That sounds entirely familiar. Overwhelmed is not the word. I spent months in tears every day even though the actual astronomy part was mostly fine. There are translation charms, and ways to get a fair bit of the language in your head quite quickly.
Alde had an hour's lecture on why people she liked didn't use them them that ended up at "I thought you were supposed to value hard work, and why should I trust you with complicated tasks if you take shortcuts with words." All in the most scathing tone you'd expect of a Slytherin witch in her twelfth decade.
She had a point. I've a much better grasp of the whole of the language than people I know who've done the charm-helped versions. It turns out to make a lot of difference sometimes.
The thing about Latin and German - and Russian, I gather - is that they're inflected languagues, where the part of speech matters a lot. Not just verbs, like in English, but nouns (and adjectives, and so on.) Getting a handle on the grammar parts in English will help. I'll see if I can rummage for a book or two that will help, and send them round, and we can talk more Sunday.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: Private message to Sally-Anne Perks
Date: 2014-07-08 08:05 pm (UTC)Alde had an hour's lecture on why people she liked didn't use them them that ended up at "I thought you were supposed to value hard work, and why should I trust you with complicated tasks if you take shortcuts with words." All in the most scathing tone you'd expect of a Slytherin witch in her twelfth decade.
She had a point. I've a much better grasp of the whole of the language than people I know who've done the charm-helped versions. It turns out to make a lot of difference sometimes.
The thing about Latin and German - and Russian, I gather - is that they're inflected languagues, where the part of speech matters a lot. Not just verbs, like in English, but nouns (and adjectives, and so on.) Getting a handle on the grammar parts in English will help. I'll see if I can rummage for a book or two that will help, and send them round, and we can talk more Sunday.