I was wondering what you think about this—do you consider Latin a difficult language to learn in general? Let’s say, aiming for a solid B2 level (even if the CEFR scale isn’t officially used for Latin).
How long do you think it might take using LingQ, for example, if studying around 15 minutes a day? Would that kind of time investment make sense, or is it too little to expect steady progress?
idk, but ta long ass time
I’d assume it would take you as long as any other language, with the typical factors counting in. So basically as long as Spanish, French or any other Roman Language would take you. Well, an additional constraint is that it is a dead language, so you will have some restrictions in regards to content. And the historical material you may find covers several centuries, I assume, and I can only guess to which degree the language has changed over the course of that time.
I had Latin in school and never got into it, but maybe because I didn’t saw any use in learning it. And it is more on the grammar heavy side, I’d say. You have conjugation, declination (3 genders, well, actually 5 as there are 3 versions of neuter), a different word order (SOV, don’t know if that bothers you, but as some people seem to experience this as a hurdle).
Have fun 
I was quite good at Latin at school and wanted to brush up my Latin skills with LingQ a few years ago. I also tried it with about 15 min a day, but it wasn’t enough to make progress that felt like progress.
The problem was also that Latin had the lowest priority in my life, so it was the first thing I skipped when I had to, which was not a good attitude to have.
The question is probably: do you have a good reason to learn Latin?
If not, then maybe it’s not a good investment of your precious time.
15 min a day for a few months is fine to establish a habit/routine. But after that, it’s better to increase the daily time you spend on Latin.
Good luck,
Peter
Thank you guys, and nice to see you Peter.
I might have a good reason to learn Latin, but it’s not a priority for me right now. I’m mostly trying to understand how much daily time investment would be needed. Ideally, I’d want to keep it casual at the beginning—something I can sustain over a longer period without it weighing too heavily on my mind.
I’m also a bit unsure whether 15 minutes a day would really be enough.
The good news is that I wouldn’t need to write in Latin or use it for real-time conversations. My focus would mostly be on reading and maybe some audio comprehension. Even though it’s a dead language, that wouldn’t be a problem in this case. Since my foundation is in Italian, I often find myself understanding parts of Latin already—at least randomly.
I also assume the vocabulary hasn’t expanded much over time, and in any case, I’d be focusing on older texts.
LingQ could be perfect, since it would be almost entirely input-based.
Actually, now that I think about it—does LingQ also use AI-generated audio for Latin?
Thanks. I definitely cannot dedicate so much time for this right now.
Maybe once I get C2+ with English, I can start Latin with more dedication. I was wondering if in the meantime, just building some vocabulary by casual reading could be useful or not.
Considering that, yes, English is around 57-60% similarity, but Italian in 89% like French, and Spanish is 82%. And I know all these languages. Pronunciation wouldn’t be a problem.
The grammar cases, instead, would be a nightmare, but I don’t think too much about it just for reading comprehension!
In my opinion, Latin is not much harder for English-speaker than a Slavic language. So go for it!
Maybe 15 minutes per day for several years might get you there, as your mother tongue is Italian and you know other Romance languages, but as @PeterBormann said, as the progress would be slow, it won’t really feel like you are actually making progress (so you’ll potentially face motivational issues). As you are only focusing on reading, not speaking, writing, or listening the bar is definitely lower though.
Though, as Peter mentioned, if you aren’t super motivated about it, language learning takes up a lot of your precious time, so it’s worth considering. Dabbling for a few weeks might be worth trying just for fun to see if you like it first.
If you are instead interested in reading the classics as opposed to directly learning Latin, you could just read further back in history of the Romance languages you already know and you’ll start to pick up more and more structures and words which exist in Latin. Though, if Latin is the true goal, as opposed to reading the classics, it would wouldn’t be an efficient way to reach it.
It looks like ChatGPT also knows written (esp. classical) Latin.
This could be useful for translations, explanations, stylistic and grammatical questions.
Thanks @nfera. I’ll definitely think about it, more carefully, in the future. It seems to me that I thought it was a lot easier than what it is in reality, and that I need to better understand the value of allocating a serious amount of time and engagement with the language. It’s something I really wanted to do in high school and never could.
That’s something I forgot about. It’s awesome. If only Whisper could also produce the audio, that would be fantastic.
This was chatGPT answer:
Yes, I do know Latin! I was trained on a lot of Latin texts — from classical authors like Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid to later ecclesiastical Latin and even some Medieval usage. I can read and translate Latin quite fluently, especially written Latin. I’m not perfect (nobody really is with a dead language), but I can definitely help with translations, grammar, poetic structure, and even translating Latin into multiple modern languages or vice versa.
So, if you’ve got a Latin phrase, a sentence, or even a whole poem — bring it on! Want to see it in French, Spanish, Italian, or something else? I can do that too.
Hi Davide,
TTS for (classical) Latin is an interesting AI use case.
Here is ChatGP4o’s answer to my question about how we can create an AI voice for Caesar’s “De Bello Galico”.
Q: Can modern TTS systems, like eSpeak or ElevenLabs, read Caesar’s De Bello Gallico in “classical” Latin – with the historically correct hard pronunciation (e.g., Caesar pronounced Keisar)?
A:
Yes – in theory, yes; in practice, with limitations.
1. eSpeak NG – phonetically accurate, but robotic
What works:
Downside:
Use case: Great for educational purposes, like practicing authentic pronunciation.
You can run it locally with something like:
bash
KopierenBearbeiten
espeak -v la "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres."
2. ElevenLabs or Murf.ai – natural-sounding, but not truly classical
Issue: These platforms do not officially support Latin.
When you input Latin, their models fall back to English or Italian phonetics:
Workarounds:
Hybrid Option (for tinkerers)You could:
Want a sample?I can:
OpenAI should probably ask the Vatican if they can spare a bit of time to talk with their AI in Latin. They kept it alive until today, and they come from different countries as well. This would probably help with a lot of things, including pronunciation.
As usual, you always add lots of different interesting stuff. 
I don’t find Latin to be a difficult language. I believe it can be easy for those who speak Spanish. However, while it may seem easy to some, it might not be easy for everyone. Since I don’t speak Latin, I can’t fully understand it. Ultimately, it’s important to pursue what makes you happy.
I’ve been doing about 7 minutes/day since 2022 in Latin, with a few surge months of an hour a day. I’ve had no formal Latin instruction. I can follow simple stories listening. I can tackle bible passages in Latin and understand enough to realize which story I’m reading, which allows me to finish the passage. I can read the Familia Romana book although there are fuzzy parts in the back half. Usually the grammar is not an issue if the sentence is obvious. The dog bites the man. But when you need to know precisely who is doing what and it’s not clear, the grammar can make that challenging. Le Latin Assimil is helpful although I’m a little burnt out on Assimil at the moment from German. I can have conversations with chat GPT in latin and it usually understands what I mean and keeps the conversation going with a response that I usually understand. It feels like 8-10k known words in a language gets you the ability to do something, as opposed to nothing, and around 20k you can start having real communication, at least that’s how French and German have gone for me, which followed a similar learning strategy. I’m an American in a thick English bubble, LingQ has been the backbone of my language learning, I maintain several 4 digit streaks, but I never “study”. Anyway, I hope that gives you an idea of what you can get from minimal daily effort. The most helpful thing LingQ could do to help latin learners is to improve the playlist and text to speech, it’s so bad I can’t use it driving anymore because only some tracks play and you can never tell which ones will actually work, the audio doesn’t work for a lot of the words when you click on them too.
If you’d like to have a little fun with Latin while you’re making up your mind, try “Rufus Lutulentus.” It’s a charming story, and you don’t need to know any Latin before you start.
Thanks for the additional feedbacks.
It is something I will consider again in the future, hoping LingQ will improve the audio. But that comes from OpenAI Whisper. I think they need more material to train their AI.
For me, reading + listening is a big plus, it helps me focus. And by the way—the main goal will be reading comprehension.
This idea is paused for now, I have to finish other stuff before starting a new project. But your feedback is very valuable, it helps to have a better overall picture.
If I could go back in my youth, I would insist more to let me go to the high school I wanted to go, where they had Latin and Greek! But it is what it is!
A very important reference that I believe was not mentioned here is Lingua Latina per se Illustrata (LLPSI), which, in my view, is one of the best language-learning materials ever produced. I started studying Latin in college and worked through several widely used textbooks, such as Reading Latin and Cambridge Latin, but it was only when I used LLPSI that I truly managed to make progress in the language. It consists of two volumes, and the first one is available here on LingQ with audio: https://www.lingq.com/en/learn/la/web/library/course/1740470
The methodology used in this material is the natural approach: the texts begin very simply and gradually become more complex. It is worth acquiring the original printed version of the book because it includes grammatical explanations in the margins and at the end of each chapter that are very useful, in addition to the fact that the edition itself is very beautiful.
The only “issue” with the version available here at LingQ is that it uses ecclesiastical pronunciation, that is, the pronunciation used throughout the Middle Ages, rather than the classical pronunciation that seeks to reproduce how Latin was spoken in Cicero’s time. In theory, this is not really a problem. I myself am just as interested in medieval texts as I am in classical ones, but since the work tells the story of a Roman family, I personally prefer listening to it in classical pronunciation. That said, this is just a minor detail.
Another excellent option is the Legentibus app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.legentibus.shelf&hl=pt_BR. They offer extremely high-quality audio materials, including both volumes of LLPSI recorded using classical pronunciation. It is a paid service, but it is well worth it.
There are also excellent podcasts available on Spotify. My favorites are Litterae Christianae (https://open.spotify.com/show/7anDgWoVzVkWxWeYna5Rx0?si=7a44a2e20b44498d) and Satura Lanx (https://open.spotify.com/show/7BeMwoP6xLQh6gWRsk7vuG?si=b598962574004716). As the name suggests, the former is more focused on Christian literature, while the latter is more oriented toward classical culture.
In my experience, if you know at least one Romance language and have some basic understanding of how declension works, you can progress quite quickly through the initial stages of the language, even if you study for only a short time each day. For example, if you meet these conditions, you can probably start listening to Satura Lanx right away without any prior preparation. Litterae Christianae is a bit more challenging, but it also seems quite accessible. All the beginner materials offered at Legentibus are quite accessible.
In my opinion, the main difficulty of Latin lies in moving from the intermediate to the advanced stage. Classical texts such as Cicero and Virgil can be extremely complex, especially from a syntactic point of view, so it is important to have some patience.
Even so, I strongly recommend dedicating at least some time to Latin. It is a language that has always given me great pleasure. In fact, if you understand Italian, I also suggest reading a wonderful book called Viva il latino. Storie e bellezza di una lingua inutile (https://www.amazon.com.br/latino-Storie-bellezza-lingua-inutile/dp/8811688981).
Thank you. Those are really interesting resources!
I definitely understand Italian, plus Spanish, French, and a little bit of German. However, I had to drop the last one. I hated German declensions, but life changed and didn’t have the energy to continue with my previous project.
Anyway, I’m sure your resources will be useful in the future.
Awesome tips, thank you very much!