Teach Yourself Beginner's Latin

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Summary: Latin dead? Never! Speak it today and forever!!!
Review: As a major in Latin and then one day going for masters in Latin: Oral Proficiency, it disturbs me that many, at least in the USA, feel that Latin is dead. If it was dead, as they say, there would not be any interest in the language or as many books composed in Latin, either from Antiquity or in Neo-Latin.

The glory of this language is that it is "dead" in the sense that is doesn't change. The grammar is solid and so is its syntax. Thus, once you can handle the grammar and learn some vocabulary, a great conversationalist you can become in this language. Go! Teach others in this language. We owe it to our future generations.

Remember, Latin was an oral language before it became written. And like English or any other language, Latin too had dialects. Think of it through the eyes of the Hispanics. There are many different forms of Spanish throughout the globe, but anyone of these speakers can understand each other, even if there are differences in spelling and pronunciation. I do not think that they are calling Spanish dead? So, feel free to pronounce the language as you see fit. Want to pronounce "ae" as "ay", go for it; why not. Or, do you feel like "vidi" to sound like "veedee" instead of "weedee", no problem. Or, do you want to use a "j" instead of the consonantal "I", as in "Jesus" vs. "Iesus"? Sure, you can do that. It is in these "gray areas" that the language is as alive as English or any other "modern/alive" language is today. However, I must warn you, there are other gray areas in the language, but what language doesn't? That is where the fun lies in learning a new language.

Never let anyone say that Latin is dead. It received this bad rap during the Cold War because Latin wasn't going to get any American to the moon or defeat Communism. Ergo, Latin is not dead; it just became begotten. It just faded away, but is not dead. No, it is as powerful and enriching, as it was when it was first created some 3000 years ago. In sum, learn it; speak it; cherish it!

As for the book, this is a great beginners book for a person from 5th grade to age 92. The story is quite creative and grows in difficulty as you learn more and progress further in the book. There could be more exercises, but there are more advanced Latin textbooks that can do that for you once you learn a firm foundation, which this book provides when you finish it.

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Summary: Where's the tape.
Review: As far as I'm concerned, language courses without the cassette tape are useless. No matter how much you understand the rules, grammar, conjugations, declensions, etc. they don't help you pronounce the words correctly. I will neve again buy a language "instruction" book without audio.
No one ever learned to speak their native tongue by first reading a work book.

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Summary: A fun, easy, and concise book
Review: I am a law student. Prior to law school I went through Wheelock's Latin to aquire a basis for the language. Wheelock's is an excellent introduction to the language which I recommend going through before purchasing this book. The beauty of the Teach Yourself book is that it is so engaging, fun, and concise. It is an excellent supplement to Wheelock's because it cements together everything you have already covered and provides a worktape by which you can check your pronunciation. It would be difficult to come away from this book and not have a very solid basis for the language.
There is another review here whereby a person claims to have mastered Latin through this course and Wheelock's to such an extent that it got him into Oxford. Having gone through both these texts myself, I have no doubt that this is true. I cannot overemphasize the quality of this course and the extent to which it brought the language alive for me.

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Summary: Very helpful guide to learning Latin
Review: I am still working through this book, but so far I like it very much. The continuing story through which the reader learns new vocabulary is extremely amusing. It is worth noting that the vocabulary words are not conversational. (Although not many people have conversations in Latin.) For example, the first few words the reader learns are woods, mule, watches (verb), scared, and slow. Or something similar to that.

I bought the book with two audio tapes, which don't appear to be offered here. The tapes were the short stories being read.

One thing about this book that could be improved is the number of practice exercises. I could definitely have used more of them. Also, it would have been nice if the book had had more straightforward grammar explanations. For example, instead of giving examples of verb endings they could have come right out with a chart telling all the endings for the different categories of verbs. However, the grammar explanations were mostly very clear and easy to learn.

I had not taken any Latin classes before reading this book, and did not have difficulty understanding anything. I reccommend this book highly for anyone interested in learning Latin.

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Summary: Latin is no longer a spoken language!
Review: I bought this book for the audio tapes. I wanted to get as much exposure to the vocabulary and inflections of the pronunciation as possible. Unfortunately, the audio quality of the tapes made them useless.

The speakers, and there are several which provide a wide range of ages and both sexes, sound like they gathered together in a large room and spoke into a single microphone placed somewhere in the room. The level of the audio varied greatly from speaker to speaker, and there was the same emphasis on low frequencies in the audio as you get when taping the audio from a television show on an [inexpensive] cassette recorder using a microphone placed in front of the television speaker.

In summary, the audio was unusable for me. Maybe your ears are better than mine, and maybe I just got a bad tape, but my hearing isn't really that bad, and there were a couple of voices who seemed close to the microphone, so I have to blame the recording process.

If I'd known that the tape was this quality, I wouldn't have bought the set. The latin which comes to mind is Caveat Emptor.

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Summary: The Best Language Book EVER!
Review: I must rave about this book. It does what many haughty titles in this category fail to do, and that is teach Latin clearly and effectively. So deftly does this book lubricate the brain to gently accept this grand language, that I hardly noticed how much it assisted me in learning OTHER languages completely unrelated to Latin. By describing grammar in terms of anticipation - i.e., that our brains anticipate language and whether what we hear makes sense is directly related to our process of anticipation - Sharpley breaks the mold for language teachers. How else to help an english speaker understand the many noun/verb/adjective tense agreements that are so common to world languages, but non-existent in english to any great extent. His pithy insight not only had me understanding Latin from the first pages, but also what to expect in my journey to learn Latin. There are no tricks, and there are no easy answers. However as teachers go, I agree with the vast majority or reviewers here who appreciate the sheer talent of the author to bring Latin to life, one bite at a time. I never felt like this language was difficult or complex, but that is was logical and quite understandable. You cannot go wrong with this book, and once the basics are under your belt (and this book offers more than basics with a quite extensive explanation of grammar and a hefty vocabulary) other books such as Wheelock's will be much easier to conquer.

Rating:
Summary: The best.
Review: This book has a way of describing the ways of the language that no other book has. Although I have used other books like Wheelock and Oxford Latin, I find that this book is the best for the beggining Latin student because of its simple, yet extremely effective way of teaching the reader word endings with comparisons to other words at the same time.
This books increased my Latin vocabulary considerably, because it uses not only classical Latin vocabulary, but ecclesiastical and medieval vocabulary as well.

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Summary: Fantastic introduction to the Latin language
Review: This book is a brilliant introduction to the Latin language. I first bought this when I was fourteen and worked my way through it, and I then followed it up with the textbook Wheelock's Latin: the two together got me admission to Oxford University's Latin and Greek program, into the same advanced stream as British students who had studied the language from childhood and had full A-levels (about an AP in the US) in Latin.

Sharpley's book works for two major points: 1) it provides a gradual exposition of grammatical concepts in a manner that is easy and straightforward to understand, and 2) it does so in a way that stresses that grammar is a natural part of language, and even languages that are 'dead' today were living and spoken at one point in time.

The book works by guiding the reader through a story which is set in a mediaeval monastery in Northern Europe. This does not, however, mean that the book teaches Mediaeval or Ecclesiastical Latin instead of Classical Latin; the forms used and taught are, in fact, the Classical ones that would have been familiar to Cicero and Vergil. (To be honest, the book really does not delve into areas sophisticated enough for the differences between Classical and Mediaeval versions of the language to be felt.) It introduces grammatical concepts a little at a time; there are few prohibitive complete verb or noun tables in the first sections of the book until the reader is able to develop a firm grasp on concepts of case, tense, and so on. Vocabulary is given in similarly small doses, and the language is presented in as accessable a way as possible. Every chapter also includes selections from 'real' Latin literature (with translations) that are not meant to be fully understood, but rather to be absorbed by the reader.

One deficiency with the book is that it does not mark the difference between long and short vowels; while in some ways this makes it easier to 'get a gist' of the language, vowel length will have to be learned in a later textbook because it is central to understanding Latin (even when it is not printed in literature, it must be known). The book does not adequately equip its reader, either in terms of grammar and syntax or vocabulary, to read with fluency either Classical or Mediaeval literature; what it does do, however, is provide a solid introduction to grammar concepts for the student working without a teacher. It also presents an excellent idea of the way the language works, as well as a taste of the richness of Classical (and even Mediaeval) Latin literature.

By the end of this course, you should know whether or not you want to go on to study Latin more thoroughly, and be able to understand the grammatical explanations of more difficult and more complete textbooks of the language. It will make the first few chapters of most standard textbooks feel like review, and will give you a sense of power as grammatical concepts lie within your understanding. The book, moreover, will give a real internal grasp of the rhythm and feel of the language. (The cassettes are not really necessary for this; I never had them, and didn't really miss them!)

I would recommend following this book on with either Wheelock's Latin (the standard North American first year college textbook, but difficult to understand without a teacher or a good background in grammar, as Sharpley provides) or the JACT Reading Latin course (which is more common in British universities). In either case, Sharpley's 'Beginner's Latin' will provide an excellent and useful gateway to the Latin language.

Rating:
Summary: Falling in love with Latin
Review: This book offers and easy and fun way to learn the basics of Latin. It is extremelly useful if you have to start learning from scratch as I did. Its simple but complete content allowed me to grasp the language inmediatly and also falled in love with it. It is definitely a choice for beginners.

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Summary: This is great for homeschool!
Review: We are using Sharpley's this year for homeschool, and after Latin Primer 1 and Minimus we found this book a bit of a challenge, but well worth the effort. Yes, you do have to study whereas we found our previous courses very easy without additional work, we are actually progressing at a rapid pace with Sharpley's. We are reading and translating in a way I think would have taken several years had we used the standard homeschool products out there. I would recommend using Minimus first for the beginner, but Sharpley's is where your actual progress will begin. It's very exciting. The book is the main part of the study. The tape is only to check to make sure you are reading the story with the correct pronounciation, which in actuality, no one is sure of anyway. My daughter is 7th grade adn some of the extra inserts about the history of the Latin language can be a difficult for her to read, but the actual text is clear for her. She likes the cartoon story and we found a written translation on his website, http://.../
She also likes having a teacher with an English accent! Right from the start, Sharpley teaches you how to read Latin using the endings of a word, and you progress into long sentences almost immediately. There is a lot of vocabulary and I really like the way he gives definitions that are not absolute, so you translate more with reasoning than with memorization. Instead of 'you sit', you learn 'sits' and you learn teacher can also mean master, etc. Those are simple explanations, but I think you get the point. I find this to be an excellent course for those who don't want to spend years learning Latin and don't want to spend a fortune on some of the less academic Latin curriculum offered in the homeschool community. This course is more fun, too!