Learn Latin Prayers

Learning And Loving Latin Are Different Things

Some have experienced Latin studies. Like any language, Latin contains building blocks which a user must assemble into communications. Latin possesses an alphabet, pronunciations, parts of speech, sentence structure. nouns classify according to declensions, with specific work endings depending upon the related declension set, which must match to that of the modifying adjectives. Verbs break down into regular and irregular verbs, verb components: person, number, time and aspect, finite forms, infinitives, participles, gerunds and gerundives, and finally, conjugations. The process normally used to learn all aspects of the language, requires tremendous personal discipline, hours of study and normally occurs within a course of study upon which the Latin serves as a primary foundational component(i.e. Law, History, Medicine).  Those enduring the learning are not motivated by the love of Latin, but by what can be studied after learning it.  Many who study it, find the process so distasteful, they never love it, and after learning it, never use it again.

Non students wanting to learn the language, looking at what is available to learn Latin, find only textbooks, which present all of the stuff most English speakers never needed to know. Noun declensions and verb conjugations cause dizziness when one tries to consider starting.  Most people throw up their hands and say, "What do I do?  I want to learn the language, but its just too complicated! I need an easy way.  What do I do?"

Loving Latin 

Loving something causes us to be drawn to them.  Like falling in love.  You want to be around it and enjoy it.  if the target of your affections is a boyfriend or girlfriend, and they acknowledge you, the love grows and things get exciting. Over time, eventually, the excitement wears off, but you have something that allows perseverance and endurance through hardship and difficulty.  Devotion emerges as you to persevere and endure when the going gets tough. 

So, how do we set out to love Latin?

Set a small goal.  Take small easy steps. Enjoy your successes, and see how Latin can become welcoming.  Latin will reveal the foundations to known words, deepening their meaning, introduce a new way thinking, expose new facets of your faith, and as it did for me, provide a profound connection to the Saints and Martyrs. 

Urgency Resulted In A Simplified Structured Approach And An Absolute Love for Latin

Without realizing it, when I began to learn Latin, facing all the challenges described above, but wanted to do it so badly and quickly, I simply discarded all of the "requirements", and devised what has become a simple structured approach to learning Latin in a way which inspires me to learn more and more all the time. To this day, during idle moments, prayers I have learned or heard, visit my conscious thoughts, and I enjoy ruminating on them. My goal was to pray the rosary in Latin: know the prayers by heart, say them at any time, and know exactly what I am saying.  The methodology proved so successful, I have committed to memory prayers which require approximately 45 minutes to recite from end to end.

The resulting approach requires only five(5) components: alphabet, pronunciation, translation, regular mental exercise and memorization.  Memorizing, the final challenge, happens last, produced by faithfully attending to all the other parts. Mental exercise consists of speaking, hearing, reading and writing.  Speaking and hearing take the most time, with reading and writing limited to simple translation exercises, occurring first.  All other language requirements, although set aside, eventually fall into place on their own.

Making It Easy - Use Bite Sized Building Blocks

The second grade riddle instructs us, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!"

One to two lines provide manageable bite sized pieces of the language to digest at any time.  For example, learning the "Ave Maria", happens in about five or six bites and perhaps in a single recitation of Rosary.

Translation Challenges

While I succeeded in discarding most of Latin Language learning to accomplish the recitation of the Rosary with good pronunciation and understanding, a few translations proved difficult. Most Latin dictionaries presume the reader has developed the technical knowledge of noun declensions and verb conjugations. Working through the translations introduced small difficulties with understanding. The words translate out easily, but as the work progresses through the various prayers, one will notice how the order of thought in Latin differs from the order of thought in English.  Additionally, some of the translations may appear a little "fuzzy". The "fuzziness" relates to the precision declensions and conjugations provide to the language and how they adjust or change the meaning of nouns and verbs, respectively, by the word endings used.  Taking an oversimplified approach does leave a lot behind.  But, since the cost of taking a deep dive into declensions and conjugations can threaten the outcome(believe me I tried), I accepted the "fuzziness in understanding" (which does not happen a lot in the Rosary) and considered it as no more than small bumps in the road to be worked out later.  Suffice it to say, they do get worked out over time as the mind sorts things out and begins to recognize patterns as vocabulary grows.

Pronunciation Challenges

Pronunciation presented several challenges.  Ecclesiastical (i.e. Catholic Church) Latin pronunciation marks(i.e focuses on the emphasized syllable) differ significantly from Classical(i.e. focused on the long and/or short vowel sounds).  Proper pronunciation requires an understanding of both the long and short vowel sound as well as the emphasized syllable in each word.  As I learned the Rosary, I fumbled through, and let it work itself out in the end.  Mistakes were made but nothing that was so big, that I could not fix it with adjustments as soon as became aware of  the correct pronunciation.   

​After the Rosary, Latin Became Welcoming

At the time I completed the memorizing of the Rosary in Latin, I had also been reciting the Auxilium Christianorum prayers daily and found they were available in Latin.  When I looked at the Latin words, I could not help think that learning the Latin would not be to difficult a project to take on.  This is a strange thought for an accountant with a mechanical mind without much aptitude for language, but nevertheless, despite the increased vocabulary required(i.e. about 1,500 additional words over and above the 500 from the rosary)  I had a process and methodology and could do it a little at a time. Within a year, these prayers, too, were memorized in Latin.  Its important to note, that the only time at the time I learned all this Latin, was driving in the car to and from work.

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