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Reviews (1)
04 March 2008
Creative and enjoyable method of learning Latin!
I studied Latin from a standard textbook as a child, and recently decided to pick it up again. By chance I discovered this book, which is basically a universal immersion course in reading Latin, and now I am a complete convert. The book is completely in Latin. No English or any other language is used. You read each passage and discover from context how every single word and piece of grammar fits into the language. The organization of the grammar is really well done to accomplish this. There is a reading passage for each section, followed by a grammar summary and three self-quizzes: one passage with blank places for you to remember the new vocabulary words, one with places for you to fill in the endings and forms of grammar, and one with open-ended questions for reading comprehension and for you to formulate your own responding sentences in Latin. There's also an index at the end to help you find the first appearance of each word (where the context always makes the meaning most clear).
The really special thing about this book is how well it adapts to every individual's learning style. A person could get a quick, fun overview or review of Latin by simply reading this book straight through once, picking up the basic meaning and getting into the flow of the language, without learning every detail of grammar or vocab permanently. Alternately, one could read every sentence several times, fitting the grammar together inside their head as you go (perhaps accessing Chomsky's universal grammar of human language), repeating and memorizing the structures, speaking out loud to a class, writing out responses, even memorizing whole passages. There are so many interesting ways to approach this book, and it's really easy to do because it's just fun stories in Latin.
This form of learning DESTROYS the usual problem with languages, particularly Latin, which is that the student always translates out loud into another language and never learns to READ the language they are supposedly learning. You can be a careful and precise student of Latin grammar, a veritable dictionary of Latin vocabulary, but never learn to really read Latin-- sight read it with ease and pleasure-- if you always find yourself translating the poor stuff into English. You'll never understand the structures and rhythms of the syntax of the Latin sentence if you needs must always stuff it into an ill-fitting English translation before you can comprehend it. This book could be taught in a classroom of students with no shared languages at all, and sentence by careful sentence as they read this book to each other, Latin would become their common tongue.
The beginning volume is all "fake" Latin, i.e. non-classical invented Latin, but the second volume is sequentially adapted from classical sources to be similarly self-instructing from context.