Latin update

A week and a half ago I started Latin. Now on the sixth chapter, I find it's not as difficult as I originally suspected. And so the Latin proverb I read this morning seemed appropriate:

"Non quia difficilia sunt, non audemus; sed quid non audemus, difficilia sunt." ~~ Seneca

(Translation: "It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; but it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.") "Audemus" must be related to the word "audacious." Latin as an audacious undertaking - I like that.

After that first crack at Wheelock's Latin, I found I was going through it too quickly. I added in a couple supplementary resources: the workbook and Grote's A Comprehensive Guide to Wheelock's Latin. Grote's guide isn't necessary, and I'm occasionally turned off by his flippant style, but it has helped each chapter's grammar to stick in my brain. After going through a chapter of Grote, I don't have to refer back to the grammar while working through exercises - I have it down cold. The workbook I use for extra practice, especially with vocabulary since somehow my flash cards went missing for almost a week (they turned up, crumpled and stained, under the sofa cushions - mea culpa for leaving them within reach of a 38" tall mischief maker). I fell into a rhythm after a few chapters:

1) study grammar/vocabulary in Wheelock's
2) read the corresponding chapter in Grote
3) work through the sentences/translations in Wheelock's *
4) do the workbook for extra practice

* Once I realized I could easily get through 2+ chapters per week, even slowing myself down with the extra resources, I went to buy a little notebook in which to write my answers because the random loose leaf sheets I had been using had already begun to grow feet and walk off.

I'll be in Mazatlán for eight days starting this Saturday. When I come back, 38 Latin Stories by Anne H. Groton should be waiting for me - it's designed to be used concurrently with Wheelock's Latin (unlike Wheelock's Reader, a sort of sequel). This sounds exactly like what I'm looking for - more depth, not just busywork.

No Yes?

I once caught a show-off student of Chinese trying to intimidate new students by warning them that Chinese had a different word for "yes" and "no" for each question! That's largely true, but not the slightest bit difficult. [. . .] When you pose a question in Chinese you present both alternatives. Thus, "Are you going?" becomes "You go not go?" or "Are you going or not?" If you are going, the word for "yes" to that question is "go." If you're not going, you say, "Not go" (Barry Farber, How to Learn Any Language 160).

When I asked C (who had 3 years of Latin at his Jesuit high school) if "sī" meant "yes" as well as "if," he told me there's no word for "yes." I recalled the above passage: "Just like Chinese!" I don't know any Chinese outside "mother scolds the horse," but good ol' Barry comes through again. I can almost forgive him for dissing Latin.