i suggest Wheelock's Latin i heard its good personaly i am reading "the Everything about Latin Book" its pretty bad ass im also using rosetta stones latin edition its ok i regret buying cause it was too expensive for me...($200)
latin is very easy to learn....
it feels good to be able to read Dantes Inferno and know what your reading lol
The language doesn't matter. I think some of the spells just sound interesting because our ears aren't used to listening to different languages & therefore we think they have more power!
When I was a little girl my mother & I used to visit my aunt who was a nun in her convent where she lived her entire life.
All the prayers & the mass was in Latin.
I used to be terrified of the echo the church made, specially when all the nuns prayed at the same time. It sounded very cool in a way though.
My point is... Spells have as much power as you want to give them, it doesn't matter if you say them in English, Latin, French or any other language. It's up to the person casting the spell to give it it's ower!
Latin is also still popularly spoken in Vatican City so it is essentially "almost dead". But there the type spoken is unique to the Catholic Church. There are different types of Latin and the best to speak with is Classic Ancient Roman Catholic. I am currently teaching myself the language and first I am focusing on pronunciation and listening.
Here are sources I found to be very helpful that can be your first steps to fluency:
-This is an introduction to the language and includes pronuncitation charts:
http://www.ai.uga.edu/mc/latinpro.pdf
-This is an article on pronuncitation with many helpful links at the bottom that will help you continue your learning after you master pronunciation.
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/latinlanguage/qt/latinpronounce.htm
Also, some consider speaking the language as an art because of its unique powerful sounds. What matters is how the language makes YOU feel. If it makes you feel more powerful, that can boost your confidence and effectiveness in casting. It is also a very ancient language, and could possibly have some magickal essence (don't want to say something I'm not positive of).
lol come on, please tell me that you're kidding :)
If you want to learn Latin, take a grammar and start! It's completely impossible to read a few spells in Latin and expect that it's a good base to start writing them on your own.
I learned it for 5 years, and believe me, it's a really long way to get to the stadium in which you will be able to write anything in that language!!!
Magic doesn't know the limits of language, so your spells will be of the same power in Which-ever language :)
As Unlucky Raven said , not that hard really , English people dont have Noun Declenision so that may appear hard, that and tenses , Consecutio temporurum and as Raven said irregular verbs.
Verbs and nouns also decline and conjugate dependind on gender which is not case in english so that might be another "put off"
As for latin as magiokal language it is indeed the most powerful one, earler when Practitioners and spirits where much closer and tight working , Practitioners used latin as universal , melodic and chanty langauge because they were suggested to do so by spirits themself , and experience had shown indounbtly that spirits are rather fond of it even nowadays.
Also writing words of power in Latin makes Your spells unvversal in cosmopolitic sense , as long as one that will uses them takes time to understand what the words mean.
Being a dead langauge there is no danger of evolving so the spells preserved in Latin remain uncorrupted indefinitely ,where as in any "living" langauage word's get new meanings every day depending on context in which used, causing misstranslations and possible confusion.
Making and effort to speak Latin , which spirits as i have said before are fond of , show them Your respect and makes them more willing to assist one :)
Learning Latin is the key to unlocking several modern languages, including French, Spanish and Italian. not to mention much of the English language. Good luck!
