Is there any truth to this?

[ThatGuyWhoLovesLatin]

Is there any any truth in the phrase "Greek starts hard and gets easier, Latin starts easy and gets hard?" I don't expect it to be completely true, but is there even a lick of truth to it? What makes Greek get easier? What makes Latin get harder? (Wrong forum, I know.)

[seneca2008]

Greek starts hard gets harder and when you begin to think you know something it gets even harder. Same applies to Latin and most other things.

[Dante]

the only time the words "Greek" and "easy" could appear in the same sentence is something like "studying Greek can easily make you want to kill yourself."

[Paul Derouda]

I agree with the above, except that Latin looks easy in the beginning; I abandoned soon after that, as soon as it got a bit harder. The idea that Greek starts hard but gets easier might be due to the utterly wrong notion that learning a new alphabet is the hard part, when it's actually the easiest.

[ThatGuyWhoLovesLatin]

I agree with the above, except that Latin looks easy in the beginning; I abandoned soon after that, as soon as it got a bit harder. The idea that Greek starts hard but gets easier might be due to the utterly wrong notion that learning a new alphabet is the hard part, when it's actually the easiest.

This is what I thought as well. To be hones though, learning the Greek alphabet isn't really that difficult at all. You could learn it in a couple of days if you keep at it. Don't know why folks think it's difficult.

[C. S. Bartholomew]

Latin looked easy when the text was diglot of the NT with greek on the facing page. On the other hand start reading the Aeneid and it isn't easy. I gave up decades ago on Latin. I can fake it with the Vulgate in textual apparatus of the GNT.

Reading transliterated greek is more difficult than the greek alphabet.

If you want to read an easy greek text start with the Apocalypse of John. Only problem is when you get done you will not know anything about greek.

[swtwentyman]

There's also the saying that "those who think Greek is harder than Latin know neither".

[donhamiltontx]

Latin looked easy when the text was diglot of the NT with greek on the facing page. On the other hand start reading the Aeneid and it isn't easy. I gave up decades ago on Latin. I can fake it with the Vulgate in textual apparatus of the GNT.

If you want to go back to Latin sometime, try Tacitus. He's supposed to be so difficult, but I am reading Historiae, I'm on chapter 78 of Book 1, and I find him far and away easier than The Aeneid. If for no other reason than he interests me much more than Virgil.
The Aeneid was the topic of my second (and last) semester of college Latin. So, like you, I read it decades ago. The subject of my first semester was Caesar. Both works bored me so much that I could see no reason to continue Latin at all. I'm not trying to start something here. I know folks regard those two as classics. This is just how I look at it (though I would accept a "How to Appreciate Virgil" lecture; what did I miss?). In fairness, too, I must disclose that I am using Loeb to help me through Tacitus. The only aid back in my college days was a translation of The Aeneid. Our professor encouraged us to read the whole thing to get a sense of where the story was going. That was a good idea, though I have not tried it on Tacitus, and I did not use the translation to help my own translating. That just wasn't done in those days.

[seneca2008]

Our professor encouraged us to read the whole thing to get a sense of where the story was going.

Well that rather begs the question of whether the "story" is going anywhere. The question of whether Virgil's epic is self defeating has been asked in many ways since it was first written. Often in the form is the Aeneid pro or anti Augustan.

Reading something under compulsion which other people say is wonderful and you don't enjoy must be difficult. Before Greek became more widely read in Western Europe Virgil had an unassailable position but later readers, once homer had become (re)established, were less charitable and Virgil's reputation fell somewhat. Nowadays of course hardly anyone reads him, except a few in schools and universities and of course here!

I am glad you are enjoying Tacitus. I read the Claudius Nero books of the annals at university and found it tough going at the beginning. But there was a lot of secondary literature to get through. I am too rusty to try it now but I would like to read the earlier books.