• Skunk@jlai.lu
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    1 month ago

    Cum gallo et gladio.

    That’s the only thing I know in Latin cause I want it to be my family coat of arms.

    It means “with a rooster and a sword”, but you need to understand French to discover the power of that sentence: “Avec un coq et une épée”, or as famously said in slang, “Avec ma bite et mon couteau suisse” (with my dick and Swiss Army knife).

    It a saying we use to say that we don’t need preparation or equipment to do something.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 month ago

    I learned Latin in school for several years; I only learned to understand and translate it, not actively speak or write it, and have by now forgotten some of it.

    I do not know any Ancient Greek at all, I might recognize some words from other languages.

  • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    Latin: I can still bang out the five declensions and the four conjugations in my sleep. Trying to read a text, the sentence structure always finds ways to trip me up.

    Greek: very patchy, I know a lot of words but my grammar is shite

  • flashgnash@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    The only Latin I know is from the thaumcraft mod

    Surprisingly it gives you a lot of the roots you need to figure out words in other languages

  • Vanth@reddthat.com
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    1 month ago

    Millennial. I had to take a root words class in grade school, with the promise it would help us become lawyers and doctors. It did not. It has helped me win a couple pub trivia rounds.

  • Mothra@mander.xyz
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    1 month ago

    I am a native Spanish speaker which makes me able to pick up the meaning of about 30-40% of words in Latin, although the semantics often confuse me. As for Ancient Greek (and some Latin words that look nothing like Spanish too) I’ve picked up a fair amount of terms from scientific terms, names and mythology.

    I don’t know how much all this translates into, I’ve never formally studied either.

  • MoonMelon@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    I was forced to take 4 years of Latin and I’ve basically reverted to “Salve Magistra, Italia Peninsula Est” levels. It never clicked with me. Every week was a struggle, I was a terrible student, and I remember jack shit. At best it helped me remember the names of stuff in anatomy class, which was actually interesting. I think the way it was taught is the worst fucking way to learn a language, like most 19th century educational theory.

  • NomenCumLitteris@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    Latin: I’m reading at a level of a second year student. Noun and adjective declensions are solid, but I am trying to hone in on different tenses of complicated verb forms, such as imperfect passive conjunctive. I can only speak Latin with small phrases derived from vocabulary and familiar texts I’ve read. My speech is quite limited since there is no one around me that has an interest in Latin, so I have to piece together and memorize what I want to say before saying it.

    Ancient Greek: I know only the alphabet.

    Both: I am a self learner in my adult years and did not take either language via schooling.