I teach a week-long Latin intensive every January, as part of a special-interest school.

There’s a class for pretty much every grade of Latin ability, from ‘never-seen-a-word-of-Latin-before’ to ‘Trust-me-I-got-this’.

Some classes are taught by brand new teachers, some by teachers who have been teaching Latin for 30 years.

And the thing that really gets my goat is that at least half of them can’t read Latin properly.

They can only translate it – given enough time,.

But don’t worry, they’re in good company, because the world-renowned classicist Mary Beard also can’t read Latin properly.

As she put it in the Times Literary Supplement:

“People often imagine that if you 'know Latin' you can read more or less any bit of the language that is put in front of you (much like what you can do if you 'know French'). It isn't really like that at all.”

To me this makes no sense.

If I came up to you and said ‘I know karate’, and it turned out what I meant was I’d read a lot of books about karate but couldn’t actually ‘do’ karate, what would you think?

Would you think I ‘knew’ karate?

What if I said ‘I know swimming’ but couldn’t swim in deep water?

Or ‘I know French’ but can’t speak or read it?

The answer is so obvious I’m going to leave it at that.

But here’s what I can’t get my head around:

What makes Latin so damned special that it’s the ONE SUBJECT in the world where it’s somehow acceptable to pretend you ‘know’ it when in reality all you know is how to follow a process to translate it?

It’s just not good enough.

And I’m not picking on anyone here, because when I started teaching Latin I couldn’t read a page of it without a dictionary either.

And I felt like a fraud.

Because I was.

I don’t care if you’ve been studying – or teaching – Latin for a month or a month of Sundays. If you can’t read Latin at least competently, you don’t know Latin.

Just the hard truth of life.

I had to face that fact with my own so-called Latin knowledge.

And only then could I fix it.

I recommend you do the same, Sparky.

Stay honest,

Alexander

P.S. The lie of ‘knowing’ Latin when all you know is how to translate is over a century old, so don’t feel bad. But it’s a lie that needs to be exposed and utterly exploded.

But if you’re struggling to change it for your own life, then let me help.

One of the biggest problems I’ve seen with my students is to make the transition from analysing grammar to recognising and understanding it.

That’s why I created 4 weeks of email lessons to take you step by step through learning to see and understand Latin as you read, with readings included. Check it out here: https://decodinglatin.gumroad.com/l/PTjGB​