Learning Latin

Try the Wheelock's Latin books.

I used them in high school, and they're pretty decent. Good enough to get you off your feet with Latin.

Shelmerdine or Wheelock for grammar, Lingua for reading. Have fun.

>>8469951
I also recommend Wheelock, it gets you up and running quickly, even within one to three months if you're diligent. After that, you'll want to start reading and then the Perseus Project through Tufts will be useful in translating and figuring out what's going on in a passage.

File: 26b8aef80e37f27d79b573531e66fa81.jpg (20KB, 236x352px) Image search: [Google]

20KB, 236x352px

Hans Orberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, with the grammar and vocabulary booklets. The textbook itself is all in Latin. You work through simple stories with illustrations and learn a lot of grammar by example, then confirm what you've learned with the grammar booklet. Memorize all vocabulary at the end of chapters.

One thing I notice about Orberg is that it has a lot more vocabulary than other methods. This is very intentional. Most other books don't teach you enough vocabulary. It also helps you learn the vocab that it is tied to these memorable stories about the life of a Roman family.

Wheelock's sucks because it has very little reading practice and tons of grammatical exposition. Imagine if you memorized 1000 words, learned the grammatical rules of English, and then tried to read the Gettysburg Address. That's what it'd be like to pick up Cicero after finishing Wheelock's.

I've heard good things about Cambridge Latin Course too but I can't personally vouch for it. I'm sure there are other good methods, and I'm sure there are people trained in Wheelock's that teach at famous universities but I do find Orberg by far the superior way.

Spending ~30 minutes a day on Orberg and accounting for the usual delays you should be done in ~6 months. You will want to make flashcards (or word-lists, I always preferred), review previous lessons, post on web forums with questions, common sense stuff. After that you can either read a relatively simple Latin text, like Caesar On the Gallic War, or bits of Cicero Against Verres, or the Lives of Nepos, or Velleius Paterculus, or the Liber Memorialis of Lucius Ampelius, or books from the Vulgate, or some saints' lives, or any number of other things.

Then you'd move onto harder prose, poetry, etc., as your taste moved you, or according to whatever scheme you like. You would be probably accessing public source commentaries online as much as possible, this is what I did as it's cheapest, though sometimes I sprung for a Cambridge if it was something that really needed a commentary, like Cicero's Letters.

Or you could get the Per Se Illustrata Pars II to ease yourself in a little more. That starts with simpler stories but moves onto unadulterated, "real" Latin midway through and is a great reader.

I wish you all the best of luck. 30 minutes a day for a couple of years will get you pretty far. It is hard to develop a comfortable reading knowledge of Latin, harder than Greek IMO, but well worth it.

>>8469963
Also Shelmerdine's book is better for non-native English speakers imo and doesn't triffle too much with grammatical jargon like other books do.

>>8469825
try latin: an intensive course

File: 1469590662110.png (79KB, 500x500px) Image search: [Google]

79KB, 500x500px

>>8469974
>It is hard to develop a comfortable reading knowledge of Latin, harder than Greek IMO, but well worth it.

What do you mean?

>>8469974

Thanks for all this. I'm not OP but I had the terrible luck of landing in a shitty Latin class while the majority of my friends got in another where they used the Lingua and they're considerably better than me now.

>>8469974
You don't know anything. Wheelock has several Latin readers, Dingus.