Latin, Heavily Resourced

 Spanish is going great, with the caveat that I have virtually no time, and even less energy to give to it. After the reactivation via the Pilkney books, I am (re)reading The Lion, The Witch and Wardrobe in Spanish, but on this read, instead of going for extensive reading -- here meaning allowing to keep going if I understand the beats of the story/gestalt, I am engaging in intensive reading -- here meaning underlying what I cannot parse, or what I am sort of able to figure out, but want to preserve. I then take those sentences and copy them into a notebook.  From this, I am starting to notice and then do the research needed to clarify the guts of the language.

I can also fall to the online resources listed in the last post, and I have been grabbing some sentences there, but I find the set up of a physical book in bed, using my phone as a portable dictionary to be the most conducive to how beat-to-shit I routinely feel with my job. 

So, this will be my hobby project for the school year.  Then during summer vacation, the plan is to work very heavily on listening skills, which sounds like a great thing to do when trapped in the house due to sweltering, heavily humid weather (it's a wet heat, and it is unpleasant). 

Then for the next school year... Latin, but starting out with older methods, intensive looks, and explicit grammar.  I have some small Latin textbooks from 1900-1913, and my wife studied Latin in college, giving me a few more modern textbooks as well. But to make sure I have enough text to make it worth my while (and to give myself some ability to practice extensive reading) I have scrapped the entirely of The Latin Library

     http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/

A project that took me under 20 minutes from conceiving the idea, to having chatGPT write the script, to the actual scrapping -- full disclosure: Datum was fucking it up with a big mess until we set upon just doing it as .html files, allowing for a one-liner using wget ... Unix philosophy, for the win, again. 

No real import, other than that's "what's up with me." 

Staying away from the news of the world, and ever asking the question "do I actually have any control over this?" and "what concretely do you want me to do about it today?"

No me gusta el "doom-scrolling." 

Spanish Resources

Backstory 

A little while ago, I was in the children's section of a library with my daughter and I noticed there was a world language's section of children's graphic novels. I grabbed a Dav Pilkney book (of Dogman fame) and from that book my joy in, and desire to learn, Spanish was rekindled. 

Excelsior! 

I have now read stacks of Pilkney books in Spanish, some of them more than once, and I think it has reactivated what I knew of the language. Now it is time to push forward. So here is are some resources I have gathered from my favorite domain -- the public one.

Antología portorriqueña

Spanish Tales for Beginners

 A First Spanish Reader (maybe too easy)

Modern Spanish Lyrics (poems)

Lecturas fáciles con ejercicios

 An Easy Introduction to Spanish Conversation

 

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And since this is a blog of stuff chatGPT tells me at this point, here is a road map of what I should learn on a more explicit level, since I am hundreds of thousands of words read into an "input only, then look up some words" method -- which I do not recommend as the only thing you do.

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1. The Core Sentence Skeleton

These are things you probably “feel” but can start labeling to lock them in.

• Ser vs. estar — essence vs. state (but really, identity vs. circumstance).

• Hay / tener / hacer — existence, possession, weather; easy to conflate early.

• Personal “a” — the hidden marker of agency and personhood.

• Direct vs. indirect objects — lo/la vs. le/les, plus the leísmo tolerance zones (esp. Spain).

• Double-object pronouns — se lo di, te la paso — where logic bends to euphony.

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2. Verbal Time and Mood (The Big Gap for Input Learners)

Once you hit narrative prose, this is the minefield.

• Preterite vs. imperfect — event vs. background, or “photograph” vs. “video.”

• Present perfect and past perfect — he comido, había comido — easy to miss how common haber is in writing.

• Conditional and future — haría, haré, often used for politeness and inference (será verdad = “must be true”).

• Subjunctive moods — this one’s best approached later, once you’re seeing patterns like quiera que sea, aunque llueva, para que vayas. You’ll already recognize them by sound; you’ll just be learning why.

• Sequence of tenses (Si tuviera... habría...) — the crown jewel of backfill grammar once you’ve stabilized the rest.

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3. Relative and Connective Tissue

The part that makes sentences “flow”:

• Que, lo que, el que, la que, cuyo — relative clause chaos.

• Porque / así que / sin que / aunque — where meaning hinges on conjunction choice.

• Se — reflexive, impersonal, passive, pronominal. Learning to label which se you’re seeing is a huge clarity gain.

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4. Modifiers and Flow

• Adjective placement — una gran mujer ≠ una mujer grande.

• Adverbs of frequency and manner — ya, todavía, apenas, casi, siempre; these change sentence polarity subtly.

• Clitic placement with infinitives/gerunds — voy a decírtelo, estoy diciéndotelo.

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5. Subtle Style and Register

This level is when you start tuning in to dialect, tone, and literary style.

• Vosotros / ustedes, tú vs. usted — and implied social distance.

• Diminutives / augmentatives — -ito, -illo, -azo; emotional tone coding.

• Nominalizations and abstract style — la búsqueda de, el hecho de que... — how written Spanish stacks prepositions.

• Verb choice nuance — saber vs. conocer, pensar vs. creer, parecer vs. resultar, etc.

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6. Meta-layer (for future Latin overlap)

This is where Latin will make Spanish click retroactively:

• Agreement systems (number, gender, participles).

• Tense correspondence (pluperfect, subjunctive triggers).

• Infinitive clauses (al entrar, sin decir nada).

• Participial constructions (traces of Latin ablative absolutes).

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Suggested “sentence method” workflow

1. Pick a line from your input reading — preferably something that almost makes full sense.

2. Translate it, but slowly, noticing each particle, preposition, pronoun.

3. Ask “why that form?” one element at a time.

4. Make a second sentence by swapping one element (aunque llueva → aunque nieva).

5. Keep a little log of what you learned — not a grammar table, just “notes to future self.”