Latin for Beginners (Passport's Language Guides)

Rating:
Summary: Lively Latin for Learners of All Ages!
Review: "Latin for Beginners" is aimed directly at kids, not their teachers. (In olden days, when I began studying Latin, I suspected that our texts were designed to please our teachers. Although the books laid out the material logically, they were dull: completion of homework was a victory over boredom.) Now, along come Wilkes and Schakell-two halves of the same brain?-to bring some pizzazz to learning Latin. Schakell uses explosive colors in a cartoon format, and his zany characters speak in Wilkes' impeccable Latin. The twenty chapters, two large pages each, cover such subjects as What is Your Name?, Your Family, What Do You Like Eating?, Shopping (including Roman money), and Going to a Café. Each chapter introduces some grammar and about 25 words or phrases. Puzzles and quizzes reinforce the pictures (answers in back of book). Concluding pages provide such basics as pronunciation, tables of grammar, Roman numerals, times of day, dates, and a good index. All noun declensions are given but not all verb conjugations. Still, after a student has finished this basic course, he may well be hooked and ready for more. Anachronisms are part of the book's charm: the characters ride bicycles, drive cars, eat hamburgers, and boogie with gusto. A note claims that the modern words have been cobbled by a committee of Latin scholars. (Latin is indeed spoken and E-mailed today by the intrepid, and of course new words are needed.) I'd like to have seen more on this cobbling process, though. The ages targeted by the book depend on the way it's presented. If only Latin-to-English is asked for, readers in the third or fourth grades would probably be attracted to it. Adding English-to-Latin and encouraging the speaking of Latin might intrigue students through middle school and beyond. My one suggestion for future editions of the book is adding a list of common English derivatives, which help in memorizing vocabulary.

Rating:
Summary: Lively Latin for Learners of All Ages!
Review: "Latin for Beginners" is aimed directly at kids, not their teachers. (In olden days, when I began studying Latin, I suspected that our texts were designed to please our teachers. Although the books laid out the material logically, they were dull: completion of homework was a victory over boredom.) Now, along come Wilkes and Schakell-two halves of the same brain?-to bring some pizzazz to learning Latin. Schakell uses explosive colors in a cartoon format, and his zany characters speak in Wilkes' impeccable Latin. The twenty chapters, two large pages each, cover such subjects as What is Your Name?, Your Family, What Do You Like Eating?, Shopping (including Roman money), and Going to a Café. Each chapter introduces some grammar and about 25 words or phrases. Puzzles and quizzes reinforce the pictures (answers in back of book). Concluding pages provide such basics as pronunciation, tables of grammar, Roman numerals, times of day, dates, and a good index. All noun declensions are given but not all verb conjugations. Still, after a student has finished this basic course, he may well be hooked and ready for more. Anachronisms are part of the book's charm: the characters ride bicycles, drive cars, eat hamburgers, and boogie with gusto. A note claims that the modern words have been cobbled by a committee of Latin scholars. (Latin is indeed spoken and E-mailed today by the intrepid, and of course new words are needed.) I'd like to have seen more on this cobbling process, though. The ages targeted by the book depend on the way it's presented. If only Latin-to-English is asked for, readers in the third or fourth grades would probably be attracted to it. Adding English-to-Latin and encouraging the speaking of Latin might intrigue students through middle school and beyond. My one suggestion for future editions of the book is adding a list of common English derivatives, which help in memorizing vocabulary.

Rating:
Summary: Not for complete beginners!
Review: I purchased this book as a summer "starter" for my two children beginning Latin this fall. I had taken four years of Latin and needed a refresher myself to be able to help them get ahead. I believe the book is very confusing and there is no way without my help that my children could use this book.
The book gives action verbs on page 11 but goes back to show the actual conjugation of the basic "to be" on page 13. Logically this should be reversed! The book also does not immediately address one of the very basics of Latin(finally page 8)...the masculine and feminine declension of nouns...and their relationship to their modifying adjectives is never truly explained well.
This book seems to be set up to "speak" the language as you would study Spanish or French if traveling abroad. The book begins with "hello", "good-bye", "what is your name?" and other vocabulary. Someone should tell the author that learning Latin is to learn the fundamentals of how language works, not to learn the language to speak the language. You would have a hard time finding an audience!

Rating:
Summary: Not for complete beginners!
Review: I purchased this book as a summer "starter" for my two children beginning Latin this fall. I had taken four years of Latin and needed a refresher myself to be able to help them get ahead. I believe the book is very confusing and there is no way without my help that my children could use this book.
The book gives action verbs on page 11 but goes back to show the actual conjugation of the basic "to be" on page 13. Logically this should be reversed! The book also does not immediately address one of the very basics of Latin(finally page 8)...the masculine and feminine declension of nouns...and their relationship to their modifying adjectives is never truly explained well.
This book seems to be set up to "speak" the language as you would study Spanish or French if traveling abroad. The book begins with "hello", "good-bye", "what is your name?" and other vocabulary. Someone should tell the author that learning Latin is to learn the fundamentals of how language works, not to learn the language to speak the language. You would have a hard time finding an audience!

Rating:
Summary: Potet esse melior, sed bonus liber est
Review: This is a very lively and colourful book, a good asset to learning Latin. On the other hand, unless you have some background in the structure of Latin, this book will be somewhat confusing. Also, this book is more for conversational Latin, which is alright since there are a few places one can speak Latin such as on the net and in universities. So those who seek Latin for literary purposes ought to be warned that this is a more conversational Latin book. Travellers and tourists may find this book useful for even far-flung descendants of Latin like Romanian can still be interchangable. People going to Romance-language-speaking countries will be able to converse in Latin with the natives, be understood, and maybe understand what they say back in their language. Try it on the clergy and educated people too. I would reccomend a backround in the structure first before tackling this book