What is the most important way to spend our time when learning Latin? This is the first of a 2-part video series that forms a complete guide to how to teach yourself Latin as an autodidact in 2023.
These 2 videos are based on the two halves of my 16,000 word essay, "Latin autodidacts, you're working way too hard" - How to learn Latin by yourself in 2023. You can read the full transcript here: https://foundinantiquity.com/2023/03/11/latin-autodidacts-youre-working-way-too-hard-how-to-learn-latin-by-yourself-in-2023/
Check out my upcoming intermediate reader, 'The Lover's Curse: a Tiered Reader of Aeneid 4'. When it is published, this 30,000 word volume will be freely distributed in digital copy to anyone who signs up to my Latin email newsletter: https://foundinantiquity.com/the-lovers-curse-a-tiered-reader-of-aeneid-4/
Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
0:43 The scope of this essay
2:39 The difficulties of an autodidact
6:36 Language learning principles
6:43 Everyone can learn a language
7:48 We learn through input
9:29 Comprehensible Input isn't one method
11:54 Everything works (eventually)
12:38 Nothing hurts
14:10 You don't have to be young to acquire a language
15:36 Language acquisition is slow
16:42 It takes less time to reach the intermediate plateau than to leave it
18:58 Meaningful activity in the language
21:15 Meaningful input
24:46 Examples of meaningful input activities
26:37 Activites that don't require meaningful processing of input
29:01 Meaningful activities are inherently enjoyable
30:08 What about ChatGPT?
31:07 Meaningful output
39:34 Examples of meaningful output activities
43:57 Activites that don't require expression of meaning
45:06 The cost of doing meaningless output activities
50:35 What's in the next video
