak in it.

Is Latin harder than Greek?

As an English speaker, Latin will be somewhat easier to learn than Ancient Greek, although there will not really be a great deal in it.

Both are very difficult languages to master, but Latin will feel more familiar to you in a few ways.

Ancient Greek is ultimately older than Latin, and thus further removed from English.

Again, though, neither are going to be easy.

Is it worth it to learn Latin?

There are dozens of reasons to learn Latin despite the fact that it is no longer a living, spoken language.

For one thing, given its foundational relationship to many European languages like French, Italian, and Spanish, knowing Latin gives you a considerable head start in learning these languages and makes it much easier to master them.

If you are more interested in the historical aspect of Latin, being able to read it will give you access to the untranslated words of many figures from history, not to mention the ability to read texts which have not even been translated into English.

Learning Latin is tough, but it is more than worth it!

There are certainly many benefits to learning Latin, then.

It may be a dead language, but it is the basis for so many languages in Europe and for much of the vocabulary of many languages which do not directly descend from it.

Learning it presents many difficulties that you won’t face with other languages, but nonetheless, if you are committed and have a true desire to learn, then learning Latin is a great thing to do.

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